An Excerpt from Episode 15 of The Idealcast with Guest Admiral John Richardson Gene Kim: I think we've all witnessed situations where an organization that once exhibited dynamic learning characteristics, well, they start to calcify. When I attended Dr. Steve Spear's workshop at MIT in 2014, I loved the way he cast the US space program in the 1960s as one of fundamental dynamic learning. I recently read Gene Kranz' book, Failure Is Not an Option. And I love the way he described his role in it, a … [Read more...]
Announcing Season 2 of The Idealcast with Gene Kim
I loved Season 1 of the The Idealcast because it was a way to further learn from some of the people I admire most within the DevOps Enterprise community. It has really helped me clarify, in my own mind, why organizations work the way they do—both in the ideal and not ideal—and what the conditions are to really enable greatness Season 2 is going to be incredible because it includes guests from outside the DevOps Enterprise community whose work I truly admire. We’ll hear from Admiral John … [Read more...]
State of DevOps: 2020 and Beyond
What Happened in 2020 Most organizations entered 2020 with a plan, and all those plans were completely upended by a global pandemic and the economic downturn that happened afterward. And yet I think 2020 has been illuminating in showing what technology can do in a time of incredible crisis. I experienced this myself with DevOps Enterprise Summit. In a normal year, we host two in-person conferences in the US and UK. Of course in 2020, an in-person conference where thousands of people fly into a … [Read more...]
Measure Software Delivery Performance with Four Key Metrics
This post has been adapted from Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps by Nicole Forsgren, PhD, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim. There are many frameworks and methodologies that aim to improve the way we build software products and services. We wanted to discover what works and what doesn’t in a scientific way, starting with a definition of what “good” means in this context. This post presents the four key metrics to measure software delivery performance. MEASURING SOFTWARE DELIVERY … [Read more...]
8 Recommended Talks from DevOps Enterprise Summit (and Why)
Recently, I was speaking with a friend in a large bank, and I ended up writing him a letter recommending some talks that I thought would be useful. Below I list each of them, along with why I think they'd be of interest. 1) Credit Suisse from London - Virtual 2020 Andrea Hausmann, Head of Program Strategy & Engagement, Credit SuisseDuncan Lawie, Director, DevOps and Development Practices, Credit Suisse I think this is a super interesting talk, because they’re a centralized group that owns … [Read more...]
Bonus Interview with Jonathan Smart on Sooner Safer Happier
Gene: You use the Cynefin model to frame a picture of everything from known knowns to unknown unknowns. What about this model is essential to the necessary mindset shift and business success in the digital age? Jon: I find Cynefin, a sense-making model, to be a great frame of reference for optimizing the approach to the work, to the domain of the work. Cynefin articulates five domains. Within the Clear domain, there are known-knowns. There is best practice.The relationship between cause and … [Read more...]
Leading through Better Value Sooner Safer Happier
Gene Kim Interviews Jonathan Smart, author of Sooner Safer Happier (Part 1) Gene Kim: Why Better Value Sooner Safer Happier? What about those five words is so revolutionary. Jonathan Smart: The world of work has fundamentally changed. We are living through a tipping point in the latest of a succession of technology-led revolutions, which have a socio-economic impact. We’ve gone from the Age of Oil and Mass Production to the Age of Digital. Like going from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, we … [Read more...]
Happier Employees Equal Better Business Outcomes
Two Simple Questions for Better Business Outcomes Two questions I ask during 1-on-1s might strike people as a bit unusual, but they directly lead to better business outcomes: Are you happy? Are you able to do work that you’re proud of? Why? A core reason is that I care about the people I work with, and I want good things for them. I want them to be happy! When I learn there are obstacles to their happiness, we generally have a productive conversation about what can be changed. My conceit is … [Read more...]
24 Key Capabilities to Drive Improvement in Software Delivery
This post is adapted from an excerpt of Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren, PhD, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim. Our research, based on four years of the State of DevOps Report, has uncovered 24 key capabilities that drive improvements in software delivery performance in a statistically significant way. The book Accelerate details these findings. This post provides you with a handy list of these capabilities. We have classified these capabilities into five categories. Within each category, the … [Read more...]
The Five Ideals of DevOps
In The Phoenix Project, we introduced the Three Ways underpinning DevOps. In my follow-up book, The Unicorn Project, I revisit Parts Unlimited and describe my learnings through the Five Ideals. The First Ideal: Locality and Simplicity The Second Ideal: Focus, Flow, and Joy The Third Ideal: Improvement of Daily Work The Fourth Ideal: Psychological Safety The Fifth Ideal: Customer Focus These are five topics that I’ve constantly gravitated toward over the last decade, and I continually seek to … [Read more...]
