Gamifying Cloud Native Transformation: Ortec Finance's Fire Drill Framework for Building Confidence in Cloud Deployments

Transitioning to a Cloud Native Platform demands significant changes across various roles within an organization. At Ortec Finance, we discovered that fire drills play a crucial role in fostering a sense of ownership and boosting confidence among teams and individuals as they adapt to this new way of working. To support others on a similar journey, we share our Fire Drill framework—a set of practical, gamified patterns designed to unite all roles within an enterprise in their ambition to successfully host products on cloud-native platforms. The Fire Drill framework immerses teams in simulated, real-world incidents on production-like environments, allowing them to build the skills needed to Detect, Identify, Communicate, and Resolve different scenarios. By regularly participating in these drills, teams gain the confidence required to build and run their services effectively on Cloud Native Platforms. In this session, attendees will explore the Fire Drill Patterns library, learn about the challenges Ortec Finance faced during their Cloud Native transformation, and hear about the valuable lessons our engineering teams learned along the way. We will discuss how periodic fire drills have empowered Product Owners, Site Reliability Engineers, and Developers to confidently build, deploy, and manage cloud-hosted services, ultimately driving our organization’s success in the Cloud Native era.