JAX DevOps: In your talk, you’ll mention the book titled Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder. Why did you choose this book? Does it have anything to do with company culture? 

Peter Lie: My colleague Jan De Baere told me about this book. The title Antifragile inspired me because it sounds like agile but in a different way. I heard of his previous book Black Swan. I wanted to know more on this antifragile topic and learn how to use disorder in my advantage. To me disorder is something happening quite frequently in our daily life, so is disorder a change or even more than that.

JAX DevOps: What is the principle of antifragility?

Lie: The principle of antifragility is actually based on the increase in being capable, being resilient or being robust caused by stress, failures and other influencers.

Antifragile is a mindset, based on agile values.

JAX DevOps: How can we (as employees) become more agile? Do you have some tips and tricks that you’d like to share with us?

Lie: Antifragile is a mindset, based on agile values. Keeping these values in mind to make teams perform. I recommend people to be honest with themselves and they have to work to get things done. Be open is one of the most important values. Open to receiving and providing feedback. Transparency is the second value; the message must be understood clearly. Hidden agendas confuse people and are not helping to achieve the goal.

JAX DevOps: There’s a lot of buzz around the term “new Agile.” How would you define it? Is being antifragile part of it?

Lie: New Agile is new to me. But if this means continuous development or integrations such as DevOps than it makes sense to me.

Hidden agendas confuse people and are not helping to achieve the goal. 

JAX DevOps: How can software be designed to become antifragile?

Lie: Currently we promote Test Driven Development among agile teams. Writing the test before the code, focus is on the expected behavior/outcome.

JAX DevOps: What should participants learn from your session?

Lie: How to gain and become stronger thanks to complexity.

Please complete the following questions:

Dev and Ops work best together if … They are complimentary to each other. Smooth integration instead doing handovers. Understanding the business need and business understands their need.

The biggest obstacle for DevOps is … Consistency in common language, open and transparent mentality between different teams and departments, learning the new skills to get the job done, appropriate management attitude and interest to make this happen, disruption resistant due to influences from other parties.

What promotes employee satisfaction is … Autonomy, mastery and purpose

The biggest advantage of autonomously-working teams is … Employee happiness and taking/acting responsible

It is important for a positive company culture to … Trust the people to get the job done.