DevOps: Remove the space. Make better products.

The route to DevOps is a cultural shift which is integral to the success of any software business.

You might not do it all right now, and that’s fine.
You might do some parts well, and some parts not so well. That’s fine too.

Extending DevOps is a journey, with the end goal being connecting the same principles & practices you do with your development teams to the rest of your business, ultimately creating a scalable workflow, manageable team cadence and by becoming more responsive and agile than before.

Let’s start by looking at what DevOps might look like to a typical developer:

• Utilising version control & issue tracking
• Employing software-driven IaaS management
• Continuous integration
• Automated deployments

You’re probably asking how we roll the above out to non-technical teams, however, the principles in each of the practices above can be implemented around existing frameworks & systems in use by project teams and can augment support processes and even help boost your sales function.

All too often, development, product, and operations teams work in silos, with too little discussion around the important stuff;

• Are we focusing our energy on the right things?
• Is the solution to this problem adding value for other customers?
• Where is our product going?

DevOps is about inclusion, and we must fight spell check’s urge to put a space in between the two words comprising the portmanteau!

REMOVE THE SPACE.

So we know roughly what DevOps looks like from a software team, but how do we implement it throughout the company?

I firmly believe it comes from the top, and by introducing better communication channels between historically disconnected teams.

Ops, Meet Dev

The main benefit of getting your operations team on board with DevOps is cohesion. It’s probably fair to say that your operations team doesn’t want to be looking at JIRA boards all day, just as your development team doesn’t need to know each and every thought. However, agreeing on a common toolset and having buy-in to ensure this is used correctly is a great way to ensure that both teams work together to ensure the delivery of relevant and high-quality software.

The result of doing this is that it breaks down the traditional barriers and ‘God complex’ which sometimes breeds in development teams by bringing everyone, from the product team to the support people into the product design, development and QA process.

At Layer Systems, we use Aha! as the conduit which brings the teams together.

Dev, Meet Ops

So you’ve got your systems (close to) perfect, what next?

Speedy code shipments and quick feedback loops are what most developers working in a team want: their work gets from their workstations to users’ screens much faster and continuous delivery enables faster iteration and product improvement.

If you’re just getting around to implementing DevOps, why not set up a few key metrics to check if it’s working for you as you transition:

• How quickly does it move from ‘done’ to release
• How often are you deploying to production
• How much manual intervention does a deployment need

In Summary

Start small with the cultural shift.

Implement tried and tested processes within your development team, and then look for buy-in from your operations team and repeat.

Then you’ll be one.