DevOps is about breaking silos. Bringing everyone to the table to bring more value to the company. But how does that fit with specialists on a team like DBAs who, by definition, are a silo of specific knowledge?

Trick question! I don’t think DBA’s are ‘by definition a silo’. I have been a DBA with outdated expectations of my roles in the past. And if you would like to know how to promote collaboration with your DBA team, I have some stories to share! In this talk, I will show you how to help your DBA get involved early in your feature planning, and how to draw on their expertise and use their knowledge to turn good performance and operationality into v1 features and not add-ons.

I will draw from my experience as the only DBA in a rapidly growing company that was also learning how to DevOps as I was learning what the word means and doesn’t mean. I will give examples on how to grow the relation between the DBA and the engineering teams to bring stronger collaboration. And I will share lessons learned from both projects that went well and some that had bumps on the road and why they did.