walls agile2013

DevOps isn’t Enough for your Dysfunctional

Organization

mandi wallsmandi@opscode.com

whoami

•Mandi Walls

•Consultant for Opscode, the makers of Chef

•@lnxchk

What I Do

•Visit Opscode’s customers

•Help them learn Chef

•Listen to their issues and problems

technical consultant as organizational therapist

Why DevOps?

•Shifting requirements for IT projects

•Shifting demands from customers

•Shift in the role IT plays in organizations

Why Dev + Ops

• It’s not really just about Development and Operations teams

•Everyone has a hand in creating better products

Are You Dysfunctional?

Deviating from the norms of behavior in a way regarded

as bad

What Makes for Dysfunction

•Arbitrary rules

•Workflows that people circumvent when they can

•Requirements that delay or derail a project

Origins of Dysfunction

•Specialization

•Prioritization

•Conflict of Incentives

Specialization

•Not a bad thing

•Necessary for complex IT structures

•Creates functional fanatics

Prioritization

•Conflicting goals

•Communication challenges

•Resource limitations

Conflict of Incentives

•Classic Dev vs Ops problems

•Also affects other teams

•Not new, not exclusive to DevOps

Tools to Get Beyond Dysfunction

Goals

•Goal setting is key

•Goals must be communicated

•Goals in change initiatives must be measurable

Communication

•Communicate, communicate, communicate

•Documentation

•Check points

Self Awareness

•What motivates your team members?

•What fears or doubts do they have?

•Does your team recognize its own dysfunction?

Training

•Good training is priceless

•Bad training is incredibly damaging

•Training in general is expensive

Working with People Issues

Executive Support

•Cleaning up dysfunction requires support from high levels in the org

•Have to be able to realign people and resources around new goals

•Skunkworks projects are tempting, but fail when scope expands

Management

•The power to create or disintegrate dysfunction

•May not be empowered to make real change

Fear

•Do I have the right skills?

•Will it be hard to do?

•Will I get fired?

Reluctance

•This isn’t exciting!

•We’ve seen all of this before

• I don’t need to know this

Path of Least Resistance

•Are people even following the currently proscribed processes

Boomerang Projects

•A sign of organizational dysfunction when your team decides to ignore an initiative, or “wait it out” because they believe it will disappear or lose traction before it gets implemented.

Making a Plan

•So you say you want some DevOps revolution

•Executive Buy In

•Organizational Assessment

•Readiness

•Pilot Project

•Reassess

Executive Buy In

•As discussed earlier, finding a sponsor in upper management smoothes your path

•Someone who has influence over all the teams you may need to involve

•Someone who is able to prioritize teams, support your goals, and articulate to others why your initiative is important and deserves resources

Assessment

•The fun begins

•Where is your process now?

•Synchronous discussion

Who

•Talk to everyone

•Ask everyone the same baseline questions

•You should get a good multifaceted view of the current state

Baseline Questions

•What is the primary goal of the company/team/project

Baseline Questions

•What is the most broken thing about the current process/project?

Baseline Questions

•What would you want to not see change about your project?

Another Interesting Question

•Drive the discussion towards who has influence

•Who would they most want to have on the team?

Generic Questions

•Tools being used

•Tickets and tracking

•Reporting and assessment

Specific Questions

•What’s driving you to DevOps?

•How long do deploys take?

•What’s your time-to-market?

Making Sense of Assessment

•The full scope of the team

•A list of tools and resources being used

•A list of potential weak spots to look out for

•Set a baseline for your goals

Readiness

•Getting at the squeaky wheels

•Training for any new tools

Build from the Assessment

•Determining what to do with the broken pieces

•Determining which of your current processes are beneficial and which could be harmful

Strong Foundation

•Align tools and people

•Set and communicate goals

Pilot Project

Choosing a Pilot Project

•Narrow but deep

•Shine light in all the dark corners

• Involve secondary teams, resources

Tough Conversations

•About goals and values

•About the priority of external requirements

Ultimate Pilot

•Greenfield when you can

•Work through it end-to-end

Hostage Situations

•Who is able to hold your project hostage?

Reassess

•Along the way, check point your progress

•How are you tracking towards your goals?

•What went well? What went badly?

Next Steps

API All the Things

•Make better use of human brains

•Common tasks can be automated

Create a Service Catalog

•Not in the SOA sense, but in the “I need some storage” sense

•Limit choices, speed up supported requests

FAQs

Timelines

•How long will this take? I want it to be done in [1,2,6] months!

Trust

• “How do I create a DevOps workflow but keep X team away from the tools?”

The Dreaded Question

• “Do I have to fire people?”

Can Large Orgs do DevOps?

• “I have too many people to do something like DevOps”

Q&A