A presentation at DevOpsDays Hartford 2019 in in Hartford, CT, USA by Henry Quinn
HENRY QUINN LEADING A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AT THE SPEED OF GOVERNMENT
CULTURE OF THE COURTS MY FIRST JOB! https://www.knowol.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/New-Haven-09.jpg @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
CULTURE OF THE COURTS WHAT DID WE BUILD WITH ALL THAT? ▸ https://blooloop.com/features/walt-disney-world-nighttime-entertainment/ @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
PROJECT REQUIREMENTS I WAS PLACATED WITH A PROJECT https://picography.co/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/picography-man-reading-newspaper.jpg @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
PROJECT REQUIREMENTS WHAT’S THE CATCH? ▸ It was written in ColdFusion. ▸ It had to be in 15 courts by the end of the year. ▸ Static app on custom VM’s. ▸ It was written in ColdFusion. https://www.haikudeck.com/bluetooth-le-and-corebluetooth-how-to-presentation-blT4G7eHGD @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
PROJECT REQUIREMENTS FROM NOTHING https://o.aolcdn.com/images/dims? quality=85&image_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fo.aolcdn.com%2Fimages%2Fdims%3Fcrop%3D4830%252C3221%252C0%252C400%26quality%3D85%26format%3Djpg%26resize%3D1600%252C1067%26image_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fs.yimg.com%252Fos%252Fcrea tr-images%252F2018-12%252Fbb586d40-fd47-11e8-bdf7-4d9a7236b898%26client%3Da1acac3e1b3290917d92%26signature%3Dafaef9d90a80981d72ecbf5db8b2158422844d2d&client=amp-blogside-v2&signature=278b23301792fab7f8322455bce8205bacf470f5 @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
CAD SLACK GROUP CAD & CONTAINERS ▸ Court Application Developers -> Judiciary Slack Team ▸ Finally “surrounded” by other engineers. ▸ There were rumors of a Kubernetes orchestrator becoming a national product to deploy judiciary apps. ▸ Containers had to be the move. https://diginomica.com/virtualization-dead-long-live-containerization @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
PROJECT REQUIREMENTS LEADERSHIP HIERARCHY FAILS US ▸ It takes a week to do things manually. ▸ I was the only developer for the district. ▸ Static apps don’t scale. ▸ Boss said no to containers. https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/human-resources/2014/05/my-boss-is-evil-and-10-other-career-excuses.html @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
HOW OUR LEADERSHIP HIERARCHY FAILED US ROUND TWO ▸ Using containers was a non-starter. ▸ I was to use my time building functionality in ColdFusion. ▸ We promised way more features to our handler helping us get funding than we had time to finish. ▸ Turn The Ship Around! https://opmed.doximity.com/articles/how-we-are-trapped-by-golden-handcuffs @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
NATIONWIDE SKUNKWORKS CLUSTERS CONTAINERS FOR DAYS ▸ There were people like me all over the country. ▸ Containers were like THE thing. ▸ We could build for our CM/ECF but deploy for courts across the United States. ▸ We learned quickly that we had to work in the shadows. ▸ There were several projects in motion outside of the normal leadership hierarchies. Exciting times. https://geekestateblog.com/real-estate-skunk-works-departments/ @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
“You were given a ColdFusion app and your problem with that was, ‘how do I deploy this?’ Congratulations, you’re a DevOps engineer.” - Tom Reznick https://twitter.com/threznick/photo @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
FUNDING SECURED CONTAINERS TO THE RESCUE https://www.allbusiness.com/startups-seeking-funding-consider-corporate-venture-capital-arms-110681-1.html @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
HOW OUR LEADERSHIP HIERARCHY FAILED US ROUND THREE ▸ Turn The Ship Around! https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/human-resources/2014/05/my-boss-is-evil-and-10-other-career-excuses.html @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
CONTAINERS TO THE RESCUE CONTAINERS SPED DEVELOPMENT UP https://www.feedough.com/what-is-a-beta-version/ @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
99.6% @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
HOW OUR LEADERSHIP HIERARCHY FAILED US ROUND FOUR ▸ After everything I did outside the leadership hierarchy to make this app work, there was a shift at the top. ▸ Some key high up position at the Administrative Office changed hands. ▸ The new OpenShift platform lead had other plans for it and all our momentum went on the back burner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Muf8Hpazf4 @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
HOW OUR LEADERSHIP HIERARCHY FAILED US ROUND FOUR https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/human-resources/2014/05/my-boss-is-evil-and-10-other-career-excuses.html @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
THIS IS WHEN I STARTED JOB HUNTING https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharon-kokoruda-5066b231/ @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
I taught myself to program as I went and got all the way to just needing a signature to save the government $15mm/ year and got the rug yanked out from underneath me. And that was before I found IO and got involved in the community. Think what all of YOU can do if you take initiative, lead from the bottom, and step outside of your leadership hierarchies when you need to. @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
WHERE TO FIND ME ▸ https://HenryNeeds.Coffee ▸ Points to Blog, GitHub, LinkedIn ▸ https://newhaven.io ▸ Join our Slack! @Quinncuatro || https://henryneeds.coffee DevOpsDays Hartford 2019
There were a lot of things asked of me as a one-person dev shop within the District of Connecticut, but the most outrageous one was to scale out a legacy ColdFusion application into something that could be used by courts across the country.
Along the way I managed myself how to use Docker, OpenShift, and eventually ColdFusion. (/rimshot)
Most importantly, though, I learned how big an impact culture has on the success of big objectives. I had the time of my life flying all over the country to speak at internal gov-tech conferences and attend meetings with important folks in D.C. But when it came time to sit down and do the work, I was miserable.
A fun project only provides so much motivation when there’s little to no team cohesion, an ingrained culture of indifference, and no sort of mentorship model in place. Regardless, I suffered through it and got the project to a point where I could hand it off before moving on in my career.
However, it taught me important lessons about how to position a team towards tackling outlandishly large goals. The technical know-how is important, but is by no means the most important part of molding a nimble and effective team. Let me share with you what I learned and how it’s helping my team at Clarity thrive.
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