A short talk delivered at MacDevOps YVR in June 2019. Where we discuss how the ThoughtWorks three pillars and a whole lot of collaboration helped us to develop a mobile device management solution.

1. Before we get started!
We’d like to share a story which has
something to do with ice cream
1©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

2. 2

3. ©ThoughtWorks 2018 Commercial in Confidence
We are a software company and a
community of passionate,
purpose-led individuals.
We think disruptively to deliver
technology to address our clients'
toughest challenges.
All while seeking to revolutionize
the IT industry and create positive
social change.
3

4. ©ThoughtWorks 2018 Commercial in Confidence
This is ThoughtWorks
4
NORTH AMERICA
Atlanta
Chicago
Dallas
Denver
New York
San Francisco
LATIN AMERICA
Belo Horizonte
Porto Alegre
Quito
Recife
São Paulo
Santiago
EUROPE
Barcelona
Berlin
Bologna
Cologne
Hamburg
Istanbul
London
Manchester
Munich
AUSTRALIA
Brisbane
Melbourne
Sydney
AFRICA
Johannesburg
SINGAPORE
SingaporeINDIA
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Gurgaon
Hyderabad
Mumbai
Noida
Pune
CHINA
Beijing
Chengdu
Shanghai
Shenzhen
Wuhan
Xi’an
Our customers are
ThoughtWorkers

5. ©ThoughtWorks 2018 Commercial in Confidence
This is TechOps
5
NORTH AMERICA
Workspaces NA
Identity
SLAM
Infosec
Finance
InfraDel
LATIN AMERICA
Workspaces
People Data
Labs
InfraDel
Staffing Systems
EUROPE
Workspaces
SLAM
(+CIO)
Our People Lead
AUSTRALIA
Workspaces
Identity
AFRICA
Workspaces
INDIA
Workspaces
Digital
Operational Insights
Finance
Finance Lead
Connect
InfoSec
People Champion
Identity
CHINA
Workspaces
Finance Systems
Recruiting Systes
Sales Systems
Connect
M&A
InfoSec

6. NORTH AMERICA
Identity
Support
Sys Admin
Engineering
Tech Lead
AUSTRALIA
Identity
Support
PO/
Engineering
India
Identity
Support
Sys Admin
DevOps
We are Identity
United Kingdom
Identity
Support
Engineering

7. Who we are
Why we are here
7
Supporting a globally distributed team
of 8 unicorns who work across 17 time
zones to deliver an Identity and access
management product to
ThoughtWorkers.
Product Owner- Identity
KELSEY VAN HAASTER
Mac Wrangling and applying a little
DevOps magic as part of Kelsey’s team
of unicorns…
Mac Wrangler and Unicorn
STEVE QUIRKE
©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

8. 8
A Tale of Three Pillars
©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

9. Those Pesky Pillars
And What they mean at ThoughtWorks
9
● Financially viable business
● Long term relationships
P1
A sustainable business
● Be excellent at delivering
excellent software
● Improve the software industry
as a whole
P2
Technical Excellence
● Looking broadly at our
impact as a company
● How can what we do, make
the world a better place?
P3
Economic and Social Justice
©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence
“Each pillar has its own definition of success and for the company to be successful it has to balance
the aims of all three pillars. While the pillars are not fundamentally in conflict, they are often in
tension - which is where the balancing comes in.” Martin Fowler

10. A Perfect Storm
10©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

11. Need to scale in
a cost effective
manner
Rapid
organisational
growth
Changes to
MacOS
A Perfect Storm
● We needed to change the way we
had been doing things
● Our existing approach could not
scale
● We had to reconsider using some
kind of MDM
Early in 2018, a few things happened all at
the same time.
11©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

12. Privacy
Autonomy
TrustDevice Management at
ThoughtWorks
● First foray in 2015
○ Did not go well
● Second attempt in 2017
○ Better - but ...
● Third time lucky 2018/19?
○ Better get it right this time, start
with P3.
A short history
12©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

13. Pillar 3
13©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

14. Privacy
Autonomy
Trust
Starting with P3 Driven
Principles
● Agentless
○ Closed source binary agents
unwelcome here
● Transparent
○ Being open about what we are
doing and why
● Culturally Acceptable
○ Respecting ThoughtWorker privacy
● Inclusive
○ A solution for everyone
ThoughtWorker requirements
14©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

15. Privacy
Autonomy
Trust
Bringing it all together
● Asset Management
○ A data collection problem
● Device Management (with P3)
○ A data distribution problem
● Both better together - YAY!
● But we will need P2 for that
With a stroke of good luck
15©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

16. Pillar 2
16©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

17. Privacy
Autonomy
Trust
Hypothesis Driven
Development...
● Can we replace imaging with
“zero-touch” device setup
● No traditional device “management”
● Can we add devices to our asset
management system at the same
time?
It started with a 6 week “trial”
17©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

18. Cloud First...
● ThoughtWorks is cloud first.
● SimpleMDM is a perfect example -
it's cloud hosted and easily able to
scale with ThoughtWorks as we
grow...
● ...but we’ll need some additional
components...
Where we’re going, we don’t need… servers.
18©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

19. Privacy
Autonomy
Trust
Open Source
● InstallApplications
○ - delivering apps and scripts
dynamically
● DEPNotify -
○ a nice UI to let folks know
what’s going on
● We’re open sourcing our code as we
go
Linking back to our requirement for
transparency
19©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

20. AWS Lambda/API
Gateway
● Filevault “issues”
● Moving devices between groups
auto-magically
● My first Lambda...
Serverless MDM automation
20©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

21. Autonomy
Trust
Enter Rolzog...
● Python/Flask SAML registration app
● Elastic Beanstalk POC…
● ...moved to serverless
● Registers a device in ServiceNow…
● ...triggers the device move in
SimpleMDM
Or, don’t let Steve choose product names
ever...
21©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

22. Privacy
Serverless Framework
● The AWS console is “interesting” to
use
● Enter the Serverless framework
● Replace hard to read
Cloudformation with easier to read
YAML
● Vendor agnostic (ish)
Because artisanal doesn’t really scale
22©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

23. Awesome cloud tools..
● A CI/CD dashboard optimised for
serverless
● Makes dealing with multiple AWS
accounts easy
Seed.run
23©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

24. 24©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

25. Awesome cloud tools..
● Build and sign macOS packages in
the cloud
● Upload to AWS…
● ...or directly into SimpleMDM
Azure DevOps
25©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

26. 26

27. Putting it all together
● Does it work?
● 3000+ devices enrolled so far :)
● Our software team tried to close
down our PROD account as we “just
weren’t using it enough…”
27©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

28. 28©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence
DEMO

29. Pillar 1
29©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

30. Privacy
Autonomy
Trust
P1 underlies it all
● None of this would have been
possible without the right;
○ Products that met our needs
■ Agentless, no device wipe
○ Partners we loved to work with
■ The SimpleMDM team
■ Okta our IdP
○ The ability to share what we’ve
done back to the community
Sustainable businesses need sustainable
relationships
30©ThoughtWorks 2019 Commercial in Confidence

31. The Code
https://github.com/ThoughtWorks-Identity/mdm-serverless-services
https://github.com/ThoughtWorks-Identity/RegisterNonMacComputer
WATCH THIS SPACE - MORE CODE COMING SOON
Steve at MacADUK -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzgPMTgvq8A&list=PLe6gxSMzV0S_puM4DliqV0JD4pwlGgO1m&index=12.
Feedback welcome
31

32. 32
Thank you