I wish adopting DevOps was as easy as just ticking items off on a DevOps todo list. Or as easy as setting up Jenkins and Docker. The reality is very different. Successful DevOps transitions require changes in the technical stack, in the mindset, in practices, and in the organizational culture. Unfortunately, the key cultural elements that need to change are usually buried in apathy, shyness and office politics.

To reveal these crucial yet hidden cultural elements, we borrowed methods from an unlikely discipline: Design. User experience designers have been developing methods to better understand humans for more than 40 years now, producing digital experiences that transform many areas of our lives seamlessly. We brought a selection of user-centric design methods to the IT department to understand how our clients work and to hear their deep, unspoken needs.

In this talk, I will go over five fundamental principles we borrowed from the design domain to understand the work culture of our clients. These principles are not exclusive to anyone – everyone can learn them with the right mindset. Join us to learn about how you can gain a user-centric perspective to understand technical organizations through creativity and without prejudice, so that you can remain happy, strong, and motivated in your DevOps journey.

Aras provides design training and coaching for designers, business analysts, agile teams, managers, and executives.

He was the Senior Vice President of experience design and front-end development at