Day one of xChange13 has come to an end and what an awesome day it was. The highlight of my day was the afternoon general session speakers. Damon Edwards presented a fantastic session on The DevOps Advantage. Unlike most DevOps sessions I have seen in the past, this session hit the bullseye for explaining the benefits of DevOps in the enterprise. Looking around the room there were many people taking notes and I know Damon had some great conversations with people later in the day.
After Damon’s presentation the room was enthusiastically waiting for the DevOps panel discussion. We had some excellent experts on the panel:
- Eric Kunkel from MMA Technologies
- Dave West from Tasktop
- Damon Edwards from DTO Solutions
- Greg Sikes from Serena Software
The panel was lively, with good chemistry between the panelists. The only major point of contention was DevOps vs. NoOps, which started a great discussion on what NoOps really is. The point was successfully argued that NoOps doesn’t mean not having Ops skills in an organization. It isn’t realistic for Dev to take over the role of Ops people, and companies that have tried generally fail quickly. The benefit of failing quickly is being able to course correct quickly and then something close to NoOps begins to happen.
If you want to use the term NoOps, then I think it really means that there isn’t a separate Ops team. Teams are truly cross functional, containing both Dev and Ops expertise. Amusing banter around DevOps, OpsDev, BusOpsDev ensued and further reinforced many points Damon made in his presentation.
On day two, both Damon and Dave are presenting breakout sessions and I, like many others, can’t wait to hear what else they have to say.
Finally, a big thank you to everyone who presented sessions today, I think it is safe to say that everyone learned something new and had a fun time doing so.
Watch the video of the DevOps panel discussion on YouTube. Also, check out the xChange13 playlist. All videos from the user conference will be posted there.
