DevOps is not just about technology, it is a union of people, process and products, to enable continuous delivery of value to your end users, and DevOps is one of the drivers for developer velocity.
In the recent Microsoft Virtual DevOps Summit on 14 Apr 2022, I spoke with 3 notable leads about Developer Velocity in Action – Experiential Learning. Specifically, I like to highlight the conversation with Annie Matthew, Director of Developer Relations at Microsoft, on bringing diversity to the workplace.
To watch the full event on-demand, please register here.
Developer Velocity is also about Strategic Thinking
Diversity and inclusion is very important at Microsoft, and it is also a key element for developer velocity because development is not just about speed, how fast apps are developed, but also about strategic thinking, how developers think can affect velocity.
How can we bring diversity to the workplace and to software development? What can we expect with diversity?
Pandemic Woes
During the pandemic, a couple of things can happen simultaneously. One is more women went off the workforce, and on the other hand, organizations needed to innovate faster.
Diversity needs a Goal-Oriented Approach
In an environment where things were unclear, Microsoft have been working on Code; Without Barriers. a program that is about increasing developer diversity, both in communities, customers and partners. One of the things we understood and we are very clear about, is that there are all kinds of diversity and we need to have a very targeted, focused, goal-oriented approach on each kind of diversity to actually move the needle. With Code; Without Barriers, it is about gender diversity.
Changing Dynamics with Gender Diversity
In conversations with CIOs, and head of engineering and others, they always ask this question about how many women are there on your teams? What is the thought on why you need more women? If they say they do, then often there will be more debate when there are more women on the team. Having one woman in a team of 50 does not help so much, but the minute there is a critical mass of say 20% or 30% of women, the dynamics change, the conversations change, and so on and so forth.
Developer Velocity – A Key Driver for Innovation
So as we think about developer velocity, and that it is a key driver for innovation as well, diversity becomes super important. Innovation is about strategic thinking, and to hit upon a strategy, there should be many diverse pathways, and then you decide, what is your strategy? If everyone is thinking the same way it does not help. So diversity is absolutely crucial, and it requires very focused attention, and kind of purposefully go after the increasing diversity to actually make that happen.
Nurturing Diversity and Thought Leadership
Once you hire more women into the teams, there is also the aspect of nurturing the thought leadership and allowing space to be vocal and grow with the team. Otherwise, even if you bring in women, they do not stay or it does not grow from there. There are many aspects to developer diversity and I hope we make a concerted effort to actually increase this in our organizations.
My After Thoughts – Build a better DevOps culture with Diversity
I seldom meet a female Build & Release Engineer, or DevOps Engineer, or Site Reliability Engineer in my 2 decades of engineering career. However, most businesses value innovation to differentiate themselves. By being deliberate in increasing gender diversity, it can bring about better ideas and innovations, not just for products, but also processes that would increase developer velocity. Build a better DevOps culture among people, process and products with hiring and nurturing more women. What do you think?
Thoughts 