DevOps Institute

Continuous Delivery Ecosystem SKILup Day Highlights

Continuous Delivery, SKILup

We’re on the tail-end of yet another eventful month for DevOps Institute. To kick things off, we declared July as Continuous Delivery Ecosystem month! To celebrate and help the community SKILup on all things Continuous Delivery, we hosted several events and shared a variety of new resources dedicated to the Continuous Delivery ecosystem. 

We also continued to highlight contributions from DevOps Institute Ambassadors throughout the month of July. You can see all of their contributions on our blog here, as well as our Medium publication, The Humans of DevOps, here

To kick-off the Continuous Delivery Ecosystem festivities, several ambassadors hosted a Global DevOps Institute Ambassador CrowdChat. The CrowdChat was a great way to dive into the key components and themes of Continuous Delivery.

On July 16, we hosted the main event – SKILup Day: Continuous Delivery Ecosystem! The one-day virtual conference centered around the people, process and technology aspects that are currently shaping the Continuous Delivery Ecosystem (CDE). SKILup Day featured ‘how-to’ lessons from speakers Sanjeev Sharma, Siddharth Pareek, Julian Fish, Mark Levy, Orit Golowinski, Tracy Ragan, Tiffany Jachja, Kristian Bank Erbou, Buffi Gresh, Oscar Medina, Tim Johnson, Mark Rix, Steve Waterworth, Chad Carlson, and Marco Coulter.  

In addition to a full day of sessions, the event offered a scavenger hunt, networking lounge, exhibit hall, resource library, and even a DevOps inspired mixology class! 

Didn’t get a chance to attend July’s SKILup Day dedicated to CDE? We’ve got you covered with a quick round-up of the key themes that emerged from the sessions and conversations around the importance of the topic.

Why devote a full day to learning to the Continuous Delivery Ecosystem?

As Continuous Delivery practices evolve, it has become more and more apparent that a successful CDE relies on the people, practices, and processes within an organization. It is not up to one person or process, but rather a collaborative group of individuals and processes to ensure successful and healthy practices and patterns for Continuous Delivery.. However, sometimes it is hard for people and organizations to put the pieces together. Thus, we dedicated a full day of exploring the keys to adopting Continuous Delivery practices, how to ensure success within the enterprise, and highlight the often overlooked pieces of the CDE puzzle. 

Adopting Continuous Delivery practices can be difficult for many organizations, but there are steps you can take to ensure successful adoption.

Throughout July’s SKILup Day, many of the presenters examined the principles necessary for a successful ecosystem to support Continuous Delivery. Oftentimes, many people think that deploying software more frequently, means you may sacrifice reliability and sustainability, but this is not the case. At the heart of Continuous Delivery is faster time to market, low risk deployments, better products and happier teams. With that, many presenters reiterated how important it is for organizations to implement practices most suitable to their organization. 

Jayne Groll, CEO of DevOps Institute, mentioned during a live panel discussion that the CDE is a delicate balance. For organizations to ensure successful Continuous Delivery, they need to look at the people and processes that make up their organization to create a pipeline suitable to their needs. 

Siddharth Pareek, Global Practice Lead at DevOps CoE, NatWest, reiterates this when he mentioned that there is no such thing as a universal Continuous Delivery pipeline during his presentation ‘Myths & Misconceptions: Busting with Case Studies.’

Continuous Delivery is about more than just the tools. 

“Continuous Delivery is about more than just the tools. People across the organization, no matter their role or department, need to be on the same page, working toward a common goal,” says Siddharth Pareek. Julian Fish and Mark Levy of Micro Focus echoed this when they shared the four steps for Continuous Delivery success during their presentation ‘Four Steps to Ensure Software Delivery Success in Today’s Environment.’ The four steps they shared are: collaboration, alignment, toolchain and streamline. 

How do you overcome the complexity of today’s work environment? 

Many of the sessions touched on the complexity of today’s work environment with respect to Continuous Delivery. With many people working remotely, many fear that collaboration will suffer. Mark Levy of Micro Focus discussed the importance of overcoming the fear of this new environment during his presentation with Julian Fish, titled ‘Four Steps to Ensure Software Delivery Success in Today’s Environment.’ Mark says, “It’s easy and understandable to fall back to an older paradigm, but by avoiding perceived risk of change, you incur the risk of deferring it. Today’s environment has changed the landscape dramatically and it is critical that you fall forward.”

Many speakers shared the importance of upskilling your employees, embracing new ways of working, and elevating visibility practices.

Advice to organizations wanting to implement Continuous Delivery: Adapt to your needs

Most speakers stressed the importance of adapting your CD pipeline to your organization. In today’s enterprise, everyone is embarking on a digital transformation journey. Which is why it’s important not get caught up in the idea of a ‘universal’ CDE. Marco Coulter addresses this during his talk titled, ‘Will it never end? – Preparing for and exploiting CD’ where he shares how to customize to your needs. 

While building a successful Continuous Delivery ecosystem can seem like a daunting task, manys presenters also mentioned how many benefits it can bring to your organization. Tiffany Jachja of Harness, shares that Continuous Delivery can bring you empowered teams, reduced errors, lowered stress and continuous value. 

For a quick recap of all the sessions, check out the sketches below.

You can also still view the videos and download the slide decks by viewing the CDE SKILup Day on-demand.

What’s Next? There are plenty of events, fresh content, and exciting announcements in the pipeline. We’ve designated August as Observability month! Stay tuned for details about our next Global Ambassador CrowdChat and be sure to join the next Virtual SKILup Day on August 20.

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