Optimising DevOps Processes – Story of Software S03E20

Brit Myers, VP of Engineering at System Initiative, talks about her experiences in improving business outcomes through DevOps practices.

 

The Guest – Brit Myers, VP of Engineering, System Initiative

Brit Myers is the VP of Engineering at System Initiative, a collaborative power tool designed to remove the paper cuts from DevOps work. Brit is a technology leader with over a decade of experience leading and scaling global engineering teams, and is passionate about implementing powerful DevOps strategies to improve software teams and business outcomes.

 

How DevOps Can Make or Break Your Team

Implementing a successful DevOps strategy can unlock the true potential of a software team and help companies adapt to agile ways of working. However, many companies, regardless of their size or status, fall into common traps when it comes to incorporating DevOps principles into daily practices. These include, but are not limited to, slow feedback loops, difficulties in collaboration due to abstractions and handoffs, and the struggle to balance automation with necessary control. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to understand risk tolerances within an organisation to facilitate change and to take a more experimental and iterative approach in adopting DevOps principles.

 

Some of the topics covered in this episode include:

  • Strategies and best practices for adopting DevOps
  • Challenges in DevOps practices across different organisation sizes.
  • System Initiative’s innovative approach to improving DevOps.
  • The potential impact of AI on software teams

 

 

Q: Are there any scenarios where the DevOps approach shouldn’t be used and how can people recognize if it isn’t the right approach?

I don’t think so. I think, to me, DevOps represents a belief that by working together – like trying to reduce handoffs, trying to achieve faster feedback – we will have higher reliability in our systems and we’ll have faster time to market. I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t want those things. I think where organisations fall short is by saying ‘Okay, the tactics to seek higher reliability and faster feedback are implementing SRE but it may be that SRE isn’t quite what your organisation is ready for. Maybe, that model doesn’t fit your engineering culture or architecture… There are so many aspects to an organisation that can impact how they should adopt some sort of DevOps principles or practices.

 

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