Narrator: You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a

podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,

knowledge, ideas, and learning, or the skil framework.

Romano Roth: We have not yet progressed really into the

direction of DevOps, but many companies are doing is they say

we have that DevOps silo introduced or we have the DevOps

engineer, but that's not really doing DevOps.

Eveline Oehrlich: Welcome to humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm

Evelyn early Chief Research Officer at DevOps Institute. Our

podcast today titled today is a really, huh, I'm not saying it.

Let's wait. DevOps is dead. Question mark, exclamation mark.

You'll know why when we are finished. Today, we have with

us, Romano Ross, who is chief of DevOps at a service provider

software service provider. Hello, Romano. Hi, Evelyn. How

are you doing? I'm very well. All good. All good already to

roll up the sleeves and tell us more about a variety of things.

But before we go there, I want to just quickly introduce him

and Romano. If you have anything to add, please do so. So Romana

is a leader, Senior Consultant, architect and software

development expert. He has over 20 years of professional

experience in many different domains, including the financial

insurance, cybersecurity, medical aviation. What did I

leave out? Is there anything else you want to add or motto?

Romano Roth: No, I think that's it more or less. The only thing

I could add is, I'm also organizing the DevOps meetup

Zurich, which is monthly meetup we're doing it's free to join.

And I'm also the president of the DevOps days, Eric, which is

a two day conference, we are organizing, and there are all

over the place all over the world in all the big cities.

Therefore, these conferences,

Eveline Oehrlich: Excellent, great addition, I actually went

to the tourist one, and, of course, many of the other ones.

So that's great. I did not forget that, that. That was a

great experience. All right. Welcome, again to our podcast

today. So my first question is chief of DevOps. I love that

title. Chief of DevOps is fantastic title tell us what

does the chief of DevOps to?

Romano Roth: Yeah, it's an awesome title. So the chief of

DevOps is a thought leader. So, as a thought leader, you are

speaking, you do conference, speaking, you are doing videos

and doing a blog post. But when it comes to Chief of DevOps in a

company, you are the solid leader about DevOps in that

company, you define the strategy, and also the offering

that this company has, and what skills and capabilities are

needed to, to be on the market and to do all of these

offerings. And of course, you also define the education

program, and you also educate the people in terms of DevOps.

But the most important thing, what you need to do is you need

to work in projects. And only by working the real projects and

making your hands dirty, you can really be a thought leader and

the chief of DevOps.

Eveline Oehrlich: I agree with that. Of course, that's

fantastic. Now I was listening and watching a video you did,

which really is I'm referring to that video, in our title of the

podcast, DevOps is dead. And in that or DevOps is dead, kind of

like a surprise. You talked about business, the developers

wall of confusion. And what I am curious about, of course, you do

your work in dark, but I think you travel, as you said, across

Europe and globally. What I'm sorry, what I thought I would

ask you Well, I am going to ask you is have we not been through

this conversation of DevOps versus developer? You know, Dev

versus ops versus business in this wall of confusion and we

really progressed yet to a modern way of developing and

delivering custom products to customers and service and

clients or are our wish I was still asking, what is DevOps?

DevOps is dead. I mean, all of that. Give us your perspective

on all of that.

Romano Roth: So I would also say, yeah, there are also

people, which is say it, everything about DevOps has

already been set it, everything is clear, it's everything is

there, you just need to do it. But when I go into companies, I

nowadays still see the same picture of the business,

together with the customers, they have bright ideas. And

still, they write it down into Word documents and into into

JIRA tickets, and then they are thrown over the wall of

confusion to the development team. And the development team

then develops these bright ideas. And they just do it and

then they throw it over the wall of confusion to a QA team, which

is still there. And then they test something and then they

throw it over the wall of confusion to the operation team.

And still the operation team has difficulties to to operate this

software. So these were all of confusions, they are still

there. And what we can clearly see is they are still there,

because we still have silo organization, many companies

have not yet organized themselves across the value

stream. So that they really have product teams, still, the

companies are working in projects, they still have

project and the project always has a start and it has an end

and has a budget. And it all boils down to yearly budget

goals to KPIs that we that we still have, we have not yet

progressed really into the direction of DevOps, what many

companies are doing is they say, Yeah, we are doing DevOps, or we

have that DevOps silo introduced, or we have the

DevOps engineer, but that's not really doing DevOps.

Eveline Oehrlich: So really, what I hear you say, is that,

even if we say DevOps, without starting at the higher level, in

the organization, where there is that common thinking in terms of

product, or as you said, value stream, it is going to be a

challenge to truly live DevOps or whatever ops, whatever dev x

Ops is, right? We'll get to that. Without having that

perspective. Is that what you're saying?

Romano Roth: Yes, absolutely. Because also, when you look at

DevOps at the definition of DevOps, and of course, there are

1000s of definition. But as I always say, DevOps is a mindset

and the culture and the set of technical practices. I think,

when it comes to technical practices, we are more or less

okay with with that you know them, but then changing the

culture or the mindset is a difficult thing. And it can

always only come from the top management. And this is

something that all of the companies nowadays are lacking

that cultural change, and that mindset change, which my opinion

needs to come from top down.

Eveline Oehrlich: Yeah, so from a pessimistic perspective, which

I usually don't take, but I wanted to just point it out.

Some of those DevOps teams are fighting against windmills,

because if there is not the top down support on changing the

culture, and as a product team, it makes it a challenge.

However, we know that they are, as you said, on the technology

side on the processes within the DevOps that have been ordered

within DevOps to have been a lot of advancements. And those

organizations are bubbling up the outcomes and the results of

their great work. And hopefully, more and more of that will go up

to those executive leaders to see that it's an overall

cultural change. Now, I want to stay on that theme, quickly

relative to one DevOps versus multiple DevOps, right? Kind of,

so if I have multiple, if I have one DevOps team, small company,

blah, blah, blah, might pass be possible, but most of our

listeners, excuse me, are in enterprise organizations. So

what is a model going forward? Well, what's the model when

there are multiple DevOps teams in an organization?

Romano Roth: So this is exactly one of the topics I'm talking

quite a lot nowadays. And as you pointed out, when you are a

small company, or just building one product, then it's quite

easy to do DevOps more or less, but scaling that up is is

difficult. And when we look at that, then what usually happens

is that companies tend to do a little bit of DevOps. They build

the DevOps silo between Dev and Ops, which is just again a silo

until you don't really get the efficiency that you wanted to

see, then when you look at how DevOps really should be is that

Dev and Ops are moving together, all of the people are coming

together across the value stream, and they are building a

cross functional team, then you really are doing DevOps. And now

when you think about that, and you have multiple of these value

streams, or product teams, then you can clearly see that, out of

that, you will have a lot of inefficiencies, because many of

these teams are reinventing the wheel, they are doing their own

stuff, which is of course good, but they are not really reusing

things. So the this this aspect is, is quite critical. Because

it you also have a quite a lot of cognitive load in these

teams, they need to really care about building the product,

operating the product and maintaining the product. This

also means that they need to know quite a lot of tools. And

this is difficult. And the new kid around the corner, or the

new kid in the block is this platform engineering that that

we are seeing coming up, where you have a platform team, which

builds the platform, and also the API's and everything so that

the product teams can build, maintain and operate the product

and do DevOps.

Eveline Oehrlich: So we have seen that platform engineering

team, what is a skill I need, if I want to become a platform

engineer? What would you say?

Romano Roth: You need to be a software engineer. A platform is

nothing else than also a product. So when it comes to

skills, in my opinion, it's really that software engineering

skill, because also building that platform requires you to to

build a product, the platform, which has a user interface, a

self service portal, a marketplace so that you can

enable the other teams. So you need to know how to program a

user interface, you need to know how to program API's, you need

to know how to program databases. And but you also need

to have is the, of course DevOps mindset, DevOps skills. And you

need to know a lot about how software is built. So what kind

of tools are good to use, so that you can build up this

platform so that the teams can most efficient work with these

technologies, which means nowadays, you need to know a lot

about the cloud technologies, cloud native technologies.

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Eveline Oehrlich: Okay, great. I would certainly not qualify for

a DevOps engineer, as a platform engineer, but I probably would

be going down the SRE path Site Reliability Engineering, because

I have an infrastructure and operations background. But I

have another question. There was always this, you know, when we

do research on DevOps and read in whatever magazines or

whatever events we go to there is or whatever vendor I talk to,

because I do speak to quite a few vendors, as I'm also having

an industry analyst position. There are these different terms

def sec, ops, Biz Ops, dev x ops DevOps, there's more and more

coming out of the closet. So I, and then of course, there's

value stream management, right? VSM. And all of them are related

SRE and keep going, all of them are related, but it seems to me

and I know you you had this argument with yourself as well.

I was listening to your video, it seems to me when we sometimes

when we use the word DevOps people or individuals or whoever

thinks that this is just as movement lol level somewhere in

the development and operations team, but it is bigger. So is

DevOps, the term itself not really serving our purpose?

Should we call it DevOps? Or Should this be called something

else? What's your thought on that?

Romano Roth: Yeah. So let's, let's be, quite frankly, when we

look at the term DevOps, then this term, DevOps is not very

good. The term DevOps says development and operation. And

back in that time, it was okay ish. I think it was around 2008.

When this term came up, it was occasioned as he pointed out,

more and more of these terms are coming up like dev SEC ops,

which is development, security and operation or biz dev ops,

business, development and operation. And but as I pointed

out, DevOps is about bringing all the people together, where

you would need sort of a term like def beats our QA, ops, and

I'm pretty sure I have forgotten someone. You can also call it

ethics ops, or Deathstar ops. For me, DevOps is really about

bringing all the people all the technology and all the process

together to continuously deliver value. It's really about how we

can continuously deliver a product or service to our

customers. That's the important thing. Now, of course, we can

now argue what could be a better term. In my opinion, this is

secondary. As long as we have a good understanding of what

DevOps is, and what what it what it is all about, then this term

is okay. I also don't believe belief that we really can find a

very good term to describe that.

Eveline Oehrlich: So what you're saying is stop talking about

what it is just go on, do follow the paths, try to adopt the

practices and change the culture on the way, expanding it from a

pilot, expanding it into something more good executive

buy in, and so on. And so, as we have different maturity levels,

I don't know if that is even the right term, I'm questioning

myself when I say maturity, because as we know, we're never

done with it, right? We, we move into the next technology, we are

adopting whatever Mehta or AR VR rpa, different server lists,

blah, blah, blah, all of that wonderful stuff, wonderful

stuff, our environment keeps getting more complex, our

demands for services and products are tied to customer

experience, etc, etc. So we will never be done. But it's it's a

two part question. The first one is, when I am somewhere in a

kind of good DevOps, journey, high performing, and I am

somewhere a DevOps Chief Chief of DevOps. What can I in this

case, you know, you are the chief of DevOps, what would you

recommend to those folks to actually scale it further among

that maybe high performing team? What are some of the things they

should be doing to expand their their journey in their culture

in towards the bigger foot print of DevOps? And I don't mean it

from a sorry to clarify, I don't mean it from a technology

perspective, I mean, or from maybe not a process perspective,

but really from a people from a culture perspective.

Romano Roth: So, what, what do you need to do is you need to

organize across the value stream, I think this is really

the magic you need to do you need to identify the value

streams in your in your company, how you generate value, what

kind of steps are needed and what people are in there, and

then organize these people in these value streams. You can

also call it product teams. Of course, a value stream can also

have multiple products, but it is very important to organize

around that value stream. And secondly, what is also important

important is to empower the people and so empower this value

stream give this value stream budget. So that's the value

stream itself can decide what is necessary to do to make a great

product or multiple great products for For the customers,

and now you can also see we are shifting away from from projects

from, we need to have these 10 features to a point where the

customer is in the center, and we want to have happy customers,

but also of course happy employees. So that we really are

focusing on the on the customer and building absolutely great

products with building and quality. So that will be my

recommendation to organize across the value stream, bring

the customer into the center half KPIs, according to to the

customer. And also employees as satisfaction and giving really

empower the people in this value stream give it giving them the

budget and the power to decide.

Eveline Oehrlich: Excellent. I wanted to do a quick shout out

to a project I'm involved in with Helen Beal I believe, you

know, Helen, right? Maybe you don't know you don't you have to

meet her. She is basically besides her being a colleague of

mine at the DevOps Institute. She's also the chair of the

value stream Consortium, which is a, I think the first time

ever since I've been in this space, a variety of vendors are

getting together, and are researching and are applying

common thinking and thought leadership together on value

stream management, and one of the projects we're doing is the

second notice the third year we're doing research in the

state of value stream management. And just recently,

Helen did a fantastic it's called a pier scape with IDC.

And if you just type in anybody listening, if you type in pure

scape, IDC value stream management, you should be able

to see the video and the conversation around a value

stream management a fantastic ability to learn how to start

that journey. And one of the customers there actually was

Netflix, a product manager of Netflix, who has talked about

how they are doing value stream management in their company.

Excellent. All right, looking at the clock, why do fun

conversations always go by so fast? So pull out your crystal

ball. Besides the conversation on value stream management,

let's hope there is more and more interest and adoption of

that product thinking in the value stream management

thinking. But if we, if we go down the road, if we even can,

right? If we look maybe two years from now, what do you

think? What is the future of DevOps, then? Two years? What is

that that is 2025? When you and I will be sitting somewhere in

soulish to have a cup of coffee or cappuccino or an adult

beverage doesn't matter? What would we then see in DevOps.

Romano Roth: But we can clearly see at the moment is Alta Vista

was platform engineering, and they were all of the toolings

there is a lot of standardization coming in, you

can not clearly see that it's more under the hood. But we are

going to into an area where software development gets

standardized. And in my opinion, it gets industrialized, we are

going away, let's say from just always reinventing the wheel it

into a direction of where you are using different things

together. And they fit together because they are standardized.

In my opinion, what we will see is the build up of digital

factories, you can already see that together with the platform

engineering companies are building their own digital

factories, where in this digital factory, the teams are organized

across the value stream where they are producing digital

products or cyber physical products. And the platform

engineering team provides the convenient belt for these

digital factories in the companies. So my prediction is

we will see a lot of digital factories coming up.

Eveline Oehrlich: I would I would bet you but I am agreeing

with you. So I will buy the drink because I ordered a coffee

or a cup of tea. No, I agree with you. This is a great, great

conversation digital factories. That's something I'd love to

explore further. But not today. But really, really great

insight. I love that crystal ball vision you have there in

the future. For my No this was great. Now I have one more

question. It's a closing question. It has nothing to do

with digital factories, DevOps, or any of those terms. What do

you do for fun?

Romano Roth: Oh, I love to travel around the world. I love

to see new countries and in these countries, I do a lot of

photography. I also have my Instagram channel and I have a

second YouTube channel where I post also some videos at the

moment. I do a lot of 360 degree videos, which I love. And of

course, I love playing computer games and I also read a lot.

Eveline Oehrlich: Fantastic. Well, if you ever make it to my

region of as I'm only really an hour and a half north of you,

stop by give me a buzz. We'll go and travel my hometown together,

you can take 360 degree videos, I will check out the videos you

have done. Thank you so much. We have been talking to Romana

Ross, Chief of DevOps at SilkAir, which is a service

provider software consulting organization. He does a lot of

work and talk leading so check him out. Again, Amanda, thank

you so much for joining me today on humans of DevOps podcast.

Thank you for having me. Humans of DevOps podcast is produced by

DevOps Institute. Our audio production team includes Julia

pape, Daniel Newman, Schultz and Brendan Leigh. Shout out to my

wonderful colleagues. I'm humans of DevOps podcast, Executive

Producer, Evelyn early. If you would like to join us on a

podcast, please contact us at this very long email humans of

DevOps podcast at DevOps institute.com. I'm Evelyn early.

I'll talk to you soon.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of

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