What to expect from CloudBees DevOps World 2022
CloudBees has a somewhat different (Ed: you almost said unique) approach to naming its annual industry convention.
The company does not actually put its name in front of the show label, so CloudBees DevOps World 2022 is actually known as DevOps World 2022, plain and simple.
Whether the organisation does this to gravitate the conference’s focus on hardcore DevOps, or whether it does it out of some kind of ‘less is more’ coolness vibe is not known.
What we do know is that the Computer Weekly Developer Network team will be at the show, poised and ready to imbibe some 100+ sessions presented by companies including JP Morgan and Deloitte… all covering topics surrounding modern software delivery, digital transformation, diversity, compliance and more.
What is CloudBees?
Before we delve deeper into the event, let’s remind ourselves what the company is known for. No prizes for guessing DevOps, but this is really a nod to CloudBees’ wider competencies in software development that it claims span all aspects of software delivery.
As we have noted before here, by all aspects of software delivery, CloudBees is referring to software architecture, design, development and commit through to production.
In its own words, CloudBees says that it enables software development teams to deliver scalable, compliant, governed and secure software… all from the code a developer writes, to the people who use it. The CloudBees platform connects with other best-of-breed tools to improve the developer experience.
Immediate actionable feedback
This is not a set of software tools and platform products designed to fix broken code, this is all about developers getting what we could call immediate and actionable feedback at every point of the software delivery lifecycle so that they have the peace of mind of being compliant at all times.
Into this year’s event then and we can see from the agenda for DevOps World 2022 that will be a large global gathering of DevOps leaders and practitioners. The conference will feature a ‘DevOps Remix’ theme to bring together new elements, energy and people to foster conversation around modern software delivery.
What is DevOps Remix? CloudBees says that the dynamic nature of orchestrating trillions of lines of code across diverse ecosystems while simultaneously managing multiple releases per day has changed the rhythm of DevOps. The tempo is faster, the bass deeper and the treble higher… hey Mr (or Miss) DJ that’s the remix here.
Five core conference tracks
This year’s agenda includes five core tracks:
- Leadership
- Community
- Practitioner
- Public Sector
- Finance
DevOps World tracks include: leadership, community, practitioner, public sector and finance… and topics that will be covered at the conference are: modern software delivery, public cloud infrastructure, diversity in technology, compliance and digital transformation.
One of CloudBees’ favourite subjects is software application development carried out within the realms of what it calls progressive delivery, but what is this?
According to CloudBees, “In a traditional waterfall model, teams release new features to an entire user base at one time. Using progressive delivery, you roll out features gradually. Here’s how it works: DevOps managers first ship a new feature to release managers for internal testing. Once that’s done, the feature goes to a small batch of users to collect additional feedback, or is incrementally released to more users over time. The final step is a general launch when the feature is ready for the masses.”
It’s a bit like dipping your toes into the water before diving in. If something goes wrong during a launch, you haven’t exposed your entire user base to it. You can easily roll the feature back if you need to and make changes.
“We are thrilled to bring a stacked lineup to DevOps World 2022,” said Sacha Labourey, co-founder and interim CEO, CloudBees. “CloudBees is again honored to present this must-attend event for DevOps professionals at every stage of their career. We look forward to connecting and collaborating with the amazing minds that make up the software delivery community.”
The call for papers for DevOps World 2022 included topics spanning from progressive delivery (see above), securing the software supply chain, value stream management (see below) and the emergence of XOps.
What is value stream management?
CloudBees explains a ‘value stream’ is a way to look at a problem using different resolutions. If a development team has a staging deployment bottleneck and an eight-member team provide eight different reasons for its cause, then the concept of the value stream helps to zoom in and look at the steps at a finer level to determine where the real cause is within that bottleneck.
To further clarify in exact terms from CloudBees, a value stream consists of a series of steps used by an organisation to continuously deliver value to customers. Value stream management is a practice that enables the organisation to track and manage the flow of value from the ‘ideation stage’ all the way to customer delivery. Proper value stream management ensures the facets related to end-to-end software development are connected and measured to properly and efficiently move the flow of value related to a product or service to the customer.
“A value stream map (AKA a current state map) that inspects the problem at different scales can draw out where waste is really occurring. This process of drawing the map together – with stakeholders across the organisation – puts everyone on the same page, settling arguments before they occur by pushing leadership and development to share a common view,” notes CloudBees, in a company blog.
With value stream mapping, teams can take a 12-month process down to three months, and three-month processes down to three weeks. By drawing the map, the teams identify where their big problems are.
Finally, let’s just touch on CloudBees’ notion of XOps – a term we now usually employ to describe a DevOps-y-Ops-centric approach to the delivery of every aspect of the entire software stack. From data science and analytics to database management across the full transept of sysadmin concerns… and right up to MLOps and the need to feed AI engines with a more Ops-centric lifeblood, XOps is X means everything.
CloudBees tweets at @cloudbees and the conference Twitter feed is @devopsworldconf with the following hashtag #DevOpsWorld – now, wash your hands.
