I joined Accesa almost 2 years ago, full of energy and motivated to make a difference in my day-to-day work. The first few months were a bit challenging as my department underwent some changes in the management structure, and we had to take every single project, colleague, and process from zero.

As we started working on reshaping our department, I soon realised that I had the freedom to do things my way, implementing my ideas and the best practices I was previously exposed to. This was also the moment when I became aware that I was in the right place to reach my potential.

Even though my first 6 months in Accesa were challenging as the DevOps Area went through a restructuring process, in the end, it turned out to be an opportunity to build a stronger foundation for our team. Back then, together with my manager, we co-defined better internal workflows, improved client requests processes and developed efficient technical approaches. My ideas and suggestions were embraced, and they mattered, which was very important for my morale. I had a strong saying in everything that affected me, my colleagues, or the projects.

Working at Accesa has shown me what it means to be listened to and, most importantly, to be trusted. As an Operations Delivery Manager my daily work is usually split between coordinating 10 projects at once and managing a dozen colleagues. It’s hard for me to pinpoint a specific day I would describe as my best day at work. I had a lot of successes, a lot of happy days, I had my busy days, my stressful days, but when I close my laptop every day, I feel like I’ve achieved something.

I enjoy a high degree of flexibility in organising work and time in a way that suits me, as long as the results are good, and everyone is happy. One of the things I like the most about our company is that we treat our clients like partners, and in return they start acting the same, which helps us to develop a more robust and mutually beneficial relationship. I handle over 20 different stakeholders across multiple clients, every week, and I feel we succeeded in building a relationship based on trust, transparency, and teamwork with most, if not all of them.

Transparency and trust are also the keywords for our team’s way of working. Embracing open communication helps us to solve issues and challenges together. We all contribute to our brainstorming sessions, share our ideas, our thoughts and most of the time, we come to a unanimous decision, making me feel I belong to a team.

Sharing a similar technical background with the colleagues I’m responsible for, allows me to understand their struggles and come up with real solutions to their challenges. I already see significant improvements in some of my colleagues, as they are slowly becoming the “consultants” who will define the DevOps industry from now on.

I envision an exciting future with plenty of opportunities and accomplishments for both the clients and the DevOps technical engineers. Some methodologies, such as GitOps (evolved around Kubernetes), AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) or DevSecOps (Security integrated with DevOps), are going to shape the way we live, work, or do business, probably faster than we expect. So, to all you IT enthusiasts out there, take some time and document yourself about those mentioned above as they are knocking on our doors already.

In addition, learn to listen to the people you’re crossing paths with, as there is always something new to learn from their experiences and mindsets. There’s so much free, valuable, useful information out there and all you have to do is listen.