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March 31, 2017

A Chat with DOES London Speaker Jose Quaresma, DevOps Lead in Denmark at Accenture

DevOps Enterprise Summit 2017

Excitement is building as the DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES) London approaches June 5-6 at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre. We are entering the final planning stages and will be releasing the conference agenda on April 12, revealing this year’s sessions and topics. This is London’s second summit and we will be building on the success and synergy of last year’s gathering where leaders from large, complex organizations implementing DevOps principles and practices congregated to learn and grow together. Conference attendees were able to take back valuable insights to help their organizations develop and deliver software faster, and win in the marketplace. This year is going to be even bigger and better, if you haven’t already, now is the time to register!

We’ve been getting to know our DOES London speakers a little better over the last few weeks. We first talked to Jonathan Fletcher from Hiscox, who gave us a good warning about approaching organizational change,

Don’t underestimate the time, effort and skill it takes to influence such a wide body of individuals—DevOps is a holistic view across all of IT and the business. That’s a big undertaking.

Next, we interviewed Alexa Alley from Hearst, who talked about the importance of culture and communication to create change within an organization. This week, we will be sharing our Q & A with Jose Quaresma, DevOps Lead in Denmark at Accenture Technology. Jose is based in Denmark and is part of the Advanced Technology & Architecture practice. His main focus is in bringing the best of DevOps’ concepts, processes, and methodologies to Accenture clients. Jose is interested in both the technology and tools as well as the people and culture aspects of DevOps and Lean.

Querisma,Jose_500x500DevOps Enterprise Summit: Jose, what are you most excited about for the upcoming event this June?

Jose Quaresma: I am really excited about meeting a lot of people who share my passion for DevOps and its potential for transforming businesses. I’m also looking forward to sharing my experience and learning as much as possible from others.

DOES: Discuss the biggest problem areas or challenges of large-scale DevOps transformations.

JQ: In my opinion, the biggest challenges when applying large-scale DevOps transformations is the change that comes with DevOps way of working. It’s a new paradigm that requires changes in several dimensions of the organization: in the tools you use, in the processes you rely on and (most of the time) in the company’s culture. It’s a big change and this is where change management comes into play.

DOES: What has been your favorite DevOps pattern that you’ve seen or done that radically improves outcomes?

JQ: My favorite DevOps pattern is Automation—of builds, of deployments, of testing, of environment provisioning. Having all this automated enables you to make changes faster and more reliably and that is, after all, one of our main goals.

DOES: What do you think is the most important metric when measuring DevOps success?

JQ: I would say cycle time, meaning the time from when a developer starts working on a specific change (new feature, bug fix, etc.) until that change arrives in production. This is the most important metric when measuring DevOps success. The shorter the cycle time, the faster your business can adapt to changes. A lot of the DevOps practices will help lower this value. Having small batches go through the pipeline will lead to a shorter cycle time. Having continuous integration and continuous delivery will also shorten that time, lower lead times for production deployments (with continuous deployment being the extreme here) and will also make your cycle time lower.

DOES: Choosing a value stream for DevOps transformation deserves careful consideration. Which would you start with and why?

JQ: I can think of two approaches here. One would be to look in the organization for value streams that already rely on Agile development as part of their work. These streams will probably be more ready for a DevOps transformation given how well DevOps supports and complements Agile development.

The other approach would be to look for value streams that are small, simple and (if possible) not business critical. This would demonstrate the positive outcomes of a DevOps transformation without the pressure of changing a complex business-critical system. Starting on smaller, easier-to-transform value streams will help you gain experience and showcase the benefits of DevOps before starting the transformation of the bigger and more important value streams.

DOES: What new Ops skills and roles may be needed in a DevOps future?

JQ: Given our path towards infrastructure as code and the usage of tools to automatically provision environments, Operations’ work is starting to be more about specifying and developing the infrastructure and not so much about building it. I think being able to define and use infrastructure as code is already, and will continue to be, an important skill for Ops. I also believe that knowledge of containerized applications and platforms will be crucial. It is especially relevant in my opinion because it is not just a skill but also a different mindset and way of handling your infrastructure. I also think that Ops will need to adapt their role to have a greater presence earlier in the value streams, be closer to the development, and help with the continuous integration and, especially, with the continuous delivery setup.

DOES: What are your favorite resources you look to (past and present) for leveraging the best practices and principles – this could be in the form of research, books, events, articles, etc.

JQ: “The Phoenix Project” book is my favorite resource to introduce someone to the DevOps world. It is a wonderful way of getting people to start thinking about DevOps and what it can bring to an organization. On a more technical level, “The DevOps Handbook” is a great resource, expanding on the different concepts and processes behind DevOps, while also providing a lot of enlightening case studies.

Also, I am currently reading the recently released, “The DevOps Adoption Playbook” by Sanjeev Sharma, which focuses on bringing DevOps to the Enterprise, and it looks promising. I also try to keep up with the presentations given at the most important DevOps conferences (such as DOES and Velocity Conference) and podcasts (such as “DevOps Cafe” and “DevOps Chats” from devops.com).

DOES: We’re all continuous lifelong learners: Share one lesson that you’d like to share with the audience:

JQ: The lesson I would like to share is actually part of your question. I truly believe that for us to succeed (both personally and professionally) we need to be lifelong learners, now more than ever. As Yuval Noah Harari said, “the time when we could expect to learn the initial phase of our lives and then be done with learning and work for the rest of our lives is behind us.” We need to be able to continuously learn and improve. That is also why I agree that Continuous Improvement should be a crucial part of culture, whether it is your own or your company’s culture.

DOES: Is there anything that you would like to ask your fellow DOES London speakers and attendees?

JQ: I think an interesting question would be: “Which non-DevOps book would you recommend to other people attending the conference?” My answer would be “Deep Work” by Cal Newport, which was one of the best books I read last year. It talks about the importance of deep focused work and provides tools to help us work in a focused and undistracted way.

Thanks for these great responses Jose! You’ve given us a lot to think about! And great question there at the end—DOES attendees, [bctt tweet=”What is your favorite “non-DevOps,” book that has helped you learn and grow? https://itrevolution.com/chat-with-jose-quaresma-devops-lead/ #DOES17″ username=”josequaresma @rcoitrevolution”] Leave your recommendations in the comments below or share with Jose on Twitter (@josequaresma) and tag DOES by using #DOES17.

Again, if you’d like to join Jose in London and haven’t yet registered for the conference, you can learn more and purchase tickets here.

- About The Authors

Trusted by technology leaders worldwide. Since publishing The Phoenix Project in 2013, and launching DevOps Enterprise Summit in 2014, we’ve been assembling guidance from industry experts and top practitioners.

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