DevSecOps in 90 Days @ Boeing

In an “interview”, I mean informal conversation with my Senior Director, Josh Sting, he told me if I decided to join the company he wanted me to be brutally honest and transparent with him regarding my overall onboarding experience as well as an internal platform called Nostromo.?

Boeing is in the process of making an Agile transformation towards DevOps.

**DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development with IT operations. The goal is to move work through a system as quickly as possible

Yours Truly was hired as a catalyst for internal change. Change is hard and there are so many factors involved, there will never be one person or one group responsible for its “Success”. Successful DevOps transitions combine Changing culture, Changing tools and Changing practices. Many of these may not be broken and in some cases work pretty well for individual teams. Why then Change? That is a very valid question that takes some time to unpack…

In April 2022, Boeing released an article confirming the signing of a cloud deal with all three of the leading cloud vendors.?

**If you didn’t know there are (3)major Cloud Vendors: AWS (Amazon Web Services) , Azure (Microsoft Azure) , GCP (Google Cloud Platform)

Roughly a year prior, in May 2021, The Information released an article stating that Boeing was being courted over a one Billion dollar cloud contract. Obviously Boeing did not settle for a single relationship with one cloud vendor, let’s see how this multi cloud relationship will unfold.?

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They say it’s good practice to create a 30/60/90 day plan before you start a new role. Momma always said “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, I agree with the need for planning and I think it's a good practice to be prepared with a plan, however don’t spin too many cycles on a 30/60/90 day plan. I think it’s an unrealistic practice as most people get sold, I mean recruited to a company to do specific tasks A- D with some occasional E - G, however, the reality is the job actually calls for mainly E-G and everything else under the sun!?

Oftentimes it can take you at least 30 days to begin to make sense of the current state of the muddy water that you are standing in. It takes another 30 days to assess and understand the political landscape. You should strive to not put yourself on the front line of career critical conversations and crossfires too early, if you are good you will inevitably get there but try not to get out there prematurely.?

The general ideology is to get employees productive on Day 1, however, in my experience it actually took me ten days to actually gain access and do anything meaningful on my company issued laptop. Ten days is certainly not the norm, but we still have some work to do to ensure we have a consistent on boarding experience. For this reason it is essential to have a dynamic plan that can accommodate the shifting landscape of a new job.

I was brought into Boeing to assist with an Enterprise wide DevSecOps initiative. I was actually assisting Boeing craft this DevSecOps strategy, when a little birdy planted the seed that there is a need to build this capacity internally, which required a strong personality like mine to really move the needle… that’s the little birdies words not mine…?

I have previous experience in helping large organizations successfully make similar transitions and transformations. This includes companies like State Farm, Disney and Major League Baseball, and I am happy that I had the opportunity to assist them all in a small way.?

“If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going”....

If you are not familiar with this saying it was a popular phrase in the airline industry suggesting that If the airplane was not made by Boeing they were not comfortable flying. This really is a testament to Boeing’s reputation in the industry for the quality of engineering and commitment to safety.

I have officially visited three different Boeing locations and? it is indeed mind blowing to witness the magic happening in person. I was thrilled to be in South Carolina viewing the assembly line of the iconic 787 dreamliner that changed the game of flying.?

However while there I received two safety warnings, once for not having on my protective glasses while walking on the assembly floor and another time for texting while walking in the parking lot…the second one really caught me by surprise...but I get it…safety first. These two simple warnings drove home the culture of safety and the level of seriousness it commands in Boeing.

Prior to starting this role I got annoyed when I saw the term DevSecOps. I thought the term DevOps was sufficient and security was built into the process, but my perspective has changed. The level of rigor as it relates to security is surely heightened and while many organizations can get away with bolting on security, at an organization like Boeing it is indeed necessary to have security called out at every step of the process and have safeguards built in.

With my acceptance of this current role, I put down my hat as GitOps Evangelist and picked up the mantle as DevSecOps Evangelist in Boeing.

Changing careers can be quite daunting and making the decision to change careers did not start when I signed my offer letter to join Boeing. It started a few years before this, as I combed through organization charts investigating decision makers along with the key stakeholders, and influencers. I took a lot of time self evaluating the impact that I was having and questioning if I could be of more value in a different role.? As I evaluated how decisions are made at the organizational level, I started to think differently as to where I needed to be.

If you want a new job, I strongly believe you can gain the basic skills to transition to that job in a year or at least be set onto the new career trajectory.

Today every company is a digital company or is driven by software. The economy has shifted and every organization has had to shift their operating model if they want to be around in the future. This presents a major opportunity in the software space. Employees can transfer from any walk of life and enter a high paying industry if they can think critically, and are open and willing to learn something new.?

My advice is that if you are in school or thinking about a career change, “Get comfortable with being uncomfortable “ change is inevitable, don’t resist it, embrace it.?

After a decade of being a professional salesperson, I am officially a software engineer.?

Someone call my momma and tell her I made it!

Nearly three decades after I witnessed her attempt to teach students about the benefits of a computer and the different components of a CPU, I now have the opportunity to help people and organizations transition to “The Cloud” - an integral component of DevSecOps.?

While working @ Oracle, I was on a team focused on gaining early users of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). We spent the majority of time educating customers on SAAS (Software as a Service), PAAS (Platform as a Service) & IAAS (Infrastructure as a Service). I’m still amazed that the initial fundamental things that I learned at Oracle in my introduction to the cloud in 2016 are still groundbreaking for some today.?

Platform One is a great initiative out of the United States Department of Defense. Take a look at @Nic Chaillan, he has been quite vocal about the DevSecOps transformation and journey within the DoD.

The Department of Defense not only wanted to shift to a cloud native operating model but wanted all teams across the DoD including partners and contractors to join in on the journey. Platform One now exists as a recommended CI/CD pipeline to accelerate the collective DevSecOps journey.

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Boeing is an exciting company to work for. Although it’s a quite large organization, it’s uniquely made up of smaller teams and entities that are woven together. As I learn more and more about the amazing ways that each of these teams are impacting lives and impacting the world we live in, I’m in continual awe and really excited for the DevSecOps roll out across these various teams.

We're hiring for a ton of roles across the company. If you are interested now or maybe sometime in the future don’t hesitate to reach out.

Damani Corbin