March 13, 2018
1 PM EST
Textbook continuous delivery sounds great. We commit code, build it, deploy into a test lab, test and then promote to production. Clean, simple and effective. The reality for most applications is that some of their test environments are named things like "system integration". When tests validate integrated systems, releases to production generally involve all the services that were changed and tested together rather than just a single build. We have release managers who specialize in making sure all the moving parts get delivered together. Meanwhile, some parts of systems are not even built and others like database schemas are updated incrementally. The textbook build pipeline may not be good enough.
Join Al Wagner and Chris Nowak for a look at how we can architect systems to work with simple build pipelines and how we can setup continuous delivery systems that work in the more complex, even messy, environments we have today.
Al Wagner, Technical Evangelist, IBM
Al Wagner is an IBM technical evangelist with more than twenty years of practical field experience in development roles driving thought leadership, strategic initiatives, and tangible solutions around DevOps and continuous delivery. Focusing mainly on deployment automation and continuous testing, Al has practical knowledge of the IBM DevOps solution having assisted, mentored, and enabled both internal IBM and external customer teams to solve their IT challenges. He has spoken at numerous conferences around the world on software development – principles & techniques - and authored/co-authored numerous papers and books including Application Release and Deployment For Dummies and Service Virtualization For Dummies.
Chris Nowak, Chief Transformation Officer, Kingsmen Software
Chris has 20 years of experience in Change Management, SDLC & DevOps. He was Head of DevOps Services at 2 of the top 4 banks in the US at divisional and enterprise levels. He designed, led and scaled services from the ground up, including service strategy, process optimization, organizational change, large-scale engagement / on-boarding, and operations.
At Wells Fargo (1996-2012, First Union, Wachovia), Chris created services which fully automated over 350 applications for the Trading, Securities and Investment Banking divisions.
While at Bank of America (2012-2016) he led a combined organization of Automation Engineering, Platform Systems, Client Engagement/On-Boarding, and Deployment Operations. His teams automated and supported over 800 applications from source to prod and implemented a large scale, rapid response service capability. The CICD platform offered integrated testing, security scanning, continuous deployments and release orchestration.
Chris left Bank of America in 2016 to join a startup focusing on transformation consulting. Prior to his IT career, Chris served in the NY Army National Guard for 15 years, retiring as a captain and helicopter pilot. Chris holds an MS in Electrical Engineering and BS’s in Physics and Electrical Engineering. In 2014 he was awarded a US Patent in DevOps Methodology (USP #8875091).