Business outcomes are not native to your tech stack. You can’t just buy a product, drop it into your environment, and expect magic to happen. People and processes need to evolve, too. No matter how modern your technology, it’s the people leveraging that technology who ultimately drive transformation and deliver value for your organization.
Which is why — in addition to the opportunity to geek out on the latest tech — the SpringOne conference offers a unique opportunity to dive into the people, practices, and culture side of transformation. It will devote an entire track to the human aspects of software development. Because let’s face it, the hardest parts of any modernization effort are the upskilling, mindset shifting, process altering, and culture changing…none of which can be automated.
While there’s no DevOps magic potion or one-size-fits-all approach, there are best practices and a proven playbook that reliably drive phenomenal outcomes with software. So if you lead a team, are responsible for your organization’s transformation initiatives, or are a software maker yourself, check out the list of sessions I’ve curated below. Almost all of them are anchored in real case studies and feature lessons learned with practical advice and inspiration to help energize your quest to deliver bigger and better outcomes with software.
Turning Digital Transformation into a Reality: Learn How It’s Done at State Farm Insurance, Tesco Bank, AirFrance-KLM, and Datev
Speedy and successful app modernization programs are possible! Hear how these organizations are tackling tough problems and driving outcomes.
18 Months to Migrate 800 Applications: State Farm's Transformation Journey — Three IT leaders from State Farm, the 100-year old U.S. insurance company, will recount how they modernized their tech stack, migrated 800 applications to the cloud, and transformed the way their product teams delivered business capabilities.
How (Not) to Develop a Modern Product Management Practice at Speed — Tesco Bank is part of Tesco, the third-largest retailer in the world. Culture, leadership, and bureaucracy were just some of the obstacles it faced, as it tried to adopt modern product development practices. With help from VMware Pivotal Labs, it quickly delivered a product used to help vulnerable customers during shelter-in-place, and is now scaling rapidly, with full executive sponsorship. Learn how to fast-track your digital transformation, including what it takes — and what not to do.
Transforming AirFrance-KLM’s Payment Application to Cloud Native in Six Weeks — Air France-KLM chose one of its most critical, complex, and outdated payment applications to be the first to break apart and move to the cloud. Members of AFKLM’s Digital Group will review the preconditions it needed for a successful transformation, the impact on its product team, and how it accomplished this feat in just six weeks.
Transformation: Not Only the App But Also the Way We Work — Datev is a household name in Germany, where it serves as the country’s primary provider of tax, accounting, and legal software as well as related consulting services. Datev will share how changes to the way it approaches development have been fundamental to the success of its app modernization efforts. You’ll hear how it’s disrupted old ways of working and which practices are working well for its various teams.
Building the Business Case for App Modernization — Convincing “the business” that modernization and refactoring are worthy investments of time can feel like trying to convince a teenager they should save for retirement instead of buying their first car. Dormain Drewitz of VMware explains how to make a meaningful business case for modernization through examples and learnings from teams that have successfully completed refactoring projects.
Evolving Platform Ops: Discover Modern I&O Practices Leveraged by T-Mobile, Albertsons, Ontario Teachers, Fiserv, and TD Ameritrade
A successful app platform relies on a culture of collaboration between I&O and the development community it serves. Add these case studies to your watchlist to learn about the skills, tools, and best practices helping these organizations get to production.
“Sh*^%# on Fire, Yo!”: A True Story Inspired by Real Events — T-Mobile will lead an interactive session on how to successfully manage large-scale distributed systems at scale. It will focus on failing forward, failing fast, continuous iteration, and the improvements critical to customer (i.e., developer) trust.
Operational Transformation: Teachers’ Journey from App Servers to VMware Tanzu — One of the world’s largest institutional investors, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund, transitioned from “throw it over the fence” to a DevOps model driven by its modern platform capabilities. Hear how it ditched app servers and made developers happier, all while achieving significant cost savings.
Delivering Essentials for Albertsons: VMware Tanzu’s Critical Role During COVID-19 — At the start of the pandemic, some grocery chains experienced huge increases in e-commerce and digital orders overnight, which impacted — both positively and negatively — applications, platforms, processes, people, and supply chain logistics. Hear how Albertsons’ platform team managed unprecedented traffic with zero downtime throughout this crisis using Tanzu Application Service.
What Does It Take To Deliver A Solution To Process Over $2B In Loans From Inception To Production? — When you’re faced with having to build a critical loan application for a host of financial institutions in just a few days — and during a pandemic! — you need capabilities that fully enable your developers. Hear how Fiserv delivered a solution capable of processing a huge influx of loan applications despite these restrictions, including the technologies and platforms that helped drive developer efficiencies the most.
Measuring ROI and Driving Adoption of Tanzu Application Service In an Enterprise — TD Ameritrade will share the best types of data to collect in order to generate a return on your investment in Tanzu Application Service. TD Ameritrade team members will also share a model that will help you determine how to collect this data so you can then analyze, visualize, and use it!
Leading Through Transformation: Learn from Agile Software Leaders at Comcast, Boeing, Tesco, the U.S. Air Force, Fiserv, Liberty Mutual, Ford, and OneMagnify
Establishing a cloud native platform team or leading a shift in software development practices requires upskilling your team. But organizational and cultural change require significant leadership skills. These professional, development-focused sessions are tailored to leaders involved in business and digital transformation initiatives.
Manager, Heal Thyself! — When you’re trying to improve the way your organization develops software, how do you change the way the people tasked with overseeing that transformation fulfill their roles? Transformation leaders from Comcast and Tesco will discuss role evolution for managers and executives — and career management overall — in times of change.
Girls Can Do It — Diversity and psychological safety are fundamental to the success of high-performing software teams. This panel of IT leaders from Liberty Mutual, OneMagnify, and Fiserv will share their experiences, challenges, accomplishments, and advice on how to make it as a woman in the IT industry.
What Makes a Great Product Manager — Panelists from the U.S. Air Force, Boeing, and VMware Pivotal Labs will discuss what makes a great product manager, how software teams and leadership benefit from a formalized PM role, and how to help great product management thrive.
Lessons From Veteran Agile Leaders and the Importance of Community — This panel presentation will be led by the founders and key participants of the Agile Leadership Meetup, leaders who have undertaken the challenge of standing up their companies’ application development centers. Speakers from Ford, Boeing, Dell, and others will share their personal journey stories as well as key learnings around measuring success, governing for results, and the importance of cross-industry collaboration.
Register now for SpringOne on September 2-3, 2020
This year’s conference is all online, all free, and all about getting apps to production. Looking for information on agile leadership and digital transformation strategy in the meantime? Check out these resources:
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The Business Bottleneck (on the role of business in digital transformation)
