DevOps Live Day 1 Highlights

AI for Everything After Code: Ship Fast, Stay Safe

Martin Reynolds, Field CTO - Harness
Billy Mattsson, Senior Sales Engineer - Harness

This talk looked at those pain points through the lens of real‑world data and stories, then shows what good looks like when you treat your internal platform as a product: opinionated golden paths, security and compliance as invisible defaults, AI used where it genuinely reduces cognitive load, and SLO‑driven reliability baked into every change, using Harness as the concrete reference implementation for that kind of governed, cost‑aware, AI‑enabled developer experience.

Why Ops Says No and other Myths – How Can We Work Better Together?

Louise John, European Head of IT Service Delivery - Virgin Active

This session aimed to bust these myths by exploring what ITOps actually does, why the work matters, and how DevOps and ITOps can partner more effectively to deliver better outcomes, faster. Louise will unpack common misconceptions—such as the idea that ITOps blocks innovation, merely fixes things that are on fire, or lacks strategic value and through that, will help you to reframe ITOps as a critical partner rather than a barrier and how we all can work together to build a collaborative IT function that enables innovation rather than hindering it.

Sweating the Stack - How The Gym Group switched up DevOps practice while transforming and scaling

Colm Campbell, Head of Engineering - The Gym Group

Colm looked at how The Gym Group addressed some of those challenges during its recent transformation programme - the successes, the learnings, and what we might do differently next time.

AI-Powered Development – The Hidden Cost of Speed

Aslesha Nargolkar, Senior Solutions Engineer - Checkmarx

This session revealed the hidden cost of unvetted AI-generated code—from backdoored dependencies to misconfigured cloud infra—and shows how leading enterprises have reclaimed both productivity and security using integrated security scanning workflows that treat AI outputs as trusted-but-verified, not just faster coding.
 

Agents at Work: Rethinking Azure DevOps with AI

Asif Sharif, CEO & Founder - Modern Requirements & Copilot4DevOps

In this session, Asif Sharif explored how AI-driven agents embedded directly inside Azure DevOps are transforming how teams manage planning, requirements, testing, and compliance. Attendees will learn how intelligent agents can reduce manual effort, eliminate handoffs, and keep delivery aligned as change happens — without leaving their DevOps tools.

What if DevOps was really simple?

Steve Fenton, Principal DevEx Researcher - Octopus Deploy

This session cuts through the complexity to focus on the handful of high-impact capabilities you can start using today. Visitors explored where to start for the biggest returns, how to sequence your efforts, and how to build momentum toward elite performance levels without trying to transform everything at once.

Disrupting the Leadership Journey: Changing Direction in Tech

Brittany Woods, Head of Systems Engineering - Man Group
Dominika Kodadova, UK & Ireland Lead - Woman in DevOps
Olga Kosmylina, Engineering Manager - MASABI
Sami Ali, Senior Strategic Solutions Engineer - Teleport

The session examined how leadership styles evolve, the realities of stepping into management, and the importance of inclusive team dynamics in building resilient, high-performing teams. Attendees will gain practical insights into challenging traditional leadership norms, embracing diverse perspectives, and navigating leadership roles in modern tech organisations.

Secure by design, fast by default: Putting trust at the heart of the open source software supply chain

Iheanyi Njeze, Enterprise Sales Engineer - Chainguar

This session examined the rise of open-source supply chain attacks and the operational realities of “secure-by-design” and “shift-left” mandates. Learn how establishing a trusted open-source baseline can reduce developer toil, minimise attack surfaces, and improve resilience at scale.

Embrace AI Coding Assistants While Efficiently Managing Risk

Andrew Bolster, Sr R&D Manager (Data Science) - BLACK DUCK

This session explored the most urgent challenges created by AI-enabled development, contrasted by the most effective methods to mitigate them without breaking DevOps pipelines.