Presentation: TweetFrom 2½ Days to 2½ Seconds - the Birth of DevOps

This is an experience report from the mid-2000s, where a fifty-person programme team was being held up by test environments that took an average of 2½ days to prepare. By developing strategies like Blue/Green Deployments, the Single Deployable Artifact, Container Templates, the Build Production Line and many of the other principles that led to Continuous Delivery, we brought this down to only a few minutes, with a near-instantaneous cutover for the users. The legendary team included the likes of Julian "Build Doctor" Simpson, Chris Read, Sam Newman and both the authors of the Continuous Delivery book, only one of whom swore a lot. Dan North is not the father of DevOps but he may be its midwife. He definitely assisted at the birth.

Presentation: TweetAccelerated Agile: from Months to Minutes Talk

The fastest teams I've ever worked with have been agile. Not big-A, all-about-the-TDD, automate-everything, methodology-over-thinking Agile, but quietly-getting-on-with-business, delivering-the-goods, making-the-trade-offs agile. Think agile manifesto over agile methodology. It turns out the things I thought were great agile practices, while useful in certain circumstances, are by no means the whole story. Kaizen, or continuous improvement, must be coupled with kaikaku, or abrupt change, in order to avoid getting stuck in the local maximum of 1990s Agile methods.

This talk is about how really high-performing teams work. Not just one or two flukes but enough that there might be something to it. The patterns and ideas in this talk are genuine experiences from active practitioners. This is agile in actuality. Agile is an attitude, not a rulebook.

Workshop: Accelerated Agile: from Months to Minutes Workshop Tweet

Formula 1 drivers don't just drive faster than you, they drive differently. Accelerated Agile practitioners use different rules, based on the core principles of agile but taken to another level, to deliver in hours and days what regular teams can only achieve in weeks or months.

Accelerated Agile is a course for experienced agile practitioners who are frustrated with the pseudo-science of agile planning and estimation, the social pressure to automate where it doesn't add any value, the artificial commitment of sprints and the unwelcome surprises that still derail their projects. You will learn new techniques that both enhance and replace existing agile practices, some of which are counter-intuitive and many which are completely counter to current Agile doctrine. This is not a course for beginners!

Using a mixture of discussion, instruction and exploration you will learn new techniques for development and testing, operations, automation and team dynamics, as well as working with legacy systems and integrating with third parties. Using these techniques you and your teams will deliver business solutions faster than they thought possible. You'll never look at TDD the same way again, not to mention copying-and-pasting code.

What you will learn

• How to challenge the received wisdom of established Agile methods
• How to design and architect for rapid and sustainable delivery
• Why understanding risk and embracing uncertainty are at the heart of faster delivery
• How to manage build, release and operations
• How systems thinking can help you plan effectively and estimate accurately
• How to identify and reduce gaps in your testing strategy
• How to engage with legacy systems and integrating with third parties
• How to manage different levels of skill and experience within a team

Praise for Accelerated Agile

• "one of the best courses I have ever attended, if not the best!"
• "really interesting with good discussions and lots of relevant information"
• "[not using slides] made the course flow in a neat and agile way"