Key Takeaways from DevCon Conference: An Operations Manager's Perspective
Natasha M. Dav
Transforming businesses of all sizes to achieve operational excellence and accelerate growth | Founder Ops8 | Fractional COO | WIT Member
Before I start writing I want to make a small note that this is NOT a sponsored article. My idea is to share an insight and to share my takeaway from a conference I attended the past weekend.
A couple of months ago I received an email that I am registered for a conference that is happening in Skopje, North Macedonia. Little did I know that my fiancé Mile Dav saw an opportunity and registered both of us for DevCon - a software development conference. YAY!
While I'm a Project & Operations Manager, not a developer myself (though I have the pleasure of working alongside some fantastic ones!), I was eager to learn more about the latest trends and insights in the IT world.
The agenda showed a variety of presentations, and I found myself particularly drawn to Marjan Jovanovski's session on Project Management. It was a great chance to explore familiar territory from a fresh perspective.
Opening Up the Conversation: Data and Development
When we came on the day of the conference, we signed up at the front desk and got inside.
The conference kicked off with a presentation by Tashko Pavlov on leveraging LLmA and LangChain to interact with your own data. While these concepts were new to me, Pavlov did an excellent job of explaining them.
The method he presented was great in theory, but the ops manager in me couldn’t help but see a lot of room of improvement and felt the need to challenge the whole method. Nevertheless, I was pleased with the start since it was a thought-provoking introduction to the day's events.
Beyond the Code
The two presentations that followed were development focused - one was about devops enterprise solutions and the other one was Java 21.?After those presentations, a coffee break followed where the participants could take 15 minutes to soak up the information.
After the coffee break, two young ladies talked about UX/UI and Automation Testing. These topics are familiar to me because of my experience in leading designers and QA teams (where sometimes I was involved in the QA process), and because besides Project Management, my fiancé has a long years of experience in QA (manual and automation) so methods of proper testing were often a discussion during lunchtime.
There was one thing that Iva, one of the speakers said that stuck with me - “people need to read”.
The Importance of Continuous Learning
It is known that many professionals are stagnant in their knowledge base. Nowadays not only IT, but every other industry is fast moving, rapidly changing and growing that we as professionals simply cannot afford to stay in one place. If we stand still, we fall behind, if we fall behind, we lose quality which leads me to the presentation that left most impact on me: The fabric of quality by Marjan Jovanovski
This presentation left a huge impact on me not only because it was a story of Marjan’s own experience, but also the way he was presenting.
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Before diving into the case study of the particular project, he asked the question “what is quality”.?He gave a few definitions for what he thought quality was all those years ago when he and his team were working on a project with a client that didn't like them very much. So they had a couple choices - either they were going to continue with what they were already doing and create a toxic environment with the client in time, or they were going to do something different.
They decided to go with the second choice. What this team did differently was that they assesed the situation first and decided to take a risk. Now why I think this was important move to make? Talking about risks, no progres can be done unless you get out of your comfort zone and you try something that you have never done before. Us people sometimes don't like getting out of our comfort zone because of the fear of the unknown. But what we fail to remember is that miracles happen outside of our comfort.
The risk that this team took was that they decided to take care of their client and themselves as a team. You might ask, why is taking care of a client a risk? Well, if the client doesn't like you and wants to get rid of you, most of the executives and leaders wouldn't like to invest more of themselves, their time and efforts only to satisfy a client who can't be satisfied. It's the logical thing to do for most people because they might lose that client anyway. However, taking a risk to take a proper care of the client and be disciplined in the process was the right thing to do for this team. Which leads me to my favorite point - discipline.
Discipline: The Key to Progress
In my experience and I believe every high achiever's experience, the discipline plays a vital role. This is because even though you are giving only one percent each day, if consistent you will make a progress. You don't have to give a 100% every day, it is only important that you keep going.
The discpiline combined with constant improving in your professional field equals success. Constant reading and improving, learning new things through networking, courses and books, atteneding conferences, brainstorm new ideas was what Marjan's team did to achieve success. Doing all these things in a long period of time transformed the strugle in a success story.
The Takeaway: A Formula for Success
At the end of the presentation, Marjan still wasn't exactly sure what quality is - I think no one can give an answer to that question because everyone defines quality differently.
In my point of view, he gave us something far more valuable and that is the key to success in every field.
It is a simple formula of:
In my point of view, there is one key thing that we can add to this formula and that is: making a smart decision to start doing something different, even though the outcome is unknown at the moment.
While I unfortunately had to miss the final presentation, I left DevCon feeling enriched by the knowledge I gained.
What I think can always be improved in events like this is that there can be more innovative solutions or personal opinions/experiences. I want to hear what's new in the industry, what is something that other people know and I don't? Are they using a different methods of work? What works for them and what doesn't? In what ways are they using new technology? How do they face dificulties etc?
On the good note, the conference offered a mix of insightful presentations, and all the speakers deserve recognition for their contributions. I believe it is always improtant to know that you don't have to take everything from everyone, you don't even have to agree with everyone - you just need to choose to learn one thing from every person in the room. It might change your course in life and career.