Welcoming CloudBees's New Strategic Advisors: Nicole Forsgren and John Willis

We're excited to welcome Nicole Forsgren and John Willis to the CloudBees family, as the recent additions to our Strategic Advisory Board! Nicole and John are joining Gene Kim and Gary Gruver (both CloudBees's Advisors since 2013) to lend expertise, insights and guidance to help us - and our customers - accelerate DevOps adoption in the enterprise. We're honored and humbled to be partnering with these DevOps luminaries, visionaries and innovators to advance the art and practice of DevOps, and see it as a continuation of our tradition of listening and contributing to the DevOps community. We thought we'd take this opportunity to introduce you to our esteem team of strategic advisors, starting with the recent additions:

Dr. Nicole Forsgren (@nicolefv ) is CEO and chief scientist at DevOps Research & Assessment (DORA ).  Her groundbreaking work as the leading investigator of the largest DevOps studies to date has helped organizations understand the impact that IT, knowledge management, and DevOps have on business performance. In a previous life, Nicole was a professor, sysadmin, and hardware performance analyst. She has been awarded public and private research grants (funders include NASA and the NSF), and her work has been featured in various media outlets and several peer-reviewed journals and conferences. She holds a PhD in Management Information Systems and a Masters in Accounting. “The work I do helps organizations understand the benefits and business impact that DevOps transformation can bring – which helps to underscore the importance of taking that first step. I’m excited to work with the CloudBees team to help educate the market on the importance that feedback loops and data-driven insights have on tackling DevOps adoption in the safest, most efficient way possible. ”

John Willis (@botchagalupe ) is a leader in container systems and co-authored “The DevOps Handbook” along with Gene Kim, Patrick Debois and Jez Humble (CTO at DORA and also co-author of “Continuous Delivery”). John gained valuable insights into DevOps and containers as founder of container-focused Software Defined Networking startup Socketplane, and has evangelized DevOps practices while working at Dell, Opscode/Chef, and Canonical/Ubuntu. The best way to reach John is through his twitter handle "I am excited to work with Gene Kim and the innovative team at CloudBees to help large organizations adopt Container technologies for both development and production workloads."  

Gary Gruver (@GRUVERGary ) is an experienced executive with a proven track record of transforming software development and delivery processes in large organizations, first as the R&D director of the HP LaserJet firmware group that completely transformed how they developed embedded firmware and then as VP of QA, Release, and Operations at Macy’s.com where he led the journey toward continuous delivery. He now consults with large organizations and runs workshops to help them transform their software development and delivery processes. He is the co-author of “Leading the Transformation: Applying Agile and DevOps Principles at Scale“, “A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware“, and the recent “Starting and Scaling DevOps in the Enterprise“. “DevOps represents a fundamental shift in how leading-edge companies around the world are managing their software and IT work. “Starting and scaling DevOps transformations in the enterprise presents its own unique sets of challenges. I’m excited to work with the innovative team at CloudBees to help organizations take their software delivery to the next level. ”  

Gene Kim (@RealGeneKim ) is a multiple award winning CTO, researcher and author. Gene was founder and CTO of Tripwire, he is the founder of IT Revolution and co-author of three books, including "The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win", "The Visible Ops Handbook" and "The DevOps Handbook". Gene has been studying high performing technology organizations since 1999. He is a huge fan of IT operations, and how it can enable developers to maximize throughput of features from “code complete” to “in production,” without causing chaos and disruption to the IT environment. He has worked with some of the top Internet companies on improving deployment flow and increasing the rigor around IT operational processes. CloudBees partnered with Gene and IT Revolution to found the DevOps Enterprise Summit – which has become the premier industry event since its launch. Gene has also been part of the team behind Puppet State of DevOps Report for four years, along with Jez Humble and Dr. Nicole Forsgren. “To stay competitive, organizations are adopting DevOps practices and tools to automate their software delivery pipeline. CloudBees understands that DevOps adoption is not just a technical challenge but a cultural one, as well. As the co-founding partner of our wildly successful DevOps Enterprise Summit event, and host of the popular “Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) ” video podcast series, CloudBees invests heavily in serving the overall community. I look forward to continuing my work with the CloudBees team to help organizations overcome the challenges of DevOps adoption. ”  

Each of our highly regarded advisors has emerged as an authority in our space in their own right, and the influence they have had on DevOps adoption cannot be overstated. We are excited to partner with them to continue to shape the future of software delivery, and help DevOps practitioners and executives as they adapt to the changing technology stack and pace of our dynamic market.