Niko Kivelä
Head of DevOps, SOK (S Group)
Helsinki, Finland
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Niko Kivelä is a technology and DevOps leader from Finland with over three decades of experience in technology and two decades of working with teams, having built his career by helping others succeed. He's an engineer by heart who has been at the center of digital transformations at several industry-leading companies while dedicating extensive time to community building.
Beyond his corporate work, he co-organizes DevOps Finland, advises as an AWS Community Builder, and mentors women in tech startups. Since the emergence of mainstream AI tools, he has been exploring how AI transforms workplace productivity and sharing these insights through international conferences.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Evolving Feedback Loops in DevOps: Past, Present, and Future
DevOps used to be Development and Operations working towards common and non-conflicting goals. In this session, I will present it through four different theories with examples and innovations to look for, and how to optimize the system as a whole.
Bullet points:
- There can be only one constraint in the system at once.
- How different management paradigms can see the forest from the trees.
- Better Employee Experience doesn’t only concern your employees, but also teams and the organization. It positively affects retention, innovation, profitability, and ability to meet the goals.
Conferences
- 2025/05 | Data Innovation Summit 2025
DevOps-Team is a Myth
DevOps was born out of the need to speed up software development by combining functions (dev+ops) and removing silos between them. It is primarily a mindset and culture. We are seeing more and more DevOps roles and teams in places where they didn't exist before. So what happened to the holistic way of working and what made it revert back to separate roles and teams? We are once again in a situation where someone else is taking care of the teams' tools, release pipelines, or infrastructure. There shouldn't be any DevOps teams. The DevOps team is a myth!
Keynotes:
- 2023/04 | DevOps tiimi 2.0
Conferences:
- 2023/11 | FooConf #2
Meetups:
- 2023/06 | DevOps Finland
Serverless Food: How An DevOps Feed People?
S-kaupat is the online groceries arm of S-group, the largest retailer in Finland. Learn how they scaled from one to a network of stores in two years.
They will cover how to deploy and operate multimillion eCommerce applications by using serverless architecture and AWS services like Lambda, SQS/SNS, DynamoDB, and Kinesis.
They will also look into how serverless has affected how they do DevOps. DevOps is not just about tooling, but how you build culture, structure teams, and continuously continue to improve your practices.
In this presentation, they will go through the kind of tooling and structure they have needed to build around CI/CD, deployment and version control strategies, some of their challenges, and what obstacles they still have to overcome.
Keynotes:
- 2022/03 | The DEVOPS Conference
Meetups:
- 2022/05 | DevOps Finland
SOK Development Guidelines
How SOK has built a community around developer-owned Development Guidelines, Engineering Handbooks and drives transparency through the use of Blameless Post-Mortems.
Meetups:
- 2023/03 | Tech Excellence Finland
Visits:
- 2023/04 | Sanoma
- 2023/02 | VR
- 2023/02 | Elisa
- 2022/05 | Fortum
Using Metrics as Quality Signals
Quality is a vague term, and it's always subjective to the observer and depends on the uniqueness of the organization's culture, history, context, and values that they pay attention to. But there's one universal truth about quality that's common for all. Quality must be observed, perceived, recognized, identified, and felt. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. Without someone recognizing it, it doesn't exist.
Seminars
- 2023/11 | Elevating Digital Quality
DevOps & DX In SPACE
DevOps used to be about Development and Operations working together for non-conflicting goals. Now, I'd define it through The Three Ways, Value Streams, The Theory of Constraints, and Systems Thinking.
The concept of Developer Experience and its three core dimensions: Flow State, Feedback Loops, and Cognitive Load, lie in the details of theories upon which I based my definition. These dimensions provide a framework with 25 sociotechnical factors to identify potential measurement areas.
SPACE is a framework for understanding Developer Productivity. There is now a universal single metric for that. And it’s always personal.
Meetups:
- 2024/02 | DevOps Finland
Visits:
- 2024/01 | Teamit
What You Need to Know About DevOps
Since 2009, DevOps has undergone an enormous transformation. What used to start as devs and ops working together towards non-conflicting goals emerged into an organizational strategy that goes beyond team boundaries.
In this presentation, I will explain what I think about DevOps and what it really means. I tie it into related concepts such as Agile, Lean, SRE, and Platform Engineering through supporting theories, to mention a few: The Three Ways, Value Streams, Theory of Constraints, and Systems Thinking.
Meetups:
- 2024/11 | CD Foundation
Visits:
- 2024/05 | LUT University
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Slides https://speakerdeck.com/nikokivela/what-you-need-to-know-about-devops
Measuring the Success of Developer Experience
In this session, we will be exploring different frameworks for measuring Developer Experience, including DORA, SPACE, and DX itself.
We will discuss key metrics such as deployment frequency and change failure rate. Additionally, we will explore a comprehensive framework for measuring developer experience, covering aspects from satisfaction and performance to communication and efficiency.
We will also look into how to incorporate DX metrics into existing workflows to ensure they align with organizational goals and provide actionable insights for continuous improvement.
Conferences:
- 2024/10 | Developer Experience Summit
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Slides:
https://speakerdeck.com/nikokivela/measuring-the-success-of-developer-experience
Data Innovation Summit 2025
1. Moderated the new Developer Stage for two days
2. Presented with a title "Evolving Feedback Loops in DevOps: Past, Present, and Future"
The Data Innovation Summit is the largest and most influential annual Data and AI event in the Nordics.
CD Foundation Helsinki Meetup
What You Need to Know About DevOps
Developer Experience Summit
Measuring the Success of Developer Experience
Panel Discussion: Strategies for Empowering and Motivating Your Developers
DevOps Finland February Meetup
DevOps & DX In SPACE
Elevating Digital Quality
Using Metrics as Quality Signals: Heading for Our Goals @ SOK
Panel Discussion: Key Takeaways for Elevating Digital Quality
FooConf #2 Sessionize Event
DevOps Finland June Meetup: Autoscaling, Myths and Panel
DevOps Team is a Myth
Panel Discussion: Exploring the Changing DevOps Landscape- Perspectives on Platform Engineering in Corporate Organizations
DevOps Finland May Meetup: DevOps in Food, Flights and Low Code
Serverless food – how DevOps feeds people. A showcase of S-kaupat.fi.
DevOps tiimi 2.0
TIIMITYÖSKENTELY: DevOps-tiimi on myytti
Tech Excellence Finland: Development Guidelines and How to Become A Better Developer
SOK Development Guidelines
The DEVOPS Conference 2022
KEYNOTE: Serverless food - how DevOps feeds people? A showcase of s-kaupat.fi
Talented Talks
Finnair: Airliner tech in 2017
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