The process pragmatist — I value intent and outcome over method and precedent. Thirteen years inside Shell Global IT building the discipline of operational readiness; since, a practice of one, with the company of dragons.
I’m a process pragmatist — I value intent and outcome over method and precedent.
Between 2007 and 2022 (with a two-year break) 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 — the aim was to engage early in projects to ensure operational readiness. The tooling I wrote in those years became the basis for the enterprise-wide toolset, and S&TM took a prominent role in Shell’s project delivery framework.
By 2016 I had written down enough of what I’d learned that the write-up needed a name. Opsasto became the framework: a structured, risk-based and scalable approach for assuring the quality of an IT service and its operation, enhancing operational readiness at the point of go-live by looking at eight assurance areas. I thought aloud about it on a blog — and still write there, infrequently, when something is worth writing down.
Geelen & Company is a handful of practices, frameworks, and projects — a practice of one, with the company of dragons:
Professional history lives on LinkedIn; code on GitHub; the Opsasto writing archive under Transition Management. For engagements, the fastest route is email.