Jun 20, 2018 | 3 min read

DragonSpears is a CIOReview Top 20 Most Promising DevOps Provider!

By: Patrick Emmons

DragonSpears is a CIOReview Top 20 Most Promising DevOps Provider!

We are excited and honored to be recognized for our commitment to using DevOps, cloud, and Agile practices to build software that solves organizational problems! In our recent CIOReview featured article, I discuss our processes and approach in more detail, including how our core values drive us to help companies align IT and the business to efficiently achieve their software development goals.


* Article republished with permission from CIOReview.

DragonSpears: Innovation and Value Creation in Software Development

Founded on the cornerstone of helping businesses adopt DevOps, cloud, and Agile development practices, DragonSpears is focused on building software that makes a difference, saves lives, and disrupts industries. The biggest challenge that most organizations have revolves around their ability to invest time and effort into enhancing their software delivery strategies, through automation and software integration. Despite their first-hand knowledge of how things work, they do not have the time or resources to accomplish their goals. “DragonSpears is that confident partner that businesses need; we focus on solving their problems, by helping with the workflow of their specific challenges, and designing a specific solution,” says Patrick Emmons, the founder and CEO of the company. An accomplished architect and a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in programming and web development, Emmons believes that businesses need to build “99.99 software”—a software application which “works so well that it allows you to be in a more strategic position.”

Any time an organization’s software does not work or is slow, their customers are bound to move to competitors. 99.99 software makes it possible for the organization to take advantage of new opportunities rather than spend time putting out fires. To that end, DragonSpears delivers a five-step methodology to help its customers stay in a strategic position where they are confident to respond to issues without sacrificing time for innovation and value creation.

DragonSpears’ five-step methodology includes assessment of opportunities, identification of areas for improvement, prioritizing needs, taking action, and conducting retrospectives along the way. With its specialties focused on agile coaching, cloud adoption, and DevOps, DragonSpears helps enterprises tear down the walls separating the business and IT teams. Specifically, they build and execute on the roadmap to create a cloud-first development approach and incorporate strategies for standardizing and automating software development.

“Our job is to share with those people, the knowledge we learned in building great software, and help their software development teams.”

Their partnership with DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment), has given DragonSpears the access to the thought leaders in the DevOps space and has empowered them to bring cutting-edge philosophies to their clients. One such upcoming trend in DevOps is containerization to accelerate application pipeline automation and deployment, and ship faster; DragonSpears uses Docker to support containerization efforts.

By enabling businesses to deploy software sooner, reduce the time spent in testing, increase the quality of their code, minimize the technical debt, motivate developers, and create greater alignment between IT and the business, DragonSpears has become the ideal partner to help achieve every software development goal of an enterprise. What makes DragonSpears unique is their emphasis on the core values that form a big part of who they are. “We hire talent, based on a candidate’s values and how they align with our philosophies. While technical acumen can be learned, core values are innate,” adds Emmons.

With its core values revolving around being the humble heroes who work behind the scenes and help clients succeed, DragonSpears aims to continue enabling businesses to reach a strategic position in the marketplace. “To derive real value out of digital platforms, we work with people who know the business, the challenges, and the customers. Our job is to share with those people, the knowledge we learned in building great software, and help their software development teams excel,” concludes Emmons.

About Patrick Emmons

If you can’t appreciate a good sports analogy, movie quote, or military reference, you may not want to work with him, but if you value honesty, integrity, and commitment to improvement, Patrick can certainly help take your business or your career to the next level. “Good enough,” is simply not in his vernacular. Pat’s passion is for relentlessly pushing himself and others to achieve full potential. Patrick Emmons is a graduate of St. Norbert College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. Patrick co-founded Adage Technologies in 2001 and in 2015, founded DragonSpears as a spin-off dedicated to developing custom applications that improve speed, compliance and scalability of clients’ internal and customer-facing workflow processes. When he is not learning about new technology, running a better business, or becoming a stronger leader, he can be found coaching his kids’ (FIVE of them) baseball and lacrosse teams and praising his ever-so-patient wife for all her support.