DevOp Enterprise Summit 2019 Vegas

The 6th annual DevOps Enterprise Summit USA was a hit! With great talks and breakout sessions from DevOps leaders working at Google, Kronos, Disney, BMW, and many other industry-leading companies. A revolutionary IT event that began with the author and founder of IT revolution, researcher, and multiple award-winning CTO Gene Kim. Here are my insights on the conference and why I would consider going next year.DevOps Enterprise Summit began in 2014 with a need for a platform where the siloed enterprises can share their practice stories and learn from each other. Removing the notion that DevOps is just for unicorns, aka Amazon, Google, Uber, Netflix; I think you get the idea. The innovative disruptors in the digital space. They are no longer the only ones having fun with DevOps and Cloud technologies. Traditional institutions and industries are now fully aware of the importance of shifting company culture and implementing new technologies to their infrastructure. They understand they have to if they want to go through a massive technological transformation successfully. It is not an easy task, and no company can do it alone.

Sharing to Survive

The time when competitors keep secrets from each other is long gone. The idea of DevOps Enterprise Summit is to bring immersive learning to conferences through experience reports. A conference where you will witness directors, engineers, architects, and developers are sharing their failures and successes with one another to learn. A collaborative effort to find plausible solutions and keep up with the continuous disruption that is tech. Embedding the phenomena, Brian Eno coined as scenius. Everyone sharing pioneering philosophies and practices that have proven to work on topics such as; implementing DevOps methodologies, organizational restructuring, team leadership, technical debt, keeping up with new tech, and many more. Have a look at some of the talks and tell us what you think.

My Favorite Talk - Technological Revolution

One topic Gene Kim focused on this year's conference was on the technological revolution. As you may know, the technology revolution began with the Industrial Revolution in 1771, pioneering the idea of factory systems. The massive shift from using hand tools, simple machinery, and home workshops to heavy machinery and division of labor. From then on, every massive disruption led to a new wave of technology with innovative methods of management and processes to cut costs and increase production. From the age of steam and railways to the oil and mass production. And now the age of software and digital.

As you see in the photo above, we are still experiencing the turning point stage in the development cycle. No one is not quite sure what new method of management, the age of software and digital will bring us. Through trends in the industry and war stories from organizational leaders, Gene Kim predicts that dynamic learning organizations are what will emerge from the software and digital revolution.

What is a Dynamic Learning Organization?

The dilemma or opportunity, depending on your point of view, with the current technological innovation, is that a human cannot have all the knowledge and be great at everything.Organizations have to promote a culture of curiosity and growth mindset to keep innovation, productivity, and performance high. The big elephant-sized question in the room is, how? There are ways to facilitate learning within your organization; one of them is a process called dynamic organization learning. This is when your organization is skilled at continuously creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge.Peter Senge describes the five disciplines of learning organization companies should implement to survive as:

1. Having a shared vision
2. Changing to Systems Thinking
3. Adapting to New Mental Models
4. Cultivating Team Learning
5. Supporting Personal Mastery

Applying learning-organization as a new model of management will not be easy and will be painful for many companies. But if you take a look at how innovative companies like Google and Kronos and are building a company culture focused around learning organization, you can see the benefit of making the change.

Vendors and all that fun

The wonderful thing about attending conferences like DOES is the expo hall. There, professionals have the chance to see what is new in the tech scene. From what new capabilities are tools offering to how these tools can help improve and streamline your organization's DevOps practices. Instruqt was there to meet up and say hello to amazing tooling companies such as XebiaLabs. They are making DevOps simple with their deploy and release orchestration tooling. XebiaLabs loves to educate its customers, and they are doing it using our e-learning platform. Go ahead and get a glimpse of what trainings they offer.

What is the final say?

After having the opportunity to attend both DevOps Enterprise Summit London and Las Vegas this year, there is something I have to say. I am impressed with the organization, topics, and community. This event has created a culture of sharing knowledge and experiences between individuals. For at least those few days putting behind the notion of combining the words competition and enemy. Everyone has accepted the fact that all of this information will be shared, and it is all fair game to use. So then the end game strategy becomes, let us share as much as we can and take as much as we can to the office. Who will be the first one to bring a new idea to their boss?