Presented at devopsdays Nashville. Tdeas to simplify conversations about systems thinking and transformation. Touches on devops history, systems thinking, double loop learning and the overwhelming opportunity to solve problems with software.

1. chop wood, carry water
Andrew Clay Shafer
@littleidea

2. hold my beer, a devops story
Andrew Clay Shafer
@littleidea

4. Agenda
• Introduction
• Influences
• Assertions
• Meandering
• Bikeshedding
• Conflate Things
• More Meandering
• Call to Action

6. Andrew Clay Shafer

7. Andrew Clay Shafer
@littleidea

8. @littleidea

9. @littleidea’s
greatest hits
leading a learning organization
not all devops luminaries

10. Andrew Clay Shafer
@littleidea

11. We are living in a world where more and more
of the world becomes constantly connected to
the totality of human knowledge. We face the
insurmountable opportunity that every aspect
of human performance and experience that
can be transformed by software, will be. What
are the challenges? What are the risks? What
are we going do to about it?

12. We face the insurmountable
opportunity that every aspect of
human performance and
experience that can be
transformed by software, will be.

13. insurmountable opportunity
transform human experience

15. you have to be serious

16. you can’t be so irreverent

17. do you have to be so serious?

18. you are a zealot

19. tl;dr
you are building a software company
or losing to someone who is

20. you are continuously delivering microservices
or losing to someone who is

21. you are building a learning organization
or losing to someone who is

23. WARNING: devops is hard

24. devops was always hard

27. hold my beer

28. Principles > Practices >Tools

29. why > what

30. Thinking about Why

31. Success and Failure is highly
correlated with the degree of
‘Organizational Learning’

32. 7 Dimensions of Organizational Learning
• continuous learning
• inquiry and dialog
• team learning
• empowerment
• embedded system
• system connection
• strategic leadership

33. The learning organization is one that
has the capacity to integrate people
and structures in order to move toward
continuous learning and change.

35. ASK ME ABOUT
PARETO INEFFICIENT NASH EQUILIBRIA

36. I really wish we could have
good conversations about this.

42. I don’t have time to learn new
things because I’m too busy
getting things done!”
- least productive person in the world

44. If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend
55 minutes thinking about the problem and
5 minutes thinking about solutions.
— Albert Einstein

45. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise.
Seek what they sought.

46. don’t seek devops, continuous
delivery, containers, microservices…
Seek Awesome

47. The problem isn’t technical.
The problem isn’t people.
The problem is socio-technical.
We have to solve both together.

48. we are all part of the system

49. Call to Action
• Question everything
• Don’t limit yourself with labels (devops or otherwise)
• Find the Why, What will follow
• Get mud on your hands
• Play to win
• Know you can

50. choose your adventure

51. Thank You
@littleidea

52. @littleidea
I’m not here to answer questions.
I’m here to have conversations.