DOES 2019 Insights: Value Stream Management Continues to Rise at DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas

I recently spent a few days in Las Vegas, where CollabNet VersionOne sponsored the 2019 DevOps Enterprise Summit (#DOES19).

We are always big supporters of DOES because of the strong sense of community among attendees. Each year it is a highly productive event for business and IT leaders, mostly from large enterprises, who are working to advance business transformation through DevOps.

This was our fourth year in a row participating at DOES U.S. It has been especially exciting to experience the evolution of the conversation – from a developer and IT collaboration to enterprise-wide practices and processes that deliver immense value through software delivery.

One of the most important and noticeable themes discussed at the event was Value Stream Management. I would certainly say Value Stream Management emerged as a core theme last year, but we saw the interest in the topic increase noticeably in 2019. That is because Value Stream Management is essential to continuous delivery at enterprise scale so there is growing interest in major enabling technologies that make enterprise Agile/DevOps a feasible undertaking.

As we saw in London, the idea of transforming from an application development and project-centric organization into a digital product delivery organization is in demand, and that continued to be the case in Las Vegas.

This was true at the CollabNet VersionOne booth, where we had a lot of visitors who wanted to see and discuss our Value Stream Management (VSM) solution and demo.

We were energized by the positive interest and engaging with attendees, showing them how the right software infrastructure can enable DevOps transformations, help scale and continuously deliver innovation and business value at large-scale organizations.

Another rising theme, that I think will continue to play out at future DOES events is data. It’s no longer just about getting the data – we have the computers and technology to do that. But now we need to know how to collect the right data and determine what actions to take based on the insights that data reveals. This is where visibility provided by value streams can help make that determination so you can adapt and continue to enhance the customer experience.

Also, all signs point to tying the business and tech teams together. Organizations like USCIS, who presented during the event, are seeing better release times and teams are much happier now that there are collaboration and open lines of communication – it’s no longer ‘us vs them’ mentality in a lot of these enterprises. This is yet another area where a value stream infrastructure can help facilitate ease of transparency and communication.

The future-facing conversations had a heavy focus on machine learning and AI. The speakers from Adidas shared that it is going to have add an AI Cup competition next year on top of their already successful DevOps Cup. Many speakers talked about upskilling their staff on AI and how they are planning to incorporate it into their DevOps strategy.

As always, the event offered fun networking events that kept us busy on the show floor and afforded opportunities to connect with the foremost thought leaders and authors in all of DevOps.

It was a pleasure to mingle with like-minded industry leaders, our partners Scaled Agile and other friends at the event. Gene Kim, who launched his new The Unicorn Project book, and the IT Revolution team did an excellent job putting on a great show.

DOES 19 was another incredible event – thank you to all who made it happen!