This talk is a list of non-technical things that Operation team members can do to continue to make themselves more valuable in their organization. The idea came to me when I was talking with someone who was new to the field that felt Operations work wouldn’t exist or it’s value would be diminished in the coming years. But there are plenty of things that internal OPS teams can do that will be difficult to commoditize by the likes of Amazon and Google.

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ELEVATEYOURCONTRIBUTIONS
ASAN OPSENGINEER

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WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
Know the people that use your system
Introduction
Know your business
Know your system
AGENDA
Know your priorities

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Jeff Smith
Centro
Manager, Production Operations
• @DarkAndNerdy
• jeff.smith@centro.net
• www.allthingsdork.com

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WHAT IS IT
OPERATIONS?

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TRADITIONAL
DEFINITION
Operations management refers to the
administration of business practices
to create the highest level of
efficiency possible within an
organization. It is concerned with
converting materials and labor into
goods and services as efficiently as
possible to maximize the profit of an
organization.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/operations-management.asp Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
“
”

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KNOW YOUR
BUSINESS

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FILLING YOUR CUSTOMER’S NEED
Easy to Understand
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Hangry
Zone
Hangry
Zone

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BORED YET?
Complicated Because You’re Not Interested
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Operations
Developer
Function
Application
Function
Business Function
THE DIALECT OF YOUR
ORGANIZATION
IT OPERATIONS, SR
DEVELOPERS
IT OPERATIONS,
DEVELOPERS, QA
DEVELOPERS, QA, BUSINESS
ANALYST
MARKETING, FINANCE,
OPERATIONS, CUSTOMER
SUPPORT
@DarkAndNerdy

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A TYPICAL CONVERSATION WITH “THE BUSINESS”
RFPs are slow
when there are
pending insertion
orders
Ok, well load
average looks
fine
RFPs query third
party sites, so
check for latency
to those calls
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
‘‘
’’
‘‘
’’
‘‘
’’
Business Analyst IT Operations Development

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KNOW YOUR
SYSTEM

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THIRD PARTY PRODUCTS
• Tons of research into third
party systems
• Tons of expertise in systems
with non-specialized usage
• Yet we have a heavy
reliance on developers for
expert knowledge on our
own tools
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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THE SKILL SET MARKET
@DarkAndNerdy

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DOMAIN EXPERTISE
@DarkAndNerdy

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DOMAIN
EXPERTISE
+
BUSINESS
KNOWLEDGE
= UNDERSTANDING
BUSINESS IMPACT
@DarkAndNerdy

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KNOW YOUR
SYSTEM’S USERS

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Karen
Customer Success Manager
• Enter training data for
each client
• Took roughly 12 effort
hours
• Extremely repetitive
work
@DarkAndNerdy

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Karen
Customer Success Manager
• 2 hours of Operations
Engineer time to
script
• Reduced effort to 1.5
hours
• Got her team’s needs
into the roadmap
@DarkAndNerdy

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Shawn Riegsecker
CEO
• Multiple Demo
environments
• Various data setups
for each demo
environment
@DarkAndNerdy

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Shawn Riegsecker
CEO
• New Demo
environments on
demand
• A list of pre-made
data sources to
choose from
• Deploy in-progress
feature branches
@DarkAndNerdy

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THEY DIDN’T KNOW THE OPS
TEAM@DarkAndNerdy

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OPERATIONS SUPPORT PROGRESSION
+PRODUCTION
OPERATIONS
+ STAGING
QA
+BUILD/CI
RELEASE
ENGINEERING
+ LOCAL
DEVELOPMENT
DEVELOPERS
+ TRAINING
+DEMO
BUSINESS
UNITS
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved. @DarkAndNerdy

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KNOW YOUR
PRIORITIES

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Planned
Work
Unplanned
Work
@DarkAndNerdy

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Support Production
• Incident Handling
Notification Feature Rollout
• Announcement will happen during
industry event
AWS Migration
• Datacenter contract has not been
renewed
Request for new
Database server for
Data Warehouse team
@DarkAndNerdy
Priorities

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WHAT DID WE TALK ABOUT?
Know the people that use your system
Know your business
Know your system
RECAP
@DarkAndNerdy
Know your priorities

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Jeff Smith
jeff.smith@centro.net
@DarkAndNerdy
THANK
YOU.