Gloria is an entrepreneur and proven leader delivering technology-based solutions for over 10 years. Her expertise is in leading digital transformations for customers across industries – companies such as Coca Cola, Stryker, Google Cloud, BCBS, and US Bank. She is currently the Director of Product at Copado, a DevOps platform company, where she is responsible for new product development and increasing customer engagement with existing products. Prior to this, Gloria held roles at Airwatch by VMware, Appirio, and 7Summits. Additionally, she is an advocate for Women in Technology, specifically in the Salesforce ecosystem where she is heavily involved with many user groups and organizations such as GDI (Girls Develop IT).
Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?
I have worked for many product and services companies during my career. In a product- driven company, you find yourself immersed in a product, spending your time analyzing each feature and how to make that thing better. In a services-driven company, your attention is more on helping a business or people, constantly asking yourself “How can I make my customer more successful?” I love being able to fully immerse myself in another company’s business problems, culture, and technology. It provides such a diverse outlook on how different businesses are run, and making others successful is a feeling that can’t be replaced.
What is a common mistake companies make when it comes to implementing DevOps?
The biggest mistake I see companies make when it comes to DevOps is not including “Plan” or “Monitor” as a part of the process. These are key parts of the DevOps lifecycle. Successful planning means being very clear about the business value of your feature requests and how you will measure it, which helps prioritize your development accordingly. It also involves understanding what you have been able to accomplish in the past and being able to look at dependencies between features. You can’t do planning in isolation. You have to be able to measure and monitor to inform your planning process with real-time analytics.
Many services companies get to a point where they consider productizing assets. What is one piece of advice you have for companies considering this route?
Productizing assets means treating them as a true product and revenue stream. Begin to think about how you can measure revenue for those assets, whether that is in the form of hours saved or new services sold as a result. Keep an inventory of your productized assets as you would for a product and measure how often those are being used across customers. Use data such as asset usage, number of installs, and number of demos or trials, to see how things are trending and to make investment decisions.
You have formally and informally helped a number of organizations establish diversity initiatives, in particular around women in technology. What advice would you give a company just getting started with their program?
Companies that are more diverse attract better talent and create a lasting culture. Research shows they also generate more revenue. When it comes to women in technology, start with giving them a seat at the table. I have spent most of my career in a male dominated industry, and the most successful diversity initiatives I’ve seen start at the grassroots level and are supported by the leadership team. My advice would be to start small by setting an attainable goal and establish a baseline of data. What can you measure today? What can you measure in the future and how do you define success?
