My friends at JumpCloud asked me to contribute to an Ebook they wrote on “Doing More Faster now with IT control”. The idea was to take the concept made famous by David Cohen and Brad Feld in a book and as the mantra for Techstars and apply it specifically to IT. I was part of an all star team, each assigned to write a section. Gene Kim, Ben Kepes, Tony Bradley and Raj Bhargava each contributed. My section is on BYOD. Gene Kim writes about DevOps (no surprise there), Ben writes about hybrid organizations.
But I don’t write this article to blow my own horn about writing a chapter in a book (maybe just a little). Rather I read Brad Feld’s blog post on it today and as much of what Brad writes, it made me think. As Brad said doing more faster generally is a good thing. But as the saying goes, “speed kills”. Going faster can spawn a cascade of other issues. Dealing with them is often the key to success. On that note Brad calls out three things about organizations who successfully do more faster:
- They decentralized decision making
- They push the pace of their product development by more closely aligning with customers
- They create a culture of action
In terms of DevOps, isn’t in many ways the idea of doing more faster core to it? So to me doing more faster is as much a mantra in DevOps as it is at Techstars. I don’t know the idea that IT wants to do more faster is just natural to me. But again on Brad’s blog I was reminded that is not the belief of everyone. There was one comment on the blog when I read it today:
Alan Shimel is founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Techstrong Group, a Futurum company, and a member of Futurum's executive leadership team. A technology entrepreneur, media executive and industry commentator, Shimel has spent more than three decades building businesses, communities and media platforms serving enterprise technology professionals, including co-founding StillSecure, a network security company, and the DevOps Institute, a DevOps certification and training body. At Techstrong, he leads a portfolio of media brands including devopsy.kinsta.cloud, Security Boulevard, Cloud Native Now, Techstrong AI, Techstrong IT, Digital CxO, Platform Engineering, Techstrong Semi and Techstrong TV, along with a growing portfolio of events, educational programs and digital communities. With more than 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, Shimel is a familiar voice in the space and was an early advocate of the DevOps movement, helping bring DevOps practices into mainstream enterprise technology. His work today spans cybersecurity, DevOps, cloud-native technologies, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and digital transformation, and he hosts popular programs including Techstrong Gang, Shimmy Says and Still Cyber, After All These Years. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Politics from St. John's University and a Juris Doctor from New York Law School.