The rise of DevOps is revitalizing age-old topics in release engineering and application lifecycle management, and aspects of software delivery that DevOps doesn’t magically solve. If you're responsible for the release engineering function in your organization, see what the new world looks like and which aspects of the industry it’s leaving behind.

1. The Changing Role of
Release Engineering in
a DevOps World
J. Paul Reed
Managing Partner
Release Engineering Approaches

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@jpaulreed
A Little Survey

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@jpaulreed
Back in the Day
Humble
Beginnings
as a
Build/Release
Monkey…

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@jpaulreed
Back in the Day

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@jpaulreed
J. Paul Reed
 @jpaulreed on
 Managing Partner at Release
Engineering Approaches
 The Ship Show alumnus
 15+ years build/release
engineering experience
 Today: A “DevOps™ Consultant”

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@jpaulreed
Shippin’ Bits

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@jpaulreed
“Yeeahhh... so what would you... say ya do here?”

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The Elephant in the Room

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We All Agree on DevOps, Right?

10. “Please explain to me: what exactly
is DevOps?”
What We Look Like Answering…

11. “Uhm... so what technological
capabilities will we gain if we ‘Do
DevOps?’”
What We Look Like Answering…

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@jpaulreed
What We Look Like Answering…
“Uhm... so what technological
capabilities will we gain if we
‘Do DevOps?’”

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@jpaulreed

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@jpaulreed
Requisite Silo Photo

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Requisite Silo Photo
Development
Operations

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@jpaulreed
Requisite Silo Photo
Development
Operations
Product
Management
Sales/Marketing

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@jpaulreed
A Small Digression on Silos

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@jpaulreed
Actual Silos

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@jpaulreed
Back to Silos

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Back to Silos

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Back to Silos

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“Yeeahhh... so what kind of DevOps... would
you... say ya do here?”

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@jpaulreed
What do “DevOps Teams” do?
 Configuration Management
 Continuous Integration
 Developing & Supporting Deployment / Pipeline Tools
 Dependency / Artifact Management
 Versioning / SCM
 Operations (Maybe?)

24. What did we used to call
these things?

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@jpaulreed

26. “Continuous Delivery is
a Set of Principles and
Practices to Reduce the
Cost, Time, and Risk of
Delivering Incremental
Changes to Users.”
-Jez Humble

27. Continuous Delivery is your
Organization— Your Entire
Organization—caring about
release engineering and
quality assurance in a
way it has never cared
about them before. Ever.
- J. Paul Reed

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@jpaulreed
Back to Silos

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Back to Silos

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Anyone Else Feel Like…
“I feel like I’m taking CRAZY PILLS!!”

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33. People
Care!

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@jpaulreed

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Systems Thinking is a Thing™

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Resources

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Pain is shared

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40. “[Computing] is pop culture. I'm not against pop culture.
But pop culture holds a disdain for history.
Pop culture is all about identity and feeling like you're
participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the
past or the future — it's living in the present.
I think the same is true of most people who write code for
money.
They have no idea where [their culture came from].”
— Alan Kay

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Versioning is Fun

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Versioning is Fun

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Versioning is Fun

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Versioning is Fun

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1st Law of DevOpsDynamics

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Visibility is Hard

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If You Stare at this All Day

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The best single question for
testing an organization’s
character is: What happens
when people make mistakes?
- Robert I. Sutton

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Sorry… No One Wants These

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Like Uber, but for RelEng

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The Hard Truth

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[It’s] important to
understand the strategy,
the context, and the
value that’s important to
your organization; and
then how you play into
those.
- Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Chef

59. “Until you take the time to sit and
understand that, DevOps for the
sake of DevOps doesn’t matter.”
- Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Chef

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The Cruel Punchline
The Single Practice Correlated to
Improvement in…
 Deployment Frequency
 Lead Time for Changes
 Mean Time to Recover

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@jpaulreed
The Cruel Punchline
The Single Practice Correlated to
Improvement in…
 Deployment Frequency
 Lead Time for Changes
 Mean Time to Recover
Use of Version Control for All
Production Artifacts

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3 Weird Tricks
1. Every release engineering strategy you
deploy must to be:
- Complexity-informed
- Accounts for the entirety of the system
(systems thinking)
- Address human factors

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@jpaulreed
Cynefin Sensemaking Framework
Complex Complicated
Chaotic Simple
Probe
Sense
Respond
Sense
Analyze
Respond
Act
Sense
Respond
Sense
Categorize
Respond
Disorder
Emergent Good Practice
Novel Best Practice
Emergent Good Practice
Novel Best Practice

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@jpaulreed
Cynefin Sensemaking Framework
Complex Complicated
Chaotic Simple
Probe
Sense
Respond
Sense
Analyze
Respond
Act
Sense
Respond
Sense
Categorize
Respond
Disorder
Emergent Good Practice
Novel Best Practice
Emergent Good Practice
Novel Best Practice

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@jpaulreed
3 Weird Tricks
1. Every release engineering strategy you
deploy must to be:
- Complexity-informed
- Accounts for the entirety of the system
(systems thinking)
- Address human factors

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@jpaulreed
Human Factors?

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@jpaulreed
3 Weird Tricks
2. If you[r team] is not involved in
some sort of continuous
improvement, you should be
worried.

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@jpaulreed

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3 Weird Tricks
3. If you[r team] is not working
on a continuous delivery
pipeline, you should be worried

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Bullish on Release Engineering

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Questions?
J. Paul Reed
www.jpaulreed.com
Twitter: @jpaulreed
www.release-approaches.com
Simply Ship. Every Time.