Digital Factory on Romano Roth

Cybernetics Is the Future: Why AI and DevOps Alone Won’t Get Us There

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 21:25:27 +0000

“AI won’t fix your broken processes. DevOps won’t save your business. But Cybernetics might.”

At DevOps Pro Europe 2025 in Vilnius, I had the privilege of delivering the opening keynote to a packed hall of engineers, architects, and leaders navigating the ever-accelerating evolution of enterprise technology. My message was direct:

Continuous Security with DevSecOps and Platform Engineering

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Imagine a world where security is seamlessly integrated into your development workflow from ideation until production, so that development teams can completely focus on feature development while building secure applications. That is exactly what I presented at the OWASP Chapter Meetup Switzerland. In this talk, I show how platform engineering transforms modern application security and makes DevSecOps a reality at scale.

Platform Plane: High-Quality Software in Record Time

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This talk is a recording of my presentation at the FI-Forum in Frankfurt am Main in November 2023. The topic: the Platform Plane and how to develop high-quality software in record time. Platform engineering is the foundation of the digital factory and enables teams to truly practice DevOps.

DevOps in an Embedded World: From Silos to Digital Factories

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Many people still think DevOps is only for web applications and cloud services. But the reality is clear: companies that apply DevOps principles to embedded systems are outpacing their competition. In this talk, which I gave at a DevOps Meetup in Munich, I explore why embedded teams need DevOps and how to build a Digital Factory that enables continuous value delivery, even for hardware products.

DevOps Meetup Zurich 2024: Developer Experience and Platform Engineering

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is a recording of my presentation at the DevOps Meetup Zurich from January 2024. The talk covers Developer Experience and Platform Engineering, including why Platform Engineering has emerged, how it fits into the Digital Factory concept, and a live demo of the Platform Plane, the internal developer platform we built together with LGT.

The Digital Factory: 90 Days of DevOps

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For the 90 Days of DevOps community, I presented the concept of the digital factory. After years of doing DevOps transformations across industries at Zühlke, I have developed a holistic approach to scaling DevOps that goes beyond just tools and pipelines. In this talk, I explain why we still struggle with walls of confusion, how platform engineering enables teams to do DevOps at scale, and how digital factories bring everything together.

DevOps Institute Podcast: DevOps Is NOT Dead

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I joined Eveline Oehrlich, Chief Research Officer at the DevOps Institute, on the Humans of DevOps podcast for a conversation about whether DevOps is dead. Spoiler: it is not. But the reality in most companies is that we have not progressed as far as many people think. In this episode, we talk about what a Chief of DevOps actually does, why companies still struggle with walls of confusion, how platform engineering enables scaling, and my prediction about digital factories.

DevTalk Podcast: The State of DevOps

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this episode of the DevTalk podcast, my colleague Kerry Lothrop and I have a conversation about the state of DevOps. We have known each other for many years at Zühlke, and Kerry wanted to pick my brain on what DevOps really means today, where companies struggle, and where the industry is heading.

The Zühlke DevOps Offering: From DevOps Engineering to the Digital Factory

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As Chief of DevOps and Partner at Zühlke, I have spent over two decades helping companies continuously deliver value. In this video, I walk through the complete Zühlke DevOps offering, from our understanding of DevOps and the challenges of scaling it, to our concrete service offerings including the Digital Factory and the Platform Plane.

What are Digital Factories ?

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 18:24:38 +0000

a talk with Romano Roth, DevOps Thought Leader and Dr. Milan Milanović Architecture Thought Leader. Source: https://newsletter.techworld-with-milan.com/p/what-are-digital-factories

1. Romano’s short biography
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I’m Romano Roth, Chief of DevOps and Partner at Zühlke. My journey with Zuhlke began 21 years ago. Over the years, I’ve evolved from an expert software engineer and software architect to a consultant. Throughout this journey, one question has always fueled my passion: How can we continuously deliver value while ensuring quality and automation?

The Digital Factory

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Many companies are suffering from a lack of alignment between business and IT, silo thinking, and inefficiencies in product development, while time to market is becoming increasingly important.

The Problem
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These companies try to adopt DevOps in their organizations, but unfortunately, sometimes the DevOps approach is misunderstood, wrongly implemented, and it does not scale as expected.

How to Architect for Continuous Delivery: From Silos to Digital Factories

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

At The DEVOPS Conference, I presented on a topic that has been at the heart of my work for over two decades: how to architect for continuous delivery. This talk covers the broken value stream I see in most companies, why product thinking matters more than project thinking, the science behind software delivery performance, and how platform engineering enables organizations to scale DevOps through digital factories.

Back to the future of software development

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 23:00:00 +0000

By Pia Wiedermayer and Romano Roth

In many organizations and projects, software development involves numerous employees and machines performing tasks separately. This approach results in problems. Here’s how going back to the original way of developing software and building an organic digital factory can help.