Ignite: "Talking to People: The Forgotten DevOps Tool"




As we focus on how to how to best use JIRA, Hipchat, Slack, project management products, incident and defect tracking solutions, and a myriad of other software tools as a part of our development and delivery environment, we often lose sight of the most fundamental and powerful tool available – talking to people, to our team members, management, users, and other stakeholders. Rather than burying ourselves in tools and devices, software and search engines, we can do more for our overall application quality and delivery processes by simply talking to the people around us. While a focus on software may produce more data, knowing the thoughts, expectations, and ideas of the stakeholders will result in more innovative ideas as well as a filter for determining optimal solutions. Using the research of MIT researcher Sherry Turkle, consultant Frans Johansson, writer Malcolm Gladwell, and others, this presentation uses the power of conversation to illustrate how we can improve our DevOps practices and results, for the good of all stakeholders. It illustrates how our conversations can be more powerful and directed than any software tool in determining and quickly delivering on application features. Last, it examines the role of ChatOps tools in supplementing conversation with actionable ideas and automated responses to be a true real time DevOps environment.

Speaker

peter-varhol

Peter Varhol

    
Peter Varhol is a well-known writer and speaker on software and technology topics, having authored dozens of articles and spoken at a number of industry conferences and webcasts. He has advanced ...