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DevOps = Effectiveness First!

Abstract

In this talk we explore in detail how efficiency and effectiveness are related to DevOps and the traditional separation of Development and Operations.

Companies are usually aiming for high efficiency and predictability. This seems to make sense in the first place, as no one wants to be inefficient, right? But wait a second, the ask for efficiency might actually be a source for a permanent conflict with the DevOps idea.

The focus on “synergy effects” and “good utilization” – which is a focus on efficiency – is often one of the main motivations for creating silos in the organisation, for the classical separation between Dev and Ops. Quite often those structures are neither effective nor efficient in the long run.

On the other hand, with DevOps done right one can achieve a high level of effectiveness: Horizontal scaling, that is, increasing for a team their coverage of the value stream from idea to production, brings naturally the focus on doing the right thing for the customer. Furthermore, by improving the efficiency of an effective process, DevOps can enable companies to be ahead of their competitors.

What I can learn in this session?

• You can gain a better understanding how the DevOps approach yields to good organizational setups.
• You learn some good arguments, why the traditional approach is suboptimal, and understand the mechanics that lead to ineffective and inefficient structures.
• You learn good arguments for selling DevOps better
• You learn ideas which help you to make the right choices in your DevOps journey.

Speaker

Alex works as an Agile Coach for HERE, a Nokia business, in Berlin. His journey in the IT industry started 20 years ago as a programmer. Over the years he assumed many different roles (tech lead, team lead, release manager, lean manager) in different companies and organizations.

Alex main focus is to deliver value to production quickly, so he was working on evangelizing and introducing Continuous Delivery, DevOps and Agile Testing in enterprises. From 2008-2010 he was leading the release management of the eBay company mobile.de in Germany, the largest online market place for selling vehicles in Germany. In 2011 Alex joined HERE, a Nokia business, in Berlin/Germany, and was leading a delivery team for three years, which is responsible for multiple REST services hosted in the cloud. In March 2014 he switched to the role of an Agile Coach and Change Agent for HERE.