About Us

About Next Release

Our team is focused on making product teams more effective through developer operations. We help teams break down communication barriers and improve alignment. We’re a Michigan based company serving software developers around the world.

Our Mission

Make every product release a success.

Effective communication is critical for companies and employees to be successful. Unfortunately, there is a lot of noise, and it’s hard to determine what really matters. It doesn't have to be that way.

By helping companies automate capturing the most essential parts of what has been achieved in their most recent product release, we give people the best insights to what has been accomplished and who needs to take action without all the pain. In short, we help people get the feedback they need to increase engagement and action, know where they stand, and reduce the amount of noise and issues that occur with their software releases.

Product releases are the most critical recurring event within an organization - our goal is to make every one a success.

Who We Are

We’re a team that believes in execution and accomplishments over expertise; We care more about how effective you are at translating your existing knowledge into results, and an unwavering drive to continuously improve yourself, bringing more success to the mission.

Founders

Devon Bleibtrey

Passionate about developer operations, Devon has designed, implemented, and rolled out developer pipelines at multiple Fortune 50 enterprises. He has worked with international partners to take development teams from low performers to elite by reorienting company cultures and integrating new technologies within local developer environments and centralized pipelines.

Donald Wasserman

Enthusiastic about bridging the knowledge gap between engineering and other teams, Donald has lead teams across different disciplines for product organizations of all sizes, in highly regulated (health care, financial, and legal) environments. He has built products and teams that are driven by uncovering what the real challenges are for customers and delivering testable and user-centered solutions that unlock real value for all the stakeholders.

Matt Wisner

Dedicated to making developer teams effective and utilizing tools to eliminate bikeshedding, Matt has led multiple product teams to elite DevOps performance. He has bootstrapped technology platforms and the pipelines orchestrating them for companies such as The UPS Store, Deliver My Ride, and TNG Worldwide. He is a passionate technologist who believes that simple is better than complex and that we should always be working on improving ourselves and the products we create.

What We Do

We care about making product releases a success because better releases mean less stress, more time for solving challenging problems, better team relationships, and better companies.

When release documentation is easy, developers develop, product managers engage with customers, QA teams know what needs to be tested, customer support knows what customers need to be prepared for, sales teams are more effective, and marketing knows what’s really going to be launched.

Our Daily Values

We’re looking for people who align with our principal framework.

Team, Teammates, Self - The Narwhal Family

We put the success and wellbeing of the company above the individual. We put the success and wellbeing of our colleagues above our own. We are coaches and students. We succeed as a team and fail as a team.

10x Thinking & Measuring What Matters

The best work is done when we all align behind a set of objectives that enable us to set personal objectives that force growth. We recognize that greatness takes grit and only comes to those who think and act ten times larger than their competition.

We work to define our objectives, track our progress based on movement towards key results, and keep persisting after everyone else has gone home and nobody is watching. It is our duty to achieve success for our teammates.

Transparency

We know that having a false sense of reality is the quickest way to demise. That is why we advocate transparency and consciously reject silos and barriers. Knowing the reality of the here and now is a superpower that enables every team member to most effectively support the company, help their team members grow, and know where they need to be improving themselves.

What’s Next

We have an unyielding passion to grow, to improve, and to find new opportunities to help others.

Once we meet an objective, we view it as having won the opportunity to play the game again and find new horizons we can cross.

Join The Team

If you love making developer's lives easier, hit us up :).