7 Quick Wins for DevOps
How do I go about generating enthusiasm about DevOps in my organisation?
If your organisation is at the onset of a change movement towards DevOps then these 7 steps may help in this process.
1) Bring your executives on board
Winning the support of your leadership team is a change in the right direction.
It helps to run a series of education sessions with executives to make them aware of DevOps /its benefits and then emphasise the need for change champions in this process.
2) Find a pain point in your deployment pipeline and do something 'quick' about it i.e. a quick win
What do developers or operations personnel speak about the most? e.g. testing takes too long, deployments are too difficult, Dev don't support Production issues, etc.
Don't attempt to resolve a large issue to begin with. Identify a quick win instead e.g. Change Advisory Board approvals - they take too long; can we automate them? Identify the quick win and 'showcase the hell out of it!'
3) DevOps by stealth
Whenever I've been involved in 'Agile transformations', my approach has been that of identifying quick wins and use these to demonstrate value. I don't like to get caught up in terminology such as role names e.g. Product Owner, DevOps engineer, Scrum Master, etc.or frameworks. Instead I prefer to focus on showing the value of the change rather than emphasising the change itself e.g. to roles, ceremonies, artefacts, etc.
For example, I would speak to the business about the value in sitting with the development team and working with the team while maintaining a documented set of requirements in the format of prioritised user stories.
4) Lean Change
What are the other quick wins? Can we take on a larger win? Build a hypothesis around this and experiment. Showcase more of these wins.
5) Run lean coffees or hot seats
Lean Coffees or hot seats are perfect for managing change as they don't have a pre planned agenda. They are a forum for team members to ask questions openly. They are also a forum for leaders to listen.
6) Build a community around DevOps
Use platforms such as ChatOps e.g. Slack, or even Facebook@work or Yammer to bring people together to discuss the changes and what DevOps entails
7) Humility
Understand that no one is an expert. DevOps, Agile and Business Agility all need to be tailored to an organisation. There is no one-size fits all or framework that's perfect for an organisation. Listen to the experts and adapt what works for your organisation.
