DevOps Meetup Zürich

Two very different, complementary topics for our June evening. One on the small, everyday habits that make teams actually collaborate. The other on how a platform and a cultural movement transformed IT in the public sector.

Here's what's planned for the evening:
17:30 - 18:00 - Arrival and first drinks
18:00 - 18:45 - Micro Habits for better Teamwork by Dr. Denniz Dönmez
18:45 - 19:30 - From DevOps to Digital Sovereignty: How a Movement Became a Platform by Syrian Hadad
19:30 - 20:30 - Networking, Open Space & More drinks*

Micro Habits for better Teamwork
Great teamwork is like solving a puzzle, and not like playing poker, it's not about playing against each other, but rather achieving real collaboration. Micro Habits are psychological hacks that create big results in teams. Micro Habits for Better Teamwork span seven behavioral domains, such as taking responsibility, creating psychological safety, and testing our assumptions. Each provides concrete, small, actionable behaviors that lead to major improvements in collaboration.
This talk presents practical, everyday tools based on real-world experience that can be applied immediately to make teamwork easier and more effective, without lengthy coaching programs or complex team-development processes. With Micro Habits, teams unlock their full potential step by step.

Dr. Denniz Dönmez
Scientific agilist and co-creator of Micro Habits for better Teamwork. 15 years experience leading teams and consulting market leaders with a background and PhD in agile methods.

From DevOps to Digital Sovereignty: How a Movement Became a Platform
IT in the public sector is anything but simple: long-established landscapes, strict regulatory requirements, complex processes, and often more than 500 business applications that must be operated reliably.
For a long time, this meant ordering individual servers, databases, DNS entries, firewall rules, and storage, then assembling everything manually. Every application was unique. Pets instead of cattle.
This talk tells the story of how the DevOps idea took hold in exactly this environment — first as a cultural movement, and later as a concrete operating and architectural model. Step by step, individual infrastructure evolved into a platform, manual work into automation, and isolated solutions into standardization.
The result: the Aargau Cloud Platform and a dedicated platform engineering team. In an environment shaped by legacy systems, federal structures, and long lifecycle expectations, platform thinking becomes the foundation for digital sovereignty: maintaining control, reducing dependencies, and still staying innovative — without simply handing everything over to others.

Syrian Hadad
Syrian Hadad is a CTO and long-standing technology and platform leader in the public sector. Among other achievements, he built the Aargau Cloud Platform and helped establish DevOps, cloud, and architecture topics strategically within the organization. Together with the IT organization of the Canton of Aargau, he won the 2023 Digital Economy Award (Digital Excellence) for the consistent transformation toward platforms, cloud-native technologies, and modern governance.

Many thanks to our sponsors:

• Catering Sponsor: DevOpsDays Zürich https://www.devopsdays.ch/
• Location Sponsor: Digicomp https://www.digicomp.ch/

* contact us min. 3 days prior to the event if you prefer a vegan option.

Two thought-provoking talks on team ownership and the evolving role of operations, two experienced speakers from the Swiss DevOps community, and plenty of networking opportunity. We are very much looking forward to kicking off the autumn season of DevOps Meetup Zurich.
Here's what's planned for the evening:
17:30 - 18:00 - Arrival and first drinks
18:00 - 18:45 - The Caretaker Model: Take over responsibility from idea to feedback by Urs Enzler
18:45 - 19:30 - Has SRE Become a New Ops? by Oleg Mayko
19:30 - 20:30 - Networking, Open Space & More drinks*

The Caretaker Model: Take over responsibility from idea to feedback
The Agile Software Development Manifesto calls for finding better ways to develop software.
We left Scrum behind because, among other things, we learned faster than the sprint was long, and the sprint blocked us more than it supported us. We needed a more adaptive approach that focuses on feedback.

We found a way of working that better supports us by separating the cycles for planning, improvement, retrospectives, delivery, and feedback. And the opportunity for every team member to contribute from start to finish has greatly increased team motivation. Finally, focusing on flow allowed us to reduce synchronisation points, such as meetings and handovers, and to gain significant efficiency. This is the Caretaker Model.

In this presentation, I explain how the Caretaker Model works, why it suits us much better, and why it might suit you and your team as well.

Urs Enzler
Software Architect @ Calitime AG
Urs Enzler is a software architect and developer specialising in the .NET platform and Azure. Passionate about building products with a rapid and continuous feedback cycle, he embraces agile principles and continuous delivery. In addition to working on the TimeRocket time tracking product, he is a consultant on software architecture and technical aspects of continuous delivery teamwork, such as evolvable design, test-driven development, and the like. Beyond his work, Urs co-organises the .Net Usergroup Zentralschweiz and shares his insights on www.planetgeek.ch.

Has SRE Become a New Ops?
Google set the bar high, but we have seen in the industry that SRE practices have often been misused, and many organizations just rebrand DevOps teams into SRE teams. In this talk, Oleg briefly walks through the history of SRE, why many have seen a silver bullet in it, and possible causes why many people think that SRE is just modern Ops.

Oleg Mayko
Senior System Engineer @ Swisscom
​SRE enthusiast and co-founder of the SRE community at Swisscom. I’m passionate about all things Kubernetes, specifically when it comes to deploying and securing applications reliably in K8s.

Many thanks to our sponsors:

• Catering Sponsor: DevOpsDays Zürich https://www.devopsdays.ch/
• Location Sponsor: Digicomp https://www.digicomp.ch/

* contact us min. 3 days prior to the event if you prefer a vegan option.

Two complementary perspectives on engineering culture and the way we work together. Two experienced speakers and plenty of networking opportunity. We are very much looking forward to the next DevOps Meetup Zurich.
Here's what's planned for the evening:
17:30 - 18:00 - Arrival and first drinks
18:00 - 18:45 - Debugging the Human Layer: Applying Systems Thinking to Team Dynamics by Ashwin Krishnan
18:45 - 19:30 - Guerilla InnerSource in Enterprises, During the AI Hype by Oleg Nenashev
19:30 - 20:30 - Networking, Open Space & More drinks*

Debugging the Human Layer: Applying Systems Thinking to Team Dynamics
In DevOps, we obsess over the "Three Ways": Flow, Feedback, and Continuous Learning. We build robust CI/CD pipelines and automated testing to eliminate technical friction, yet we often ignore the most volatile component in our architecture: the humans.
This session explores how personality and team dynamics assessments function as "telemetry" for your human systems. By understanding the underlying "code" of our team members—their communication protocols, stress-response thresholds, and cognitive biases—we can move from accidental collaboration to intentional high-performance.
I will present a few personality assessments I have used personally, as well as with my teams (no brand endorsements), that the audience can consider to use to get a better understanding of themselves.

Ashwin Krishnan
Innovator, Board Advisor, Change Catalyst
Ashwin Krishnan is a highly accomplished CxO & Board Advisor with over 23 years of experience driving large-scale digital transformation and delivering significant business impact. His expertise lies in translating complex technologies like AI, Cloud, and Industry 4.0 into practical business solutions. Ashwin has a proven track record of leading large, global teams with empathy and empowerment, fostering a culture of excellence, and is passionate about team culture. He possesses a multi-cultural, multilingual, and multi-domain skill set, having advised CxOs in financial services, telecom, and manufacturing across Europe, the US, and APAC. His entrepreneurial leadership is demonstrated through his founding of wealthQUAY, a cloud-based Wealth Management-as-a-Service venture within Cognizant, as well as heading Disruptive Innovation at Orange Business. He holds an embaX from ETH Zürich & HSG St. Gallen and a B.E. in Computer Engineering.

Guerilla InnerSource in Enterprises, During the AI Hype
Many developers want to foster collaboration, knowledge sharing, and developer productivity, especially when those developers are their own colleagues. But do their companies really care? Despite the endless DevOps and developer productivity slidedecks, not everyone has a strategy beyond "let's form another task force" or "let's have another weekly meeting" from management. Can a single engineer actually introduce InnerSource and change how work gets done in a big enterprise? Maybe! Can they burn out in the process? Well, let's talk.

We'll discuss introducing an open collaboration culture, also known as InnerSource, inside rigid corporate structures that are not willing to change. The ongoing AI hype can be a great leverage, an excuse to form internal guilds, secure funding, and get executive attention for collaboration and productivity initiatives. How to get started without a budget or official blessing from higher ups? How to find allies and not burn too many bridges? And how to show impact when everyone is obsessed with KPIs?

Oleg Nenashev
Serial Community Builder, Independent Consultant
Oleg is a developer tools hacker, community builder, and DevRel consultant. He is a passionate open source software, open ecosystems, and open hardware advocate. Oleg is a core maintainer and ex-board member in the Jenkins project. He is a CNCF ambassador, Testcontainers Champion, GSoC mentor, and a former CDF TOC Chair. Oleg has a PhD degree in electronics design and volunteers in Ukrainian support and Russian anti-war organizations.

Many thanks to our sponsors:

• Catering Sponsor: DevOpsDays Zürich https://www.devopsdays.ch/
• Location Sponsor: Digicomp https://www.digicomp.ch/

* contact us min. 3 days prior to the event if you prefer a vegan option.