[DevOpsDays Kansas City] Culture is Still a Challenge

When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. For technical teams, their control over their environment is often limited to the technical tools they choose to use to implement their projects. Unfortunately, tooling alone doesn’t create better customer experiences, better end products, and happier employees; culture plays a major role.

Organizational culture is set from the top. The attitudes, values, and behaviors of an organization’s leadership forms the core of the organization’s culture. While some folks may feel disenchanted with the commodification of ideas like DevOps, there is still work to be done, helping organizations with their cultural challenges.

How can tech teams influence culture? How can individuals support and grow a more positive culture? Technology is not alone in the struggle for better organizational structures and relationships, and we’ll talk about some of the methods and research.

Mandi Walls is a DevOps Advocate on the Community and Advocacy Team at PagerDuty. Before joining PagerDuty, Mandi spent a number of years at Chef Software, working with customers and community members in the US and Europe. Originally a large-scale systems administrator, Mandi has focused on IT automation; organizational culture and change; and community.