Scaling Automated Governance

A Short Story about How a Fictional, Faster-Growing Financial Institution Scaled Automated Governance across a Large Enterprise

The goal of this paper is to help enterprises rethink their approach to governance and how software is built inside larger organizations. Using a fictionalized story, this paper will highlight the importance of trust, how to tackle policy at scale, address standardization across the enterprise, and embrace ways to promote communication. By introducing concepts, tools, and ideas to reimagine governance at scale, we hope to convey a more humane way to enable high-velocity software delivery that inspires trust and is inherently more secure.

Thank you to reviewers Andres Vega and John Rzeszotarski.

What's inside

  • Clear Guidance — The Fall issue of The DevOps Enterprise Journal collects guidance papers from the annual DevOps Enterprise Forum, which addresses the most pressing challenges facing the industry today.
  • Expert Authors — The papers in this collection are written by teams of expert leaders, technologists, consultants, and more to provide proven solutions.
  • Business/Technology Alignment — The DevOps Enterprise Journal shares evolving technology and architectural practices for better, safer, happier technologists and enterprises.
  • All Levels — Change Agents can come from anywhere on the org chart. These papers directly address how to lead and implement change no matter your role or title.
Publication Date
September 26, 2023
Pages
43
Topics
Audit & Security · Software Delivery & Architecture
Formats
epub · pdf
License
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

About the authors

10 authors
Jason CoxTechnology Executive

Affiliation as of 2026-09-30

Jason Cox is a technology executive, engineer, researcher, and longtime builder of large-scale systems. His work spans artificial intelligence, AI research and engineering, site reliability engineering, DevOps, developer experience, and enterprise technology, with a focus on turning emerging technologies into practical, scalable solutions. Jason is a frequent speaker who enjoys making complex ideas accessible, practical, and inspiring. He is a co-author of Investments Unlimited: A Novel About DevOps, Security, Audit Compliance, and Thriving in the Digital Age, an open-source contributor, and a firm believer that the future of technology is ultimately about amplifying people and elevating the human experience.

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Sean D. MackManaging Director, CXO Advisor, ISMG
Christina YakominSenior Manager, Performance & Resilience Optimization, Vanguard

Affiliation as of 2026-08-31

Christina Yakomin is a Senior Manager in Vanguard’s Chief Technology Office, leading the Performance and Resilience Optimization team. She has worked at the company’s Malvern, PA, headquarters since graduating from Villanova University with an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Throughout her career, she has developed an expansive skill set in front- and back-end web development, as well as cloud infrastructure and automation, with a specialization in Site Reliability Engineering. Christina has also worked closely with the Women’s Initiative for Leadership Success at Vanguard, volunteering both internally at the company and externally in the local community to further the career advancement of women and girls—in particular within the tech industry. She has previously shared her technical expertise at many conferences and events, including AWS re:Inforce, QCon, SRECon, and the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit. In her spare time, Christina is passionate about traveling; she has visited twenty-seven different countries and thirty-two US states so far!

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Brian ScottCloud Engineering Leadership, Adobe

Affiliation as of 2026-08-31

Brian Scott is a seasoned technologist with over 25 years of experience in DevOps, SRE, and managing technical operations at scale in Cloud & Infrastructure. His career includes impactful roles at MySpace, OpenTable, and The Walt Disney Company. Currently, as a Principal Architect at Adobe, Brian supports engineering teams with technology, cloud, and AI governance and adoption while assisting senior leadership in solving enterprise-wide challenges and breaking down technical barriers.

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John WillisOwner, Botchagalupe Technologies

Affiliation as of 2026-09-01

John Willis has worked in the IT management industry for more than 35 years. John is currently working as a Distinguished Researcher at Kosli. He is researching DevOps, DevSecOps, IT risk, modern governance, and audit compliance. Previously he was an Evangelist at Docker Inc., VP of Solutions for Socketplane (sold to Docker) and Enstratius (sold to Dell), and VP of Training & Services at Opscode where he formalized the training, evangelism, and professional services functions at the firm. Willis also founded Gulf Breeze Software, an award winning IBM business partner, which specializes in deploying Tivoli technology for the enterprise. Willis has authored six IBM Redbooks for IBM on enterprise systems management and was the founder and chief architect at Chain Bridge Systems.

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Elisabeth HendricksonFounder & CEO, Curious Duck Digital Laboratory

Affiliation as of 2026-09-04

Elisabeth Hendrickson is a technology leader with over thirty years of experience in the tech industry, having led geographically distributed teams of engineers, product managers, and designers as VP R&D at a publicly traded company and VP Engineering at a Series B startup. She is the author of Explore It! and There's Always a Duck , and currently works with technology leaders to improve collaboration, decision making, and execution. Her philosophy centers on putting people first, focusing on incremental delivery and learning, and recognizing that there are many right ways to achieve outcomes depending on context, making her methodology-agnostic while emphasizing the importance of tight feedback loops and collaborative partnerships.

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Rosalind RadcliffeIBM Fellow, CTO for IBM CIO Platform Transformation
Bill BensingCo-Founder, CTO, Attestify

Affiliation as of 2026-09-01

Bill Bensing tranforms Shadow IT into legitimate software development organizations. Bill's recent thought-leadership is proving software devliery velocity and highly secure and compliant software are not mutally exclusive. He lives in Tampa Bay, FL, area.

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Pat BirkelandOperations Lead, Boeing Enterprise Data Analytics Platform IT (at publication)
Jeff KadansSenior Director, Enterprise Tools & DevOps, Fannie Mae (at publication)