The General Manager of DevOps at TUI UK&I, Clinton Elston, spoke exclusively with DevOps Online about his success, future plans, and his presentation at The National DevOps Conference, which will take place on the 24-25 May 2017.
Elston joined TUI, the world’s largest tourism business, only ten months ago; the company needed his expertise to introduce DevOps across IT platforms, and to help with its digital transformation into the cloud. Since then, he feels that the transition programme has gone extremely well.
“Working with DevOps can be rewarding – at TUI I have moved quickly, without having to face too many challenges. Colleagues are dealing with the technology and DevOps migration well. Most areas of the business are supportive about the new concepts and change that DevOps requires. The biggest of these is the change to culture, breaking down silos and the building of new teams,” said Elston in regards of his supportive team.
“Challenges do still exist, especially with existing testers, developers and ops in IT who are used to their way of doing things, and are still suspicious of change.”
TUI’s future plans
“The DevOps Manager role at any enterprise sized organisation is attractive; you get to own and see what the future roadmap is going to achieve. TUI does not just sell holidays, we own and operate an airline, we have cruise liners, and we own many hotels, the scale of which is massive. What we are doing is imbedding CICD into our core strategy, by streamlining and optimising the way we deliver change, yet understanding that this will be a long journey,” Elston added.
Elston will be presenting on DevOps into an enterprise at the National DevOps Conference. He will be talking about how it requires complete cultural change, and the importance of people, processes and technology, taking people on the journey, and keeping those people, for better outcomes.
“Conferences play an important part in this journey. As Dev and Ops teams often have preconceptions on how to do things, it is crucial to get together and learn from each other, think of new ways to face challenges and challenge these assumptions,”concluded Elston.
Register here today to attend Elston’s presentation along with other senior industry speakers.
Written by Leah Alger
