This article is based on an announcement originally published on DevOps.com. Some details, including specific broadcast times and registration links, reflect the original launch date of August 6, 2020.
What Is DevOps Unbound?
DevOps Unbound is a recurring video series produced by DevOps.com (MediaOps) that examines the practical challenges software delivery and IT operations teams face every day. The central questions the series tackles are familiar to any engineering organization: How do you ship faster? How do you maintain quality at speed? How does automation change the role of developers and testers?
The show covers topics including CI/CD pipelines, test automation, DevSecOps, cloud-native architectures, observability, DataOps, and open source tooling — all through conversations with recognized practitioners and thought leaders in those domains.
Format and Availability
New episodes are released every other week (bi-weekly), with an additional monthly roundtable discussion open to the public. The roundtable format features a rotating panel of subject-matter experts organized around a specific theme, and participation requires advance registration.
Episodes are distributed across multiple platforms:
- TechStrong.tv — the primary streaming network for live broadcasts
- LinkedIn Live — via the DevOps.com page
- Facebook Live — via the DevOps.com, Container Journal, or Security Boulevard pages
- YouTube — on the DevOpsTV channel
- On-demand — through the DevOps.com mobile app and OTT channels on Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV
- Digital Anarchist — MediaOps’ dedicated streaming video platform, where all episodes are available on demand
The series launched with sponsorship from Tricentis, a continuous testing platform vendor.
Premiere Episode: The History and Future of Software Testing
The debut episode brought together two figures who represent very different paths into the world of software quality:
- James Bach — Developer of session-based test management (SBTM), a structured approach to exploratory testing. Bach began his career as a game developer and became one of Apple’s early test engineers in 1987, having arrived in the industry without a formal degree.
- Dr. Grigori Melnik — Chief Product Officer at Tricentis and holder of a Ph.D. focused on software testing. Melnik bridges academic research and enterprise product development.
The conversation explored how testing practices have evolved over decades — from purely manual verification to the automated, continuous testing pipelines that underpin modern DevOps delivery. Despite their contrasting backgrounds, Bach and Melnik share a common interest in making testing more intelligent, efficient, and integrated into the development lifecycle rather than treated as a gate at the end of it.
Upcoming Topics and the “DevEverythingOps” Roundtable Theme
Planned episode topics for the bi-weekly show include:
- DevSecOps — integrating security into the CI/CD pipeline
- Open source tooling and community-driven development
- Cloud-native architectures and container orchestration
- CI/CD pipeline design and optimization
- Software delivery management (SDM)
- DataOps — applying DevOps principles to data pipelines
- Observability — metrics, logging, and distributed tracing at scale
The first monthly roundtable carried the theme “DevEverythingOps” — a reference to the expanding application of DevOps principles beyond traditional software delivery into security, data, machine learning, and other operational domains. This theme reflects a broader industry conversation about whether the cultural and technical patterns of DevOps can generalize across an entire organization.
Why This Matters for DevOps Practitioners
Video content has become a primary learning channel for engineers and engineering managers. Series like DevOps Unbound offer a format that complements written documentation and conference talks — allowing practitioners to hear experienced engineers discuss real-world tradeoffs, tooling decisions, and organizational change in a conversational way.
Key themes the series consistently returns to include:
- Acceleration without sacrificing quality — how to increase release frequency while maintaining reliability
- Automation strategy — deciding what to automate, when, and at what layer of the stack
- The evolving role of the tester — as automation handles more regression coverage, where does human judgment add the most value?
- Organizational and cultural change — tooling adoption rarely fails for technical reasons; it fails because of people and process
How to Watch or Participate
Past episodes are available on demand through DevOps.com and the DevOpsTV YouTube channel. The monthly roundtable discussions are open to the public but require registration through DevOps.com. If you have a topic idea or are interested in appearing as a guest, the production team can be contacted at unbound@devops.com.