Jos van Schouten
Tech Lead, OGD ict-diensten
Delft, The Netherlands
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Jos is a Tech Lead with extensive experience helping customers transition to cloud-native solutions and infrastructure. Over the past years, he has guided teams and organizations in adopting DevOps practices and building resilient systems.
Passionate about knowledge sharing and community building Jos has been an active part of the organizing teams for DevOpsDays Amsterdam and Eindhoven, as well as KCD Amsterdam and Utrecht.
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From flocks to pyramids: Balancing self-organization and Architecture
Nature is full of systems that thrive without central control. Flocks of sparrows turn in perfect synchronization, fungi finding the shortest path through a maze. All without planning. The ultimate self-organizing systems but still complex, adaptive and resilient. In software Spotify squads are a good example of this, but not every company is Spotify.
History shows us the opposite. Pyramids, sky scrapers, space stations require blue prints and coordination. In tech, banking and government represent this deliberate, explicit side of architecture.
Most companies fall somewhere in between. In a place where the tensions between self-organizing teams and intentional design are constant. Both are right, both are necessary. But balancing them is one of the hardest challenges we face today.
In this talk we'll explore that balance, with metaphors and real-world adoption stories. We'll cover:
- When to trust self organizing teams
- When architecture must be explicit
- How to spot the difference
- Examples when self-organization thrived and where it failed without constraints
This is an introductory session aimed at anyone that wrestles with the push between agility and architecture. You'll leave with insights to decide when to let teams find their own way and when to step in.
This session explores the tension between self-organization and deliberate architecture using metaphors from nature (flocks, fungi, ants) and human history (pyramids, payment provider software or banking regulations).
The goal is not argue one way or the other but explore how both have value and are needed. I'll talk about golden pathing, policy as code and when to favor self organization vs when to favor dictated architecture and intention design. I'll show case studies of examples with well-known companies to underline these points.
This is not a deep-dive session, but gives actionable insights into when to step back, step in and how to spot the difference between the two.
What happens if someone breaks the rules?
Nearly every tech event has a Code of Conduct these days, but too often it’s treated as boilerplate, or as a box to tick.But what happens when someone breaks it. Like incident response, success depends on rehearsal, not documentation.
In this talk we’ll share practical lessons from over a decade of experience running events like DevOpsDays, Cloud Native Days and from PostgreSQL conferences. How to set the stage for a safe event, talk through potential incidents, and what conversations will need to be had with different stakeholders.
Most importantly, it’s hard to build trust, but easy to lose trust. We will cover how to openly and iteratively develop your community’s code of conduct.
A 20-30 minute talk for a general audience with specific relevance for event and community organizers. The talk is intended to be practical and covers preparation on paper, training organizers, practicing scenarios and incident response.
A community health talk from an ops thinking mindset.
The Real CI/CD is Communication, Iteration, Coffee, and Donuts
CI/CD is sold as automation magic, just hook up your pipeline and watch your problems disappear! Except... they don’t. Because what really keeps DevOps moving isn’t code, it’s communication. I’ll argue that the real CI/CD is Communication and Iteration. The human stuff we pretend is soft skills but actually determines if your deploy goes smoothly or takes something down unexpectedly. In this 5 minute talk, we’ll go through how culture, not config files, makes or breaks your pipeline.
This short talk is aimed at anyone in the DevOps or Cloud Native ecosystem. It's designed to be accessible, lighthearted and not technically complex. Rather it's intended to spark a hallway conversation and get people thinking about an overlooked part of CI/CD.
Workshop - YATA: Experience DevOps through play
We talk a lot about DevOps DevOps, but what does it truly feel like to work in a DevOps way? In this playful and hands-on workshop you'll experience directly.
Using Jenga blocks to represent software products, you and your team will face the real challenges of building, testing and releasing together. Dev and Ops must collaborate, adapt and keep improving to succeed.
Along the way you'll discover why communication, feedback loops and share responsibility are at the heart of DevOps. This game integrates Agile and Lean practices such as Kanban boards and daily stand-up meetings while also introducing challenges and obstacles that teams must overcome.
By the end of the the workshops you will have a better understanding of DevOps principles and practices, as well as practical tips and strategies for implementing them in your organization.
This workshop is suitable for both technical and non-technical individuals and is intended to be a beginner level introduction to the concepts described above.
Full credit goes to Adrien Muller and Yoan Thirion who originally developed YATA - a serious devops game.
This workshop is suitable for both technical and non-technical individuals, and it can be customized to fit larger or smaller groups. Expected time to run the workshop: Either 90 minutes or 120 minutes.
KCD UK Edinburgh 2025 Sessionize Event Upcoming
KCD Warsaw 2025 Sessionize Event
devopsdays London 2025
The Real CI/CD is Communication, Iteration, Coffee, and Donuts
devopsdays Amsterdam 2022
Technical Debt - a fun (promised!) game - delivered as a 90 minute workshop
Jos van Schouten
Tech Lead, OGD ict-diensten
Delft, The Netherlands
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