August 2020 Summaries

PagerDuty Summit 2020 is set to be a fully virtual event offering a wide array of sessions tailored to different interests, from incident response best practices to industry trends like the Future of Work and cloud migration. This free event, accessible to a broad audience, features keynotes, panel discussions, and various tracks including Using PagerDuty, Building a Great Culture, and Industry Trends, enabling participants to tailor their experience. Highlights include sessions on production excellence, the stress of incident management, cloud migration, and inclusivity in tech, reflecting the diverse challenges and innovations in the industry. The summit also offers a free Incident Responder Certification, aimed at equipping participants with best practices for incident command systems, underscoring PagerDuty's commitment to enhancing operational efficiency and inclusivity in the tech landscape.

PagerDuty's updated integration with ServiceNow introduces new features aimed at enhancing incident response and collaboration by leveraging ServiceNow's Configuration Management Database (CMDB) data to build service hierarchies, making it easier to understand the impact of incidents on business services. The integration allows for seamless automation of actions, updates, and notes within the ServiceNow platform, enabling responders to perform tasks such as sending status updates and managing escalations without leaving the platform. Real-time insights from PagerDuty are now accessible directly on the ServiceNow dashboard, saving users time by eliminating the need to switch between platforms. The update also includes capabilities for running PagerDuty response plays and utilizing business response features to keep stakeholders informed about incidents. By integrating with PagerDuty's collaboration tools, incident commanders can quickly initiate conference calls to improve communication and resolution times. The integration is designed to bridge communication gaps between IT, engineering, and DevOps teams, enhancing visibility and accountability during incidents, while PagerDuty's Event Intelligence uses AI and machine learning to reduce alert noise and provide context for incidents, driving greater utilization of ServiceNow across organizations.

At the SaaStr Summit: Enterprise, CEO Jennifer Tejada emphasized the significance of digital acceleration as a positive outcome of the COVID-19 crisis and urged leaders not to waste this opportunity for change. She highlighted that transparency and engagement are crucial for CEOs, who must adopt a people-first mindset and focus on employee well-being, transparency, and engagement to maintain trust. Tejada also stressed the importance of automation in maintaining competitive advantage, advocating for the elimination of manual processes to free up resources for creativity and innovation. Additionally, she underscored the need for businesses to embrace social impact by moving from "profit with a purpose" to addressing major global issues, suggesting that organizations can create employment opportunities and partner with diverse groups to foster inclusivity and diversity.

Organizations are increasingly adopting DevOps to enhance release velocity, developmental agility, and innovation, but successful implementation requires more than just transitioning to a new methodology. A DevOps model emphasizes communication, collaboration, and blameless retrospectives, which can streamline processes and address bottlenecks. One major challenge is identifying and eliminating existing workflow constraints, which can impede progress. Gartner outlines six steps for increasing DevOps velocity by removing such constraints, beginning with defining the process and identifying the greatest constraint, followed by removing waste, avoiding the neglect of constraints, adding capacity, and continuously identifying new constraints. These steps aim to improve throughput and ensure high development cadence, ultimately leading to more efficient and productive DevOps practices.

Embarking on a DevOps transformation requires a strategic approach akin to playing a complex game like chess, where there are numerous paths to reach the desired outcome. Successful transformation involves acknowledging inevitable change, securing buy-in from both management and development teams, aligning incentives to improve code quality, and tailoring the DevOps framework to fit the unique needs of the organization. Change can be uncomfortable, and teams may resist or experience attrition, but starting with smaller projects allows for testing new ideas and achieving quick wins, which helps in visualizing the transformation. It's crucial to measure and quantify existing processes to establish a baseline for comparison, demonstrating the improvements brought by DevOps, such as faster deployment and improved reliability. The process demands risk, patience, and commitment, but with careful planning and execution, it can foster a cultural shift, aligning roles and responsibilities and ultimately enhancing the quality and skills of the team.

Agile software development often faces criticism due to misconceptions and misapplications, where some organizations claim to be agile while deviating from its core principles. This misuse, termed "agile BS," involves practices such as micromanagement and conflating estimates with commitments, which are management issues rather than inherent flaws in agile itself. True agility requires organizational commitment at all levels, valuing individuals over rigid processes, and empowering engineers to influence project direction and provide feedback on product roadmaps. Sustainable development and flexibility in planning are key to successful agile practice, enabling teams to focus on delivering the most valuable outcomes while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Ultimately, embracing genuine agile principles fosters an environment where engineers can adapt and innovate, ensuring that they work on projects that align with both organizational and customer needs.

Adam Boone, a Sales Operations Analyst at PagerDuty, has been honored with the Social Impact Quarterly Leadership Award for his dedication to integrating social impact into his role and fostering connections with community partners and organizations. As co-lead of PagerDuty’s Black and Latinx employee resource group, Adam emphasizes the importance of intersectionality in philanthropy and aims to create sustainable connections that yield long-term benefits. He is passionate about supporting organizations like The Women’s Building and The Equal Justice Initiative, addressing issues such as gender and social justice and racial inequities. The transition to virtual volunteering has opened new avenues for giving back, allowing Dutonians to engage with a wider range of causes beyond their immediate vicinity. Adam's commitment to social impact work reflects his belief in the importance of empathy and giving back, both professionally and personally, and he encourages others to actively participate in volunteer efforts.

PagerDuty Summit, scheduled for September 21–24, is an annual event that gathers developers, engineering managers, IT teams, and industry leaders to explore real-time operations and best practices in DevOps, ITOps, and SecOps. This year, it will be held in an all-virtual format, allowing participants worldwide to join and gain insights into digital operations management, AIOps, automation, and digital transformation strategies. The event will feature technical deep dives, expert viewpoints, and interactive workshops. Attendees can take advantage of free incident responder certification through PagerDuty University, which offers courses on implementing an Incident Command System and managing major incidents. Additional tracks focus on real-time operations best practices and PagerDuty product expertise, covering topics like DevOps culture, cloud migration, and service structuring within PagerDuty. Registration for the summit is free, and participants will have access to all sessions on demand for six weeks post-event.

PagerDuty, led by CEO Jennifer Tejada, is committed to equality as a fundamental right, not a privilege, and has initiated several efforts to promote inclusion, diversity, and equity. These efforts include supporting minority-led suppliers and investors, in collaboration with SurveyMonkey and The Justice Collective, by requiring vendors to invest in these values to maintain business relationships. The initiative is a response to racial injustices highlighted by the murders of individuals like George Floyd, leading to a global acknowledgment of the role companies can play in fostering a just society. By partnering with companies like 23andMe, Slack, and Zoom, PagerDuty aims to combat systemic racism and bias, both internally and in the broader business ecosystem, by ensuring their spending aligns with these values. CEOs involved in this initiative will require their largest vendors to demonstrate progress in diversity and inclusion, with the goal of encouraging systemic change and providing opportunities for underrepresented and marginalized communities.