DevOps fusion slides

1. generali.ch
DevOps – What we thought it was
and where we are today
Christian Nicoll
Director of Platform Engineering & Operations
20 March 2019

2. Generali Switzerland
Starting position
2 April 2019 2
Regulatory pressure
Stagnating economy
Changes in customer
expectations
Brand differentiation
Digitization &
modernization
Challenging market
environment

3. Generali Switzerland 32 April 2019
Sleeping beauty
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/grimmbilder/images/b/b5/Dornroeschen_Paul_Hey_Jahr_unbekannt.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130516132113&path-prefix=de

4. Generali Switzerland 42 April 2019
Changes in customer expectations

5. Generali Switzerland 52 April 2019
How to connect both worlds?
https://stock.adobe.com/de/images/grey-unfinished-bridge/97597672

6. Generali Switzerland 62 April 2019
How things looked in January 2017
Adopted strategy:
• Aiming for 2
• Maybe some 1
• But not 3

7. Generali Switzerland 72 April 2019
High-level solution sketch

8. Generali Switzerland 82 April 2019
Potential business value

9. Generali Switzerland 92 April 2019Presentation title,
What DevOps meant to me
There is no
separation between
DevandOps.
You build it and
you run it!

10. Generali Switzerland 10
The definition of DevOps
Value streaming
Deployment pipelines
Team setup &
empowerment Infrastructure exellence
& Cloud computing
Test automation
Continuous Learning &
Error culture
Shared services
& knowledge
Architecture
Production
stabilization & optimization

11. Generali Switzerland 112 April 2019
What we adapted so far
Value streaming
Deployment pipelines
02.04.2019
Infrastructure excellence & Cloud computing
Team setup & empowerment
Stabilization & optimization
Architecture
Shared services & knowledge
Test automation
Continuous Learning & Error Culture
Level of achievement
Implemented & adapted
o Inject production failures to enable
resilience and learning
o Keep team sizes small
o Do peer reviews
o Centralized Monitoring (MVP)
o Shared service creation
o Make work transparent
o Continuously identifying constraints
o Create loosely coupled architectures
o Shared source-code repository
o Blameless post-mortem reports

12. Generali Switzerland 122 April 2019
Next goals and outlook
To dos
o Reserve time for technical debt reduction
o Limit work in progress
o Create security telemetry
o Codify and measure NFRs
o Test-driven Development
o Create new environments on demand
o Integrate security and compliance controls in pipelines
o Integrate OPs engineers in DEV teams
o Log business relevant events
o Use chat rooms and chat bots to automate and capture
organizational knowledge
Value streaming
Deployment pipelines
Infrastructure excellence & Cloud computing
Team setup & empowerment
Stabilization & optimization
Architecture
Shared services & knowledge
Test automation
Continuous Learning & Error Culture
Level of achievement

13. Generali Switzerland 132 April 2019
Key take-aways
• Buy a few copies of the DevOps Handbook and create a common understanding what DevOps is
and make sure that people have a common understanding of it.
• Invest in people and their professional development. Empower and train them to automate
processes and work.
• Think early about processes, governance and security.
• Don’t neglect IT infrastructure.
• Expect setbacks. You need them! Rome wasn’t built in one day.

14. Generali Switzerland 142 April 2019
Thank you
Christian Nicoll
Christian.nicoll@generali.com