One of the smoking hot topics these days is AI-assisted development. How can we leverage tools and practices to improve the flow and make teams more effective?

My guest today is Michael Geatz, and he is dealing with this topic in the role of VP of Engineering. A couple of weeks ago, Michael stirred quite some interest with his LinkedIn post sharing his experience of moving the development team to AI-first development workflow. Soon after that post, I reached out to Michael and asked him to share more details with us, which he gladly accepted.

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In this episode, we talk about a phenomenon that is deeply ingrained in our world today, and that is complexity. And my perfect guest for this conversation is professor Scott Page from University of Michigan whose focus is on researching complex social systems and the potential of collective intelligence. Scott is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. I was blown away by his lectures available under the name Understanding Complexity.

In May, Scott will be our guest and keynote speaker at our annual QED conference in Zadar in Croatia. This conversation today is just a glimpse of insights we will share at the conference so jump straight to the QED web page, register and join us to learn more about complexity and how to harness it in daily life.

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An accident happened in July that everyone is talking about. This conversation is inspired by the CrowdStrike event. However, it’s NOT specifically ABOUT the CrowdStrike event.

While everybody was mostly analyzing process dumps and null pointers, Bill Bensing and John Willis took the perspective of operations management and why the software industry is so prone to accidents. We’re missing things like operational definitions, blueprints, specifications, and standards.

Listen to our conversation where we talk about DevOps automated governance and debunk the myth that the software industry is so creative that no standard can (or should) be imposed.

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Did you know there is a 0800-DEVOPS newsletter? Take a look and subscribe here DevOps automated governance with Bill Bensing and John Willis.

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You know how in every good movie, it takes some time for a plot to develops, and the main character is introduced only later in the movie… We’ll that’s why it took me 43 episodes of the DevOps podcast to welcome a person that started it all! I talked with Patrick Debois about challenges of introducing Generative AI and how can AI Platform Engineering help.

Platform Engineering is the pattern that successful organizations use to efficiently scale the approach, the technology, and ways of working. Yesterday, it was about building abstractions to deploy and manage apps on Kubernetes. Today, it is also about providing access to approved LLM models, RAG mechanisms, vector databases, caching, model versioning, and connectors to legacy data sources, hence AI Platform Engineering.

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Damon Edwards is Senior Director, Product at PagerDuty. I’ve been aware of Damon’s impressive work in the DevOps space since my first Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit where Damon is continuously a member of the program committee. But, in the last couple of years, we’ve gotten to know each other better and engaged in some super interesting conversations and topics that I wanted to share with you.

This time, we talked about the timeless topic of providing value and whether operations, in the broader sense, can be a competitive differentiator for a company. The conversation is as much a history lesson as it is a primer for operating in the future.

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Did you know there is a 0800-DEVOPS newsletter? Take a look and subscribe here 0800-DEVOPS #62 – Operations as competitive advantage with Damon Edwards.

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Sam Newman and Michael Heiß have a long history of helping organizations with technical architectures and organizational dynamics. I talked with them about the future of software architecture, the return of the Monolith, and the importance of play in daily work. This episode is special since we recorded it live at the QED conference!

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This interview is featured in 0800-DEVOPS #61 - Software architecture and play with Sam Newman and Michael Heiß.

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(1:42)
Trends in software architecture
 
(27:22)
Simplicity and pragmatism
 
(41:46)
The importance of play in workplace

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Dan Garfield is VP Open Source at Octopus Deploy. I spoke with Dan about KubeCon, GitOps, DORA regulation, the future of Continuous Delivery, AI, and the bright future of Codefresh joining Octopus Deploy.

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This interview is featured in 0800-DEVOPS #60 - GitOps with Dan Garfield.

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(2:51)
Introduction

(5:07)
Founding Codefresh

(7:30)
Maintaining ArgoCD

(10:52)
About GitOps

(17:43)
GitOps fueling organizational performance

(22:50)
GitOps and DORA regulation

(27:10)
Codefresh joining Octopus Deploy

(32:05)
State of DevOps in "regular" organizations

(36:57)
The future of Continuous Delivery and AI

(41:16)
Dan's recommendations

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Kaspar von Grünberg is CEO at Humanitec, one of the companies leading the platform engineering space. He’s been involved in platform engineering from the start, practically when the term was invented. A lot is going on recently in this space, particularly around Broadcom acquiring VMWare, and this is just one of the topics Kaspar and I will dig into.

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This interview is featured in 0800-DEVOPS #59 - Platform Engineering with Kaspar von Grünberg.

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(0:45)
Introdution

(5:08)
What is Platform Engineering?

(8:39)
The curious case of Broadcom and VMWare

(14:30)
How to escape the lock-in trap

(21:54)
Typical challenges with Platform Engineering

(26:23)
Platform Engineering as an organizational transformation

(29:00)
Setting the right goals and metrics

(35:32)
The future of Platform Engineering

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Peter Guagenti is the President & Chief Marketing Officer of Tabnine, a company behind one of the most popular AI code assistants on the market. I spoke with Peter about AI code assistants, what automatic transmissions and AI have in common, and the philosophical question of future humans forgetting how to code.

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This interview is featured in 0800-DEVOPS #58 - AI code assistants with Peter Guagenti.

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(0:45)
Introduction

(10:41)
The magic behind AI code assistants

(14:03)
Typical patterns how developers use code assistants

(21:15)
Can developers rely too much on code assistants?

(30:26)
Will developer skills deteriorate over time?

(34:52)
How mature is the technology today?

(39:22)
The future of code assistants

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John Willis is another absolute legend in software delivery and DevOps, an industry veteran working at companies such as Docker and evangelizing good technical practices. He is the co-author of The DevOps Handbook, Beyond The Phoenix Project and Investments Unlimited, and lately, he published an incredible book on Dr. William Edwards Deming called "Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge."

I thought I knew everything there was to know about Dr. Deming - after all, what is there to know - watch out for seven data points in a row above or beyond the average and do something - and that's it! Except it's not! :)

Through his book and by hanging out with him in a weekly book club, John took me on the journey of exploring Deming, and at times, it felt like going through an escape room - just as I thought I understood everything, I'd find a new door and a whole new world. This episode is a glimpse into John's book and our ongoing conversations with the hope that we will also spark interest for Deming in others.

🙌 Help me spread DevOps ideas even further by voting for the 0800-DEVOPS podcast for DevOps Dozen 2023 award in the “4. Best DevOps Related Podcast Series (Audio Only)” category - I truly appreciate it! You can cast your vote here.

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Show notes:
John Willis' Ignite talk: "Devops and Dr Deming’s 14 Points" (Velocity NY 2014) - YouTube

This interview is featured in 0800-DEVOPS #57 - Deming’s Journey to Profound Knowledge with John Willis.

[Check out podcast chapters if available on your podcast platform or use links below]

(0:01)
Introduction

(1:32)
How John started exploring Dr. Deming

(11:17)
The System of Profound Knowledge

(21:25)
An example of PDSA working in an organization

(30:50)
Key experiences that shaped Dr. Deming's work

(42:14)
DevOps and Dr. Deming's 14 Points

(44:07)
Book recommendations

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