The four Automation Communities – AIOps & IT Automation, Business Automation, Integration and WebSphere & DevOps – had their first combined virtual gathering on December 14 to celebrate a year of growth and great conversations, as well as showcase some of the non-profit organizations and charitable groups that our members support with donations of time and funding.

The keynote was delivered by Rachel Reinitz, IBM Fellow and VP & CTO of IBM Client Engineering, Americas. Rachel and her team have developed a new way of approaching an Automation project, with Design Thinking embedded.  It’s called “The Pill,” and it’s a way to quickly identify pain points in an organization where Automation can make a measurable difference.  Rachel walked us through a scenario of how the Pill methodology works with an example.  Whether you’re looking at Business Automation, IT Automation, Observability, Application monitoring, the “Pill” is a great place to start.

The session closed with an open-ended request from the IBM Automation Communities Team Leader, Stephanie Wilkerson, to all Community members.  “What would you like to see in 2023?”  While we had a flurry of responses in the session, you can still let us know how we’re doing and what you need from the Community by posting suggestions and comments below.

You can find the powerpoint slides used in the session here.  And you can find Rachel's charts on "The Pill" here.

Here is a replay of the hour-long session.  Thank you all for a great 2022. Enjoy the season and let’s keep it going in 2023!