Key Takeaways from the 2016 DevOps Enterprise Summit

Day 1

Gene Kim noted that ticket sales doubled from 600 in 2014 to 1,200, reflecting growing enterprise interest in DevOps.

(Re)building an Engineering Culture – Target’s DevOps Practice

Key figures: Ross Clanton, Director; Heather Mickman, Senior Group Manager.

"Target struggled for years with siloed teams and a chaotic IT department, where a single server required ten teams to support and most development work waited in queues."

Ross emphasized that while they have received praise, the journey is just beginning.

Enterprise DevOps Driven by Metrics, Empathy, and Empowerment

Jody Mulkey (Ticketmaster CTO) compared development and operations to football, arguing that operations should enable developers to score.

From 2011 to 2014, Ticketmaster’s developer headcount grew 230% while ops grew only 12% – a mismatch. Mean time to fix bugs dropped from 47 minutes to 3.8 minutes. Ticketmaster’s ticketing engine, first shipped in 1976, now generates $2.5 billion in revenue, thanks to continuous improvement.

USAA and IBM on DevOps and Innovation

Michael Bueche (USAA) described a 158‑day pre‑launch journey and a 90‑day post‑launch agile rollout.

"Before acting, we often endure a painful 'hot stove' period; shortening feedback loops is essential to avoid weeks‑long bug discovery delays."

Dibbe Edwards (IBM) stressed the need for scalable environments that support DevOps plans.

Lean Application Development with DevOps

Carmen DeArdo (Nationwide Insurance) explained how adopting lean and agile practices reduced reliance on external vendors and cut waiting times.

Nationwide’s teams have seen significant quality and productivity gains, though many teams remain in a waiting state.

Results: Slides showed measurable improvements after introducing lean DevOps.

Day 2

Innovation and DevOps in Banking

Tapabrata Pal (Capital One) argued that open‑sourcing tools fosters a culture of continuous experimentation and learning.

"Open source makes our tools better and supports rapid feedback for both employees and customers."

He highlighted the "Office Hours" resource and the "Voice of the Customer" program for identifying bottlenecks.

"I'm not building network software, why care about continuous delivery?" – discussion moderated by Jez Humble.

"If you ship a premium product quickly, late‑found bugs become far more costly, especially in embedded, automotive, and medical software."

Panel emphasized that IT should not be seen merely as a cost center.

Disney’s DevOps – Enterprise Awareness

Jason Cox (Disney) encouraged teams to become "DevOps Jedi" and emphasized the need for cultural change.

Architecture for Continuous Delivery

Jez Humble (author of Continuous Delivery) asked the audience if they could resolve a production incident within ten minutes.

"Software should always be in a releasable state, with every build being a candidate for production."

He illustrated the CD definition with an image.

Day 3

Test Automation for Mainframe Applications

Rosalind Radcliffe (IBM) shared 26 years of mainframe experience and how virtualization enables testing on constrained hardware.

Containers Meet the Software Supply Chain

Joshua Corman (Sonatype) and John Willis (Docker) discussed how DevOps rescues IT operations and the importance of secure, reliable software in critical domains.

"IT operations lost 20 years; DevOps got us back on course." – John Willis "I want to save lives; software reliability in medical devices, cars, and homes is essential." – Joshua Corman

They highlighted the need for coding standards and robust security for connected devices.

On Feedback

Elisabeth Hendrickson (Pivotal) warned that more testers do not automatically mean higher quality and emphasized avoiding feedback loop contamination.

"Too many testers can cause noise, false alarms, distortion, and loss of information."

She presented diagrams illustrating effective feedback across developers, testers, ops, users, security, and systems.

Overall, the summit underscored that rapid, multi‑source feedback is essential for successful DevOps transformations.