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Virtual Think IT Panel Event

Last Friday, we hosted a Virtual Think IT Panel Event on So you think you know what DevOps is? A huge thank you to our panelists, David Cherryhomes, Vice President of Software Engineering at Optum and Robb Neuenschwander, Senior Director – Architecture and Application Engineering at Medica for sharing their knowledge on DevOps. Thank you to everyone who joined us well! 

Below you will find an overview of the most popular questions from our members and a summary of what was discussed. 

What are the useful DevOps measurements? 

Some useful DevOps measurements that the panelists stated were working with development teams, collaboration, and having a cultural understanding of DevOps. Companies are growing out of software that is developed and understanding manual issues. The opportunity for failure should be a part of software building, while DevOps makes things better and more efficient. Teams need to come together so all technology and organizations can understand each other.   

What are some of the essential cultural components of DevOps? 

DevOps is a leader. It is hard to tell your team that they are going to be a DevOps team because they won’t have the best understanding. The key is personalizing the teaching of DevOps, and the cultural piece comes through the organization. DevOps needs quality, and you can only get quality through continuous improvement.  

Why would some companies not go through the DevOps model? 

The DevOps model is not easy to do. A lot of companies do it but are unsure of where to start. The panelists recommended that you break up the work into smaller chunks and deliver frequencyTesting is a good place to start due to DevOps being such high quality.  

With this skill set in short supply, can you talk about how you recruit, train, and retain DevOps resources? 

When looking for DevOps resources, the panelists mentioned that security engineers, build engineers, and looking internally are all good resources to start with. It’s important to let people visualize how their skillset would support DevOps and how this person would operate to drive forward. You will want your resources to be able to invest time into their DevOps team.  

Do you see IT Operations support teams go away, and the same Scrum Development teams build and maintain the software? Is it good or bad? 

Scrum teams may obtain more operations, functions, and dynamics between development teams. The teams need to be fluid, and you don’t want teams to go away entirely. All organizations need to be supportive of one another. By supporting other teams, all teams should be able to do their own deployments.  

The panelists all agreed that improving quality is the overall goal of DevOps. Companies should embrace the DevOps community, especially during this time. If you were unable to join, you can view the full session here.