Episode 074 — Make SOX audits easy with Salesforce DevOps!

Jack sits down with Tapan Patel, Gearset DevOps Leader for 2026 and DevOps Lead for the Salesforce practice at Braze, a publicly traded omnichannel platform where every change management decision is subject to SOX audit scrutiny. Tapan brings a rare blend of project delivery experience, release management rigour, and genuine passion for building DevOps not just as a set of processes, but as a culture. The episode is a masterclass in phased, people-first DevOps rollout. Tapan walks through exactly how he's taken Braze from change sets and manual deployments to a governed, audit-ready CI/CD pipeline over the past year and a half — breaking it down into four distinct phases and sharing what actually worked, what took longer than expected, and where he's headed next. Tapan shares his rounded take on AI, including where it's already adding value in the pipeline today, why agentic autonomy in prod is still a way off, and how Claude, Jira and Gearset's reporting API are becoming a powerful combination for DevOps KPI tracking. 00:01 – Intro & Meet Tapan Patel 00:40 – Tapan's Journey: From Data & Analytics to Salesforce DevOps 02:12 – What DevOps Actually Means as an Organisational Culture 04:10 – DevOps in a SOX-Audited, Publicly Traded Company 05:10 – The State of DevOps at Braze When Tapan Joined 08:14 – Shifting Mindsets From Change Sets to a DevOps Tool 10:32 – Precision Deployments: Why Page Layouts Break Everything 11:49 – Stakeholder Visibility & the Value of Issue Tracking Integration 13:36 – What Tapan Values Most About Gearset 15:53 – The Four Phases of CI/CD Rollout at Braze 19:16 – Phase Two: Stabilisation & SOX Integration 20:30 – Phase Three: Automation Layers & QA Integration 21:18 – Phase Four: Maturity & Minimal Intervention 22:55 – The Admin Learning Curve for DevOps Adoption 25:25 – Continuous Improvement as a Practice, Not a Project 28:34 – Where AI Fits Into the DevOps Pipeline Right Now 31:07 – Supplementary vs. Agentic AI: Why Tapan Is Taking It Slow 33:14 – Using Claude + Gearset Data for Sprint Analysis & KPI Tracking 36:00 – The DevOps KPIs That Matter at Braze 37:24 – Closing Advice for Anyone Starting Their DevOps Journey