Agile + DevOps West 2020 Keynote : Are We There Yet? A New Decade to Deliver

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Wednesday, June 10, 2020 - 8:30am to 9:45am

Are We There Yet? A New Decade to Deliver

Mainframes were born in the 1960s, along with the first computer languages: COBOL, ALGOL, and FORTRAN. Minicomputers arrived in the ’70s, along with BASIC, PASCAL, and C. PCs came of age the ’80s, along with languages that were so simple we figured anyone could use them. This led to many a disaster—from bloated, unmaintainable corporate systems to medical device failures. And so the ’90s became the decade of heavy process, as we tried to get software under control. Then along came Y2K, which brought us the internet, agile, and the decade of teams. Try as they might to be autonomous, the teams inherited monolithic databases and deep dependencies. To solve these problems, the 2010s became a decade devoted to flow (DevOps) and architecture (microservices). Now, as we start the 2020s, our problem has become this: How do you coordinate all of these small services and their autonomous teams to deliver something big? Nope, we’re not there yet—but we’ll figure it out; we always do.

Mary Poppendieck
Poppendieck, LLC

Mary Poppendieck’s first job was programming the #2 Electronic Switching System at Bell Labs in 1967. She has worked on systems that control roll-goods processes, interpret digitized images, and support statistical process control. She spearheaded the implementation of a just-in-time production system and led new product development teams, commercializing products ranging from digital controllers to lighting systems. Mary is a popular writer and speaker and co-author of the book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, which was awarded the Software Development Productivity Award in 2004. A sequel, Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash was published in 2006. A third book, Leading Lean Software Development: Results are Not the Point was published in November 2009, and a fourth book, The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions was published in 2013.