DevOps Enterprise Review #10

Gene’s links, DevOps resources, industry musings, & more

#DOES19 Las Vegas

Published in

IT Revolution

9 min readAug 6, 2019

Hello, DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES) Community!

In the 10th edition of the DevOps Enterprise Review, we continue spotlighting the insights from many of the leading IT practitioners and subject matter experts in DevOps who are pioneering the philosophies and practices that work (and conversely, which to avoid.)

If this is your first time reading our bi-monthly periodical, the purpose of the DevOps Enterprise Review (otherwise known as the “DOER”) is to serve as a place to help our community find and amplify helpful information. More specifically, the kind of information that intersects continual learning and data to help advance the principles and patterns for all to benefit in IT.

In this edition of the DOER, you’ll discover more in-depth information on the Airbus A350 software bug, a report that there is now a woman board member at every S&P 500 company, what an enterprise IT team can learn from a startup, ways to build a DevOps-inspired career track, and much more.

There’s also an update on several books that can help keep the knowledge tree ever-growing, as well as some very interesting news items and articles that are worth a quick read. These stories include new data and reports, as well as industry insights, to help continue shaping the narrative around what matters and why in the world of tech. Last but not least, we’ve also highlighted to most recently announced speakers for the DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2019 event this October (hope you can join us there!).

If there was anything we missed or that you want to call out for the next edition of the DOER, please send us your ideas in the comments section below.

Enjoy reading and we look forward to hearing from you!

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Gene’s Links

(Note: all posts sourced from Gene’s Twitter feed, @RealGeneKim)

It amazes me how much compute these projects require — much of MSFT investment of $1B will be used for needed Azure cloud services… reminds me of Google Cloud providing $9MM grant to @CloudNativeFdn, in the form of usage credits.
So awesome. Decades-Old Computer Science ‘Boolean Sensitivity’ Conjecture Solved in Two Pages
Wow!! What brilliant work and it’s such a dazzling glimpse of what programming and UX should be like. Thanks for sharing, Jack — it made me raise my own standards and expectations of what is possible! Reshared from Jack Rusher.
Watching John Hennessy and David Patterson 2017 ACM Turing Award Lecture. Among many interesting points: 65K speedup possible for Python programs using techniques/technologies available today. Moore’s Law running out of steam: 3.5% Y/Y incr SPECint
Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours
Reshared from Kent Beck: Big architectural changes that start with small, safe steps can start right now. This minute. We can integrate before lunch and deploy on a Friday.
Reshared from @ValaAfshar: “A minimum viable product doesn’t mean half finished. It’s doing small number of things to a high standard.”
“There is now a woman board member at every S&P 500 company,” sourced from CNBC.

DevOps Resources — Learn and Grow, Together

Want more frequent updates on DevOps Resources? Be sure to check the IT Revolution DevOps Blog for regular updates!

What Enterprise IT Can Learn From A Startup’s Journey

This post is an excerpt from a presentation by Naomi Lurie, Director of Product, and Laksh Ranganathan, Senior Solutions Consultant at Tasktop, titled “What Enterprise IT Can Learn From a Startup’s Journey.”

You can watch the video of the presentation, which was originally delivered at the 2018 DevOps Enterprise Summit in London.

Continual Learning: Building a DevOps-Inspired Career Track

Many organizations list a skills gap as one of their primary obstacles to achieving and sustaining a high-functioning DevOps-based organization. This paper attempts to provide practical guidance to organizations on developing, recruiting, and retaining DevOps talent.

This paper also serves as a call to action for the industry to help advise and advocate for more DevOps and Lean/Agile concepts to be included in the curriculum of traditional educational providers. Academic partners for both four-year degrees and adult education have not widely embraced teaching updated principles and current skill sets. As a community, we have a role to play in advocating for better educational programs for the workforce.

Authors: Jason Cox, Chivas Nambiar and Paula Thrasher

The Art of Business Value

Playful and thought-provoking, The Art of Business Value explores what business value means, why it matters, and how it should affect your software development and delivery practices. More than any other IT delivery approach, DevOps (and Agile thinking in general) makes business value a central concern. This book examines the role of business value in software and makes a compelling case for why a clear understanding of business value will change the way you deliver software.

This book will make you think deeply about not only what it means to deliver value but also the relationship of the IT organization to the rest of the enterprise. It will give you the language to discuss value with the business, methods to cut through bureaucracy and strategies for incorporating Agile teams and culture into the enterprise. Most of all, this book will startle you into new ways of thinking about the cutting-edge of Agile practice and where it may lead.

Written by: Mark Schwartz

Industry News — Read All About It!

Working remotely is the new norm for developers — Developers have come to expect a flexible work schedule when it comes to their career. In a new report from DigitalOcean, which gathered responses from more than 4,500 developers, 86 percent of respondents revealed they currently work remotely in some capacity. Thirty-three percent work from home full time while 28 percent split their time between working remotely and going into the office (Source: Christina Cardoza, SDTimes)

2019 State of the Software Supply Chain Report: 5 key takeaways — Today, businesses that are racing to deliver better value to their customers — and differentiate from competitors — are embracing Deming’s principles within their open-source-based software development practices. As software has become the last path to differentiation in most competitive industries, practices are evolving, from artisan-based creations to those that more closely resemble high-velocity parts assembly.

As the team set out to develop the fifth annual State of the Software Supply Chain Report, we wanted to better understand the health and habits of the open-source component ecosystem. We also wanted to understand how software developers choose which open-source components to use in their own projects. (Source: Derek Weeks, TechBeacon)

CIO job description grows ever more demanding— As the ability to produce digital revenue has become increasingly important to companies of all kinds, Craig Stephenson, senior client partner and managing director of the North America CIO/CTO Practice at Korn Ferry, is seeing the CIO role at some companies take on more of a technology bent than before: The top technology exec oversees product, engineering and software development. This article explores the evolving CIO job description during an interview with the veteran headhunter at the 2019 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium (Source: Brian Holak, SearchCIO.TechTarget.com)

DevOps for Enterprises with Rosalind Radcliffe: RunAs Radio #644 — Is DevOps only for startups? Rosalind Radcliffe says no! The largest enterprises can benefit from DevOps practices, the challenge is finding the right approach to changing practices. Rosalind talks about getting buy-in from senior leadership by focusing on reducing waste and improving efficiency. Picking the right project is important also — you want a project that is important, but not the crown jewels of the company. Understanding how work actually gets done in the enterprise helps lead you to where you can find improvements in deployment, testing and more. DevOps in the enterprise is possible — and worth it! (Source: Richard Campbell, RunAs Radio Podcast)

Digital Transformations Fall Short, Survey Claims— According to the Kony Digital Experience 2019 Index Survey report, businesses are “still missing the mark” with consumers despite nearly $5 trillion in digital investment. The report didn’t distinguish how the $5 trillion was being spent and in what areas of the business the investments were made. (Source: George V. Hulme, DevOps.com)

Reminders and Updates — Mark Your Calendars

More DOES19 Las Vegas Speakers Added to Program

The programming committee for DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas has announced its third round of speakers for October! Multiple vertical markets are represented in the latest round of speaker announcements, which include:

David Blair, OIT Transformation Delivery Chief, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Klaudia Breslavets, Program Manager, Investment IT Learning Academy, Vanguard
David Cherryhomes, Vice President, Software Engineering, Optum United Healthcare
Scott Havens, Director of Software Engineering, Jet.com and Walmart Labs
Scott Kellerman, Digital Transformation Lead, Technology Speed Bump Program, Vanguard
James Lloyd, Branch Chief of Innovation in Field Operations, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Dr. Stephen Magill, CEO, MuseDev
Heather Mickman, Vice President, Platform Engineering and Practices, Optum United Healthcare
Manuel Pais, co-author of “Team Topologies: Evolving Organization Design for Business and Technology”
Matthew Skelton, co-author of “Team Topologies: Evolving Organization Design for Business and Technology”
Melinda Solomon, Agile Training Lead, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Russell Warman, Head of Infrastructure and Operations, Auto Trader
Dave Whyte, Operations Squad Lead, Auto Trader

If you want to join the technology leaders listed above and attend the event, you can register here before the event sells out. DOES19 takes place at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas from October 28–30.

2019 Book Publishing Update

Books, books — the magical fruit! The more you read the more you root (yourself in knowledge-growth, that is.)

Hopefully, Summertime has been going well and you’ve been reading some excellent books while traveling to that family vacation destination, or when it’s simply just too hot to go outside. If you’re looking for a must-read book list, Carla Rudder at The Enterpriser’s Project picked 10 fiction books for leaders that provide an escape — or lessons, if you prefer.

Another book worth considering to add to the Summer reading list is one that Ben Linders recently spoke with author Michael Ventura about, called Applied Empathy. This book explores how understanding people and learning about their perspectives can help us to lead with empathy. Questions are more important than answers; as leaders, we should look for ways to connect with our customers and employees, and listen more and talk less.

A new development in the book world comes from the All Day DevOps organizers who just released a new publication, Feedback Loops: Voices of All Day DevOps, Volume 1. This book compiles the stories from 38 different DevOps practitioners that show us many different ways to develop a path to successful transformation. Check it out if you want to learn about the challenges they faced, their frustrations and opportunities, as well as their accomplishments along the journey.

Last, but not least, we’re now only about a month away from the release of Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow and co-author Matthew Skelton recently announced that multiple DevOps Topologies A1-sized posters are now available as well. Be sure to scoop your poster up soon for decorating the office this Fall!

Thank you for reading the 10th edition of the DevOps Enterprise Review (DOER)! Keep reading and keep sharing, so we can all Get Together and Go Faster!