Inspire, develop, and guide a winning organization.
Create visible workflows to achieve well-architected software.
Understand and use meaningful data to measure success.
Integrate and automate quality, security, and compliance into daily work.
Understand the unique values and behaviors of a successful organization.
LLMs and Generative AI in the enterprise.
An on-demand learning experience from the people who brought you The Phoenix Project, Team Topologies, Accelerate, and more.
Learn how making work visible, value stream management, and flow metrics can affect change in your organization.
Clarify team interactions for fast flow using simple sense-making approaches and tools.
Multiple award-winning CTO, researcher, and bestselling author Gene Kim hosts enterprise technology and business leaders.
In the first part of this two-part episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Dr. Ron Westrum, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University.
In the first episode of Season 2 of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Admiral John Richardson, who served as Chief of Naval Operations for four years.
Exploring the impact of GenAI in our organizations & creating business impact through technology leadership.
Half-day virtual event with live watch parties worldwide.
DevOps best practices, case studies, organizational change, ways of working, and the latest thinking affecting business and technology leadership.
Is slowify a real word?
Could right fit help talent discover more meaning and satisfaction at work and help companies find lost productivity?
The values and philosophies that frame the processes, procedures, and practices of DevOps.
This post presents the four key metrics to measure software delivery performance.
September 27, 2018
Wow! It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, we were wrapping up two days of immersive learning at the DevOps Enterprise Summit London event — and now we are getting ready for our biggest DevOps Enterprise event ever — Las Vegas 2018!
In this post, I describe:
I shared this with our programming committee early in our planning process, so that we could scrutinize and critique it — as someone once famously noted, “to be able to think clearly, one usually needs to first write it clearly.”
Our first objective is to have the 2018 Las Vegas event be even better than our 2018 London event, which in turn, I believe, was even better than our 2017 San Francisco event, which was the better than all of our previous events. Aiming to have the next conference to be better than the last is challenging, especially when you think that your last event was the best yet — but without a doubt, stating this as an explicit objectives makes it impossible just to coast.
But, the good news is, there are plenty of challenges this community faces, and I have confidence that by helping the community overcome those challenges, the result is a better conference. And I think you’re going to love what we have in store for you!
(And with that in mind, I hope that when you see this year’s conference speaker lineup, you’ll agree that this will be the best DevOps Enterprise Summit yet — if you haven’t registered yet, please use the special code below to save $300 off your registration price!)
Here are the other programming objectives for 2018, created with the fantastic Programming Committee.
For the past four years, one of the hallmarks of DevOps Enterprise Summit is that we have many repeat speakers presenting their ongoing DevOps transformation experience reports.
This has been an awesome way to document their journeys and progress over time – it is especially gratifying to see how their areas of responsibility keep growing.
Repeat experience reports make up 15% of our programming.
American ExpressChad Avery, Program Manager, DevOps Aimee Cardwell, VP, Consumer Product DevelopmentVerizonRoss Clanton, Executive Director, Technology ModernizationHearst Business MediaPauly Comtois, VP DevOpsNationwideJim Grafmeyer, Director, IT Infrastructure Jared Speno, Senior Technical ConsultantJaguar Land RoverChris Hill, Head of Systems EngineeringDXC TechnologyOlivier Jacques, Principal, DevOps Transformation Joan Watson, Dir. DevSecOpsWalmartBryan Finster, Staff Software Engineer Dana Finster, Sr. Software Engineer
American Express
Chad Avery, Program Manager, DevOps Aimee Cardwell, VP, Consumer Product Development
Verizon
Ross Clanton, Executive Director, Technology Modernization
Hearst Business Media
Pauly Comtois, VP DevOps
Nationwide
Jim Grafmeyer, Director, IT Infrastructure Jared Speno, Senior Technical Consultant
Jaguar Land Rover
Chris Hill, Head of Systems Engineering
DXC Technology
Olivier Jacques, Principal, DevOps Transformation Joan Watson, Dir. DevSecOps
Walmart
Bryan Finster, Staff Software Engineer Dana Finster, Sr. Software Engineer
One potential danger of having repeat speakers is the self-reinforcing loop and creating an self-contained echo chamber, merely repeating what we like hearing. That’s why we continue to seek out new experience reports — new experience reports are 25% of our programming.
In these new experience reports, we actively seek the largest and most recognized firms across every industry vertical, to give DevOps Enterprise champions more case studies and empirical evidence to make their case internally, and overcome objections.
Over the years, we’ve had some of the world’s largest banks present, as well as large not-for-profits, government agencies, and military branches — organizations that are often viewed as risk-averse and conservative.
For these stories, we are interested in organizations at all stages of the journey. And these stories are a source of fantastic and serendipitous discoveries, as well.
I’m delighted that this year, we have new speakers from:
National Association of Insurance CommissionersDan Barker, Chief ArchitectIBMAnn Corrao, Distinguished Engineer and Master InventorJet.com and Walmart LabsScott Havens, Director of Software EngineeringUS Patent & TrademarkSimmons Lough, IT SpecialistDelta AirlinesKeanen Wold, Manager, DevOps Transformation
National Association of Insurance Commissioners
Dan Barker, Chief Architect
IBM
Ann Corrao, Distinguished Engineer and Master Inventor
Jet.com and Walmart Labs
Scott Havens, Director of Software Engineering
US Patent & Trademark
Simmons Lough, IT Specialist
Delta Airlines
Keanen Wold, Manager, DevOps Transformation
?? Las Vegas: October 22-24, 2018
Another goal is to help the community get business leadership onboard — and by that, I don’t mean business leadership silently tolerating DevOps. Instead, what we are looking for are enthusiastic and grateful business partners, who want to tell the world how all their goals, dreams and aspirations were finally achieved by working together with their technology counterpart.
In London 2018, we had some fantastic talks along these likes (from Nike, Capital One, and Verizon Enterprise).
In Las Vegas, we’ll be featuring even more talks like this, showing how technology leaders are partnering with not just business leaders, but also other areas of the business, such as product leadership, security/privacy, legal, project management, and so forth.
These unique types of experience reports will represent about 15% of our overall talks, and I’m super-excited about their stories — these are the most difficult talks to find, because they require a technology leader with a great working relationship their business counterpart, and that they’ve created visible successes.
NikeCourtney Kissler, Vice President, Nike Digital Platform Engineering Ann Bradley, Chief Privacy Officer and Global CounselCapital OneAimee Bechtle, Senior Manager Advanced Engineering Abbie Gray, Product Manager in Credit Card Channels Product & PlatformTargetLevi Geinert, Director of Engineering Lucas Rettig, Principal Product Owner Dan Cundiff, Principal EngineerCapital OneTopo Pal, Senior Director & Sr. Engineering Fellow Jamie Specter, Counsel, IP & Technology Legal GroupThe Walt Disney CompanyJason Cox, Director, Systems Engineering Deepti Mutnuru, Senior Project ManagerKaiser PermanenteAlice Raia, Vice President, Digital Presence Technologies Le Quach, Director, Strategic Design & Implementation
Nike
Courtney Kissler, Vice President, Nike Digital Platform Engineering Ann Bradley, Chief Privacy Officer and Global Counsel
Capital One
Aimee Bechtle, Senior Manager Advanced Engineering Abbie Gray, Product Manager in Credit Card Channels Product & Platform
Target
Levi Geinert, Director of Engineering Lucas Rettig, Principal Product Owner Dan Cundiff, Principal Engineer
Topo Pal, Senior Director & Sr. Engineering Fellow Jamie Specter, Counsel, IP & Technology Legal Group
The Walt Disney Company
Jason Cox, Director, Systems Engineering Deepti Mutnuru, Senior Project Manager
Kaiser Permanente
Alice Raia, Vice President, Digital Presence Technologies Le Quach, Director, Strategic Design & Implementation
I’ve written before about how this programming objective came from Jason Cox at Disney (one of our programming committee members), who said to me every year, “Great conference for Dev, but it wasn’t as great for Ops.”
In 2018, we finally did something about it — starting in London 2018, we reserved 25% of talks for next generation Ops and Infrastructure concerns, and created a separate subcommittee to focus on this area.
And wow, we were all very, very happy with the results — in fact, I think the elevation of this topic has fundamentally changed the feel of the conference (you can watch a full discussion about this track here>>>).
In this track, we really make an effort to help define and clarify what exactly the role of Ops leader is, all the technology and organizational changes there have been in how infrastructure is designed, delivered and operated.
This year we are dedicating about 25% of the programming to this topic, and we are preserving that proportion for the mainstage presentations, as well.
I love that these presentations are also a bit more technical, but there’s no doubt that it is extremely relevant for the technology leadership community. (After all, as Mark Schwartz famously observed, “last I heard, this is still a technical field.” Haha!)
Examples of talks in this track include:
MicrosoftJeffrey Snover, Technical Fellow and Chief Architect for Azure Storage & Cloud EdgeKeyBankJohn Rzeszotarski, SVP, Director of Continuous Delivery and FeedbackPivotalCornelia Davis, Senior Director of TechnologyRundeckDamon Edwards, Co-founder and Chief Product OfficerStack OverflowTom Limoncelli, Renowned Author and Speaker, Former Sys Admin for Google, currently SRE ManagerStandard Chartered BankShaun Norris, Global Head, Cloud Infrastructure ServicesHoneycomb.ioCharity Majors, former Production Engineering Manager for Facebook, currently CEO, Engineer and Co-founder
Microsoft
Jeffrey Snover, Technical Fellow and Chief Architect for Azure Storage & Cloud Edge
KeyBank
John Rzeszotarski, SVP, Director of Continuous Delivery and Feedback
Pivotal
Cornelia Davis, Senior Director of Technology
Rundeck
Damon Edwards, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer
Stack Overflow
Tom Limoncelli, Renowned Author and Speaker, Former Sys Admin for Google, currently SRE Manager
Standard Chartered Bank
Shaun Norris, Global Head, Cloud Infrastructure Services
Honeycomb.io
Charity Majors, former Production Engineering Manager for Facebook, currently CEO, Engineer and Co-founder
BONUS – if you haven’t seen the Next Gen Ops panel discussion from the June conference in London, it’s worth a watch here>>>.
In our San Francisco 2017 conference, one of the most notable (and for me, memorable) moments was the Safety Culture and Lean Panel we had, featuring three luminaries in the field. Dr. Sidney Dekker and Dr. Richard Cook (Safety Culture) and Dr. Steven Spear (Lean) and I discussed the areas of mutual reinforcing principles from those two fields, and discussed how lessons learned from those domains could be applied to the DevOps Enterprise community.
This year, we are honored to have Dr. Christina Maslach speak on her lifetime of research on burnout. She is professor emerita of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and her area of research focus includes: burnout and job stress; and individuation and social influence, as well as the positive antithesis of burnout, work engagement, as a better framework for developing interventions.
My mentor, Dr. Steven Spear will be presenting, as well. He presented at DevOps Enterprise Summit in 2015, and was part of the panel I mentioned above. He is currently Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Dr. Spear is a Senior Fellow for the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, and was a four-time recipient of the Shingo Prize for Research Excellence. He is the author of “The High Velocity Edge”, and has extended his research beyond manufacturing to R&D, workplace safety, healthcare, etc.
(Stay tuned for some exciting news that we’ll be able to share about something else special we have planned!)
20% of our programming is dedicated to these types of talks —
Dr. Nicole Forsgren (Founder and CEO of DevOps Research and Assessment) will be presenting the 2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Findings, which was done with the help of Google Cloud.
Rosalind Radcliffe (Distinguished Engineer, Chief Architect for DevOps for z Systems IBM) will be presenting on her work elevating the state of the practice for the mainframe ecosystem.
And many more!
When I look at the DevOps Enterprise community, it is a community of networkers. I see lasting collaborations and friendships that have lasted for years and the mark of a phenomenal community is one that is actively helping one another.
With that desired outcome in mind, we have made some changes to our programming.
Furthermore, there will be an hour per day in the programming where there are no talks — instead, this is a time for networking and collaboration and information sharing, with various levels of structure.
(Our observation was that formats such as Lean Coffee were extremely popular, but because they were scheduled at the same time as talks, people went to the talks instead because of the “Fear of Missing Out.” Now there are no talks to compete with!)
We also will have…
This year at DOES18 Las Vegas, we’ll also be having Lightning Talks and the IT Revolution Author Book Signing! These will be on Day 2, following closing remarks. There will be refreshments and happy hour snacks as well!
As you can see, there’s a lot that is getting me excited for the conference this year! We hope we will see you at what is sure to be the best DevOps Enterprise Summit yet!
Register now (and book your room at the Cosmopolitan) to ensure your spot at DOES18 Las Vegas!
Gene Kim has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999. He was the founder and CTO of Tripwire, Inc., an enterprise security software company, where he served for 13 years. His books have sold over 1 million copies—he is the WSJ bestselling author of Wiring the Winning Organization, The Unicorn Project, and co-author of The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook, and the Shingo Publication Award-winning Accelerate. Since 2014, he has been the organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit (now Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit), studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations.
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