Every organisation needs to be able to innovate to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. Innovation simply put “is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services” (Wikipedia).

To innovate requires change and there are challenges facing industry, data and people. This disruption has been coined as the fourth industrial revolution. The fourth industrial revolution requires rapid pivoting and a fail-fast mentality with business management buy-in.

The ultimate goal is to increase efficiency with higher success factors. There are a couple of core elements which fit into this DevOps, the ability to create software at high velocity that fits into the root of the business culture and Data Governance, which enables trustworthy data quality that is a part of the business culture.

Failure to move forward is often marred by the legacy systems and the level of current skills in an organisation. Additionally, there is often cultural resistance to change and the increasing frequency of any changes (Redgate survey).

To move forward I think it is important to think about any DevOps processes and data as well, as that will come to life once new software changes are implemented. Consider how this is communicated internally and how culture changes are adopted within the organisation, and above all, there must be Executive buy-in.

To consider more on this topic there is a panel session at PASS Data Community Summit discussing this. "Transformation and Innovation: Why the Database Must be Included" led by Steve Jones, Redgate, Advocate and the other participants, Joshua Higginbotham, Rev.io, Vice President of Data, Chris Yates, Republic Bank, Senior Vice President, Managing Director of Data and Architecture and me, Dr Victoria Holt, Coeo, Enterprise Data Architect.

Summit - Day 1 Wed 16 November 02:30 PM–03:45 PM PST (10:30 PM – 11:45 PM GMT)