Software Engineering on Romano Roth

How to Build a Future-Ready Organization

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this LeanPub podcast episode, host Len Epp and I have a deep conversation about my book “The Cybernetic Enterprise: How to Build a Future-Ready Organization.” We cover everything from my career journey at Zühlke, to why the future is cybernetic rather than just AI, to the practical steps of enterprise transformation. If you have ever wondered what it takes to build an organization that can continuously adapt, this conversation covers the essential ideas.

DevEx: A Strategic Imperative for Business Success

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 20:01:24 +0000

Romano Roth advocates the importance of companies focusing on the developer experience and enabling developers to concentrate on creating business value.

How to Reduce Costs While Continuously Delivering Value

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How can organizations reduce costs while still delivering real value to their customers? This is a question I get asked frequently, and one that a client recently brought to me when they wanted a keynote for their solution architects. In this talk, I walk through the key principles and practical techniques for continuously delivering value while cutting unnecessary spending.

How to Architect for Continuous Delivery

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In September 2024, I had the privilege of delivering a keynote at the Roche DevOps Conference in Poland. The topic: how to architect for continuous delivery. This is a subject close to my heart, because after more than two decades of working in software delivery, I keep seeing the same fundamental patterns that separate high-performing organizations from those that struggle.

Developer Experience and Platform Engineering: The Foundation of Modern Software Delivery

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Is DevOps dead? That claim keeps appearing on the internet, with people arguing that platform engineering is taking over. In this talk, which I gave at the Developer Experience Conference at Roche in Poznan, Poland, I explain why DevOps is absolutely not dead and why platform engineering is the key to making it actually work at scale.

AI-Augmented DevOps with Platform Engineering

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When the CEO or CIO comes to you and says “We need AI in our development process,” the right response is not to start implementing immediately. The right response is to ask: why? In this talk at Conf42 Platform Engineering, I walk through the complete journey from identifying value stream bottlenecks to implementing AI-augmented DevOps on a real platform, including a live demo.

CrowdStrike Disaster: Causes, Impact, and How to Prevent Future Outages

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On July 19, 2024, the world witnessed one of the largest IT outages in history. A sensor configuration update from CrowdStrike, pushed to all Windows systems at 4:09 UTC, caused 8.5 million Microsoft Windows PCs to crash worldwide. Airlines, banks, hospitals, government agencies, stock exchanges, and countless other organizations were brought to a standstill. In this video, I break down what happened and, more importantly, what you can do to prevent something like this from happening in your organization.

What Does Good DevOps Look Like?

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this episode of the Ship It podcast, Gerhard Lazu and I have a deep conversation about what good DevOps looks like in practice. We talk about the real challenges companies face during transformations, how to deal with middle management resistance, technology choices, and where the industry is heading with AIOps and hyper automation.

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 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.

Unlocking Efficiency: Platform Engineering vs. DevOps

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

In this episode of Tech Chat with Navika Chadha, a Cloud Engineer and Microsoft MVP, we had a deep conversation about Platform Engineering: what it is, how it differs from DevOps, why companies should adopt it, and what skills are needed. The discussion cuts through the buzz and click-bait headlines to explain why DevOps is very much alive and how Platform Engineering complements it.

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 Trends 2024: Unlocking the Future of Product Delivery

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Every year, I go through the latest reports, articles, and industry discussions to compile a comprehensive view of the DevOps trends shaping our industry. For 2024, I mapped every major trend onto the technology adoption lifecycle to give you a clear picture of where each technology, methodology, or capability stands in terms of adoption. This framework helps you understand not just what is trending, but how mature each trend really is.

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.

Architecting for Continuous Delivery at Conf42 DevSecOps 2024

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

At the Conf42 DevSecOps 2024 conference, I presented my approach to architecting for continuous delivery. After more than 21 years at Zühlke, working across industries on DevOps transformations, I keep seeing the same fundamental problem: value streams broken by walls of confusion. In this talk, I walk through how organizations can move from project thinking to product thinking, build in quality and security from the start, architect for operability, and use platform engineering to scale it all.

The Science of DevOps

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

In this video, I take a deep dive into the science behind DevOps. Specifically, I look at the DORA metrics, where they come from, and the book Accelerate that provides the scientific foundation for everything we know about high-performing software delivery organizations.

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.

D for DevOps: The Philosophy of Software Engineering

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 22:00:00 +0000

I had the honor of being interviewed by 📈 Matt Warcholinski 💾 from Brainhub in his 𝐏𝐨𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭🎙️ on 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩.

🔎 If you’ve ever wondered about the ins and outs of introducing 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐎𝐩𝐬 into your organization, this episode is a must-listen! We delved into some fascinating topics, and I’m thrilled to share a few highlights from our conversation:

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.

DevTalk Podcast Episode 88: The state of DevOps. With Romano Roth

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 06:43:01 +0000

On episode 88 of DevTalk I and Kerry W. Lothrop speak about the state of DevOps.

Original Post: DevTalk 88: Romano Roth

Golem.de Interview: "When we talk about DevOps, we need to talk about people"

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 23:00:00 +0000

Romano Roth is Chief of DevOps at Zühlke. In this interview, he explains why DevOps is not bullshit, how transformation succeeds in companies, and what IT students really need to learn.

High-Quality Work in Software Engineering and Building Great Developer Experience

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

What defines high-quality work in software engineering? Is it Scrum? Clean Code? TDD? Functional programming? In this Expert Talks session, my colleague Milan and I present two complementary perspectives. Milan covers the pillars of high-quality engineering work, from team building and customer centricity to clean code and engineering culture. I then show how DevOps and continuous delivery help build great products by moving from a project mindset to a product mindset.

DevOps: Thinking in Systems and Value Streams

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In this conference talk, I discuss one of the most fundamental topics in DevOps: thinking in systems and value streams. When I work with companies on their DevOps transformations, I consistently see the same patterns. The business has bright ideas. They write them into Word documents and Jira tickets. They throw them over a wall of confusion to development. Development builds something and throws it to testing. Testing compares what was specified with what was built (never quite the same), tests something, and throws it to operations. Operations asks “How can we operate that?” and somehow, with great effort, they get it running. Then the customer sees it and says: “What is that? That is not what we ordered.”

DevOps Explained: What do "DevOps Engineers" actually do at Zühlke?

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 15:59:46 +0000

Have you ever wondered what “DevOps Engineers” actually do? What does “DevOps” even mean actually? This blog post aims to explain the concept of DevOps and the value that it

What It's Like to Work for the Same Company for More Than 20 Years

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 06:18:24 +0000

On February 1, 2002, I started my journey at Zühlke as a junior software engineer. Twenty years later, I am still here. In this post, I want to share what those 20 years looked like, what kept me going, and why I plan to stay for at least another 20.

Does TDD Work With Legacy Code?

Sat, 03 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Does test-driven development work with legacy applications? That is a question I get a lot, and the short answer is yes. In this video I take a big, ugly WinForms application and walk through how I use TDD to add a new feature without touching the messy parts of the existing code. The goal is simple: show that the test-first mindset works even when the surrounding codebase has no tests at all.

What is TDD? Test-Driven Development Explained

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What exactly is TDD or Test-Driven Development, and why do so many experienced engineers swear by it? In this short video I explain where TDD comes from, how the red-green-refactor cycle works, and I walk through a simple C# calculator example that shows the process in action. TDD is not only a development technique, it is a mindset that shapes how you approach every line of code.

What Is Continuous Deployment (CD)?

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Continuous Deployment is the final, most aggressive step in the CI/CD progression. CI proves the code builds and the unit tests pass. Continuous Delivery proves the artifact works in a production-like environment. Continuous Deployment removes the last manual checkpoint: if every test along the way is green, the change goes straight to production. No “deploy” button, no Friday-afternoon release window, no human in the loop for the final step.

What Is Continuous Delivery (CD)?

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Continuous Integration ends with a tested artifact. That sounds great, but a green build does not mean the software actually works in a realistic environment. Unit tests run in isolation. Integration tests run against mocks. Until you put the software somewhere that looks like production and exercise it under real conditions, you have not really proven anything. Continuous Delivery is the step that closes that gap.

What Is Continuous Integration (CI)?

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In traditional software development, integration was a single, painful event. Every developer worked in isolation for weeks or months, and at the end the team merged everything in one big bang. The integration step took weeks, sometimes months. Conflicts piled up, bugs hid in the seams between modules, and nobody could say with confidence whether the system actually worked. Continuous Integration was invented to make that pain disappear.

How to start a DevOps transformation

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 18:20:54 +0000

At first glance, a DevOps transformation seems to be a major undertaking for any company. But with the right approach, you can keep the process lean and agile.

Insight in brief
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Start small with a small to medium sized project or product.
Select the right people to ensure sufficient credibility and influence.
Continuous improvement is key to success.