michael djahel from the accor group answers our questions

Michael Djahel, Head of Methods & Tools-DevOps for the Accor Group, kindly agreed to answer our questions and give us his feedback on the solid partnership relationship he has built with Itecor over the last 6 years. Here is a review of this interview.

Michael Djahel, what is your profile in a few words?

I have been the Methods, Tools and Supervision Manager for the Accor Group for 12 years. Previously, I was Technical Manager of our front office solution, developed internally, and I also took over the management of the supervision team on the production side.

What are you most proud of in your work? What is it about your job and your role that makes you tick on a daily basis?

The most important thing is to always have different challenges: whether they are technical and related to our applications or to the organisation in general.
It is always these insights that keep me motivated.

What, Michael, are your main professional challenges?

The coordination of all my contacts. With each new project, it is necessary to identify the real and not the assumed needs, to propose approaches that allow the changes I have to implement to be sustainable. At the moment, the company project ‘move to cloud’ is my main challenge.

Which film character do you think could do your job and why?

It would be Eddy Murphy in The Nutty Professor playing multiple roles at once, I sometimes feel like I’m experiencing the same thing dealing with multiple subjects simultaneously.

Let’s talk about your Group now, if you don’t mind: what are the major challenges and issues facing Accor?

The major challenge is to succeed in the digital transformation by migrating our entire IS to the cloud and developing applications within an agile organisation.

How does the Software Factory respond to this transformation, Michael?

The Software Factory is a kind of assembly line for applications: it allows them to be built and then deployed in our acceptance and production environments.

Can you tell us about the benefits of the Accor Software Factory?

This Software Factory uses the most advanced components available on the market: Gitlab, Neoload… It adapts perfectly to all the product’s needs.

How does the Methods and Tools team fit into the Software Factory?

The Methods and Tools team provides the Software Factory with components for testing applications and thus validating the quality of deliverables through observability tools to condition production releases.

How have your RUN and BUILD progressed thanks to Itecor?

Automation is the golden rule of the Software Factory. Thus, all operations are scripted and not carried out manually, which makes it possible to be very efficient and particularly fast in the run phases, while making build operations more reliable.

How has the collaboration with Itecor improved the Quality of Service?

Itecor allowed us to easily integrate the components, allowing us to carry out the Software Factory tests. The contributors also facilitated the support of a large part of the development teams in its use, as well as the implementation of version building and test pipelines.

What do you appreciate most about your relationship with Itecor?

Professionalism: this translates into a great deal of rigour in carrying out tasks, a willingness to study the impact of changes in great detail, and to explain and train our employees in the latest technologies implemented by Accor.

Let’s talk about the future … what are the major IT changes planned for Accor in the coming years?

The next big changes are related to the migration of our applications to the cloud, we are talking about a multi-year project of about 4 years.

A final word?

Let’s hope that thanks to the collaboration with Itecor, we will be able to move forward strongly in the direction that our management has set.

a word from itecor

Thank you very much Michael for your trust and also for taking the time to give us your feedback. You can indeed count on our full commitment to the success of your future projects.

Didier Nizard, Head of Itecor Paris

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