Skip to content

April 10, 2012

@Botchagalupe and @Cote at Devopsdays Austin

By John Willis

Michael Cote (@cote) and I recently met up at DevOpsDays Austin, and, naturally, a video interview ensued.  We jokingly talked about getting the band back together and maybe starting up our old IT Management podcast series. For those of you who remember, we stopped recording after Michael left RedMonk and went to Dell.  As you’ll see, it didn’t take long for us to get back into a great rhythm.  In this video we talked about some of the conclusions made in Michael’s DevOpsDays Austin presentation.

Here is a list of the conclusion he made….

* There are two types of people in the world: Those who understand DevOps, and those who do not.

• Always Be Coding, Not Educating: Be comfortable with people not understanding. You can’t educate forever.

• Get Customers and Users ASAP:  Building a customer base drives your own process, encouraging innovation. In explaining yourself and your methods to others, it helps to have a customer base to back you up.

• Work The Iron Triangle: When you’re young, being awesome is better than being on-time.

• Find The Right Context: Getting pulled to do something is easier than pulling something along.

• Hiding Out: Things are easier when people aren’t aware that they should care.

• Get By With Just Enough Architecting and Abstracting: Eventually you’ll probably need it, but you can finish it later once you’ve built up enough momentum.

• Don’t Open Source A Box of Junk: Bring something to the party.

• Market The Right Stuff: Top-down marketing and bottom-up marketing.

- About The Authors
Avatar photo

John Willis

John Willis has worked in the IT management industry for more than 35 years and is a prolific author, including "Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge" and "The DevOps Handbook." He is researching DevOps, DevSecOps, IT risk, modern governance, and audit compliance. Previously he was an Evangelist at Docker Inc., VP of Solutions for Socketplane (sold to Docker) and Enstratius (sold to Dell), and VP of Training & Services at Opscode where he formalized the training, evangelism, and professional services functions at the firm. Willis also founded Gulf Breeze Software, an award winning IBM business partner, which specializes in deploying Tivoli technology for the enterprise. Willis has authored six IBM Redbooks for IBM on enterprise systems management and was the founder and chief architect at Chain Bridge Systems.

Follow John on Social Media

No comments found

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.



Jump to Section

    More Like This

    Vibe Coding Workshop For Leaders (September 2025, ETLS Vegas)
    By Gene Kim

    As you know, I’ve been working with Steve Yegge (famous for his 20+ years…

    Why the Business-IT Gap Exists and How to Begin Closing It
    By Leah Brown

    The divide between business and IT has been a persistent challenge in organizations for…

    Small Changes, Big Impact: How to Transform Organizational Culture Through Meetings
    By Leah Brown

    It's no secret that many leaders find themselves frustrated by organizational culture challenges that…

    The Road Ahead: Emerging Trends and Future Directions for Enterprise GenAI
    By Leah Brown

    As enterprises build and scale their GenAI implementations, forward-thinking leaders are already anticipating the…