This post is a transcript of Mark Schwartz's DevOps Enterprise Summit- London 2020 presentation. Hi everyone. My name is Mark Schwartz. I'm an enterprise strategist with Amazon Web Services. I think I've spoken at every one of these DevOps Enterprise Summits since 2014, so I hope you're not getting tired of me yet. I think some of you might also have read one or more of my books. There's The Art of Business Value, A Seat at the Table, and War and Peace and IT. And the exciting … [Read more...]
Three Innovative Funding Models to Enhance DevOps
Adapted from War and Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz. The traditional project plan tries to manage risks by itemizing them in a register and proposing a mitigation plan for each one. Risks are mitigated to the extent necessary to bring the plan back into line—in other words, to adjust the initiative so the initial business case and plan are maintained. But the uncertainties in the IT domain go deeper—it might be that … [Read more...]
Quick Guide to DevOps for the Non-IT Business Leader
Adapted from War and Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz. What is DevOps 1) Small Teams of T-Shaped People DevOps is practiced in small teams, say five to nine people. Small teams can communicate among themselves face-to-face, thereby avoiding the overhead of passing around and perfecting documents. Each team is cross-functional, with skills in software development, testing, infrastructure engineering, operations, and … [Read more...]
Fear: The Original Sin of Unproductive Conversations
This post was adapted from episode 123 of the Troubleshooting Agile podcast with Jeffrey Fredrick and Douglas Squirrel. We’re continuing with our tour through Agile Conversations and we’re up to the fear conversation. That’s when I remember enjoying writing some of the stories. And fear is really important because it’s so foundational. I consider this the original sin of unproductive conversations, in a sense. It’s kind of the root of why our conversations so often go astray. In the … [Read more...]
Unlock Your Enterprise’s Digital Transformation by Changing Your Relationship with Technologists
Adapted from War and Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz. Leaders of digital transformations often look around their organizations and see heads nodding. Everyone seems to agree that change is needed to survive in the digital age. Everyone understands that it’s urgent and that there is a risk of being disrupted if the company doesn’t transform quickly enough. Capital markets are demanding growth and innovation, while the board … [Read more...]
Software Factory to Feature Factory
This post was adapted from Episode 120 of the Troubleshooting Agile Podcast. The Taylorist Mindset and its Outcomes In the Taylorist mindset, management is there to debug the machine of the company. The workers are interchangeable parts. And the job of management is to fine tune the machine and monitor all of the parts to make sure they’re compliant and doing what they’re told. There is a role for motivation here. But the only motivation is negative. Just make sure that people know … [Read more...]
The Problem with Org Charts
Adapted from Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. Technology workers are in a constant state of action: creating and updating systems at an unbelievable rate, and combining different types of technology to create a compelling user experience. Mobile applications; cloud-based services; web applications; and embedded, wearable, or industrial IoT devices all need to interoperate effectively to achieve the desired business … [Read more...]
Q&A with Mark Schwartz and Gene Kim
Recently, Gene Kim had a chance to speak with Mark Schwartz about Mark's new book, War and Peace and IT, Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age: Gene Kim: What inspired you to write a book about IT management for business leaders? Mark Schwartz: I meet with executives from over a hundred large enterprises each year. It’s amazing how patterns emerge: so many of them are trying to transform digitally, trying to find new sources of growth and to survive disruption—and … [Read more...]
Beyond The Phoenix Project: Modules 7 & 8 – The Panel & Case Studies
Earlier this week, I wrote about the first six modules of Beyond The Phoenix Project, along with excerpts from each — this is from the nine hours of recorded audio that John Willis and I created, summarizing hundreds of hours of research into the bodies of knowledge that DevOps draws most heavily upon. (By the way, we’ve gotten an update — Beyond The Phoenix Project will be available on Audible and iTunes sometime next week.) Today, I want to tell you about the remaining modules: The Panel … [Read more...]
Q&A With Dominica DeGrandis and Gene Kim
Recently, Gene Kim and Dominica DeGrandis had a chance to discuss Dominica's new book, Making Work Visible. Gene Kim: What inspired you to write this book? Dominica DeGrandis: When I was a Kanban for DevOps flow consultant, I facilitated a lot of workshops to help organizations design and improve their workflow. Workshop attendees repeatedly requested a handout that they could reference during the workshops. They wanted to look at the example kanban boards and policies while doing the … [Read more...]
