I have been on a personal journey of late, trying to define this next chapter in my professional life. For the first twenty years of my professional career, I was explicitly focused on email and collaboration. At a young age, I realized there is genuine need for businesses to help people communicate faster, to break down barriers of communication, and help people share knowledge despite time and space. I am an email & collaboration expert!
As time ticked by, email turned to instant messaging, which turned to collaboration, then to social collab, until finally these technologies became commoditized. A differentiator no more, everyone has multiple email addresses, are now capable of self-organizing into collaborative groups with digital presences and mature tools for sharing and communicating. I found myself asking: Where does that leave me?
Much like the aging technology stack I was aligned with, the people involved also need to repurpose. As a technical and organizational leader in my past few roles, I have found a joy in working with younger technologists and watching them grow and thrive in the technology world. I thought I figured it out… I am a coach!
Then I joined a start-up...
If you have ever worked with a start-up company, then you appreciate the need to wear any and every hat, not being worn by anyone else at that moment. The ever-shifting, extremely agile and exciting world of tech start-ups is anything but boring! That also leads to a greatly reduced need for mentors and coaches, so… what does this IT dinosaur, with commoditized technical skill and no-one to lead do? I EVOLVED!
There are many emotions attached to my journey… concern, worry, nervousness - but also excitement, exhilaration, wonder. I found a parallel which I could understand. Business need to change, and they turn to cloud computing to do that… I need to change, and I also can turn to cloud computing to do that. Wait, what?!? Indeed! The fundamental realization that hit me was this:
Businesses need nimble IT tools AND nimble technologists to succeed.
A movement which would allow me to leverage the technical knowledge I have acquired from building cross-platform, cross-function social-collaboration portals and building teams from around the globe to deliver them is the world of DevOps! I recognized not only opportunity to be completely relevant, but that I am uniquely qualified in this growing discipline. So I made a checklist:
- Experience with SDLC - CHECK
- Knowledge of architecture patterns - CHECK
- Functional knowledge of modern development frameworks, languages and conventions - CHECK
- Enterprise deployment and support experience - CHECK
- Knowledge and experience with… (you get the picture)
As the list grew, what I recognized is I have an extremely broad set of skills which are not just interesting, but critical to becoming a responsible participant and leader in a DevOps culture. For the last two years, our modest company has been building towards what is now an extremely talented and skilled staff in end-to-end cloud technologies. The discipline which seems to span and touch the entire gamut of these concepts is DevOps. I am a DevOps Architect!
I have trained and studied XP, Agile, and many of the wonderful contributions brought to the mature software development practice by the likes of Martin Fowler and other leaders in application development methodologies. Then I sought and consumed copious hours of training and studies on Docker, Kubernetes, and modern containerized computing. Much like my career has been developing towards this for the last 20 years, so have these disciplines… even longer! (admittedly closer to 30 years) Thanks to pioneers and visionaries, I have a place to grow into again. A field of discipline which not only encourages cross-discipline knowledge, but requires one to take action as both developer and sys-admin. To write code as if you will be supporting it… because you do! Build orchestrations which are elegant and reduce barriers to delivery, not create them… because you will use them too!
The moral of the story is this… change is inevitable. Yes, sometimes scary, but always necessary in some form or fashion for anyone to grow. For some this is more obvious than others. To avoid becoming obsolete in a world that communicates and moves faster than ever, we need to be agents of change, and it starts with us as individuals. I embraced this change, and found that building DevOps practices and systems to help enterprises be more nimble and poised to respond to market changes is every bit as exciting and rewarding as it was to give them email, or a knowledge base… or more rewarding!
Coda does cloud. Cloud enables rapid transformation and growth.
Coda does cloud transformation. Cloud transformation is leveraging cloud native technologies, architectures, development patterns and tools to transform your business or enterprise.
True transformation takes every type of discipline… creative, development, architecture, engineering, operations. They all must change and grow together to be transformational… and that is DevOps. Converging all technical practices into a single team, which is an agent of change, innovation and growth.
So who am I? I am Coda… agent of change, bringer of cloud transformations, and disruptor of technology… and we are here to help!
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