a short biography.
i'm a process pragmatist — i value intent and outcome over method and precedent. that sentence is the one i would like read first; everything else is a footnote to it.
between 2008 and 2015 i was supportability & transition management lead inside shell's global IT services and application management group. S&TM was the response to the troublesome operation of a number of new global applications — our aim was to engage early in projects to ensure operational readiness. the tooling i wrote in those years has since been the basis for the enterprise-wide toolset, and S&TM has taken a prominent role in shell's project delivery framework.
the work was, in retrospect, a structured blend of ITIL service design, transition, and operation — but those are the textbook words. on a real project it looked like writing down the support model in the same room as the architecture, getting the cutover plan signed before the change board met, and making sure the tenth person on the rota inherited the same runbook as the first.
opsasto, and how it began.
by 2016 i had written down enough of what i'd learned that the write-up needed a name. opsasto — operations + sourcing + assurance + transition + operations, give or take — became the framework, and a blog at opsasto.blog the place where i thought aloud about it.
"opsasto is a structured, risk-based and scalable approach for assuring the quality of an IT service and its operation. the methodology enhances operational readiness at the point of go-live by looking at eight assurance areas and gives the operational IT aspects a stronger voice in the project." // from the original write-up, 2016
the eight chapters have held up well — they're the same ones we use today. what's changed is the cadence: most engagements now run them as backlog items inside agile delivery, or as work-stream deliverables inside waterfall, sized to the project's risk rather than imposed as a fixed checklist.
why "& company".
the named-partner convention is a quiet promise: the work is signed. you know whose practice you're hiring; you know whose name is on the cutover plan when the page goes out at three a.m. & company is the room behind the name — collaborators, second opinions, the people whose work has shaped mine. but the signature stays mine.
and the dragon?
a low-polygon dragon, blues, vaguely chinese, slightly playful — drawn long before any of this had a brand. it's stayed for two reasons: it's the only ornament the practice allows, and operational readiness, properly done, is the discipline of being ready for the dragons that haven't appeared yet. the dragon is a polite, polygonal reminder.
elsewhere.
i write infrequently — when something is worth writing down. the archive of about thirty pieces lives in writing; the canonical blog at blog.dimitrigeelen.com; professional history on linkedin. for engagements, conversations, or a friendly disagreement about ITIL in a devops world: contact.