DevOps – The Honeymoon Is Over
Monikers come and go, the practices will evolve
It is very obvious that DevOps, I spare you my favorite definition, is on its way to become a mainstay in IT organizations of companies of all sizes. Smaller sized “born-in-the-cloud” companies grow and prosper applying modern and collaborative development and operation practices from the get go. Let’s call them DevOps practices.
Larger enterprises - with mature operations structures and procedures, carrying large bags of technical and cultural debt, are clamoring for ideas to stay or to become more competitive in their markets. DevOps and the practices that come with it may be able to help. And there are plenty of excellent examples of companies that started on their IT transformation before DevOps was even a word (Nordstrom, GE, Macy’s). They fostered collaboration and cross-team work including shared responsibilities between development and the IT operations groups because they saw the possibility of improvements in their overall processes – and how this can lead to increased business success.
For now DevOps is the future of IT organizations
Latest with the advent of cloud computing more and more IT organizations are faced with new challenges. A world of on-demand, self-provisioning, and elastic scale to name some. Developers understand they need to be empowered to do more things faster. It is to a large part in the hands of the ops teams to enable them. DevOps practices applied early on in the lifecycle support this.
While there is no one DevOps motion, DevOps is here to stay. That said, I am in wild disagreement with Baron Schwartz who asked in a recent post “DevOps is experiencing an identity crisis” if it is time to rethink the “no manifesto” mandate of DevOps purists. Working on an all-encompassing manifesto will be the first nail to the coffin of what DevOps can do.
DevOps is different things to different people. That is a good thing. In my opinion the best thing about the DevOps movement is that people in IT started reaching out to teams in other disciplines looking for ways to collaborate and become more efficient to support the ongoing success of the business. That’s the real value of DevOps.
The term has created much awareness and opened the eyes to new ways of improving IT of many leaders, managers, and practitioners in companies of all sizes. To be clear, we just start to feel the impact of DevOps. DevOps as a concept is a gift that will keep giving for a very long time. The practices will evolve as IT will.
We may call it something completely different in a few months or a year or 10 years from now. Who cares? It marks the introduction of a number of improvements at all levels within the IT organization. It is the next evolutionary step that IT (dev, test, ops, networking, security …) will take to address today’s challenges.
Unlike Baron Schwartz, I am not looking for any uniqueness in DevOps. It is no requirement that says you have to be unique to be successful. In many ways DevOps is the culmination of common sense and best practices that exist outside of IT for decades, applied to IT.
Rightfully Schwartz warns us to not fall for the snake oil that clever people trying to sell us under the name of DevOps.
But I disagree with him and say that any discussion or dispute about the term or how to use it should be welcome. It will foster shaping a new and better IT. Mature leaders in IT will have to learn or know how to funnel the energy of these discussions into tangible outcomes and improvements for their organization’s IT. There will always be people unwilling to give up perceived territory. There will always be the “younger guy” who knows better. But there are also always ways of dealing with it in context. There’s no difference with DevOps. Do you need a manifesto for it? I highly doubt it.
IT faces very real challenges requiring new and innovative ways of handling them. That’s the real problem.
DevOps and Cloud
Cloud adoption is one of the challenges. Everything in a hybrid world moves so fast that, especially on the ops side of IT, new methods and new practices are key to survival. If everyone involved in the ongoing success of a cloud connected app or a cloud service is not properly involved in the process of creation, testing, deployment, and improvement, there is no chance to be successful. Too much time will be spent on dealing with “old way of working” problems that there is almost a guarantee of failure. DevOps practices can guide teams to avoid this challenge.
DevOps and IoT
Internet of Things or IoT. Apologies for introducing another highly contagious term into this post but while everyone seems very excited about the opportunities and developers all over the globe are asked to build the next big thing, I wonder who thinks of the deployment, management, security, etc.? This is something IT teams needs to address jointly – across silos. DevOps practices can guide teams to do the right thing. Success is only possible if everything from cradle to grave is taken into consideration.
DevOps and Big Data
Same as for the cloud or IoT. Cloud adoption will grow. It will help generate and accumulate more and more data from IoT and from other more mundane places like the DMV or bird population counting. This data creates hunger for apps. Apps slicing and dicing the data. Apps displaying the data. Apps analyzing the data. Huge investments will be made and today IT teams should use DevOps practices to stay in the game.
But this is just the beginning. The honeymoon is over. DevOps is a stepping stone for IT into an ever evolving future and a way to address an ever fiercer struggle for relevance for some.
Have fun
@volkerw
Picture taken by Pål-Kristian Hamre , https://flic.kr/p/dhbJpD
Comments
- Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@RDEF - Thanks for sharing your thoughts and observations. While I (somewhat) agree with your comment "DevOps is a buzz word", I see the great potential for IT organizations as a whole in the underlying idea of close collaboration across different function inside IT and a company. The idea can only be successful if people are willing to collaborate which each other, regardless of profession. - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
February 21, 2015
The majority of IT Pros are in the process of deploying and managing off the shelf OS hardware and applications. They get no closer to a developer than the average purchaser of meat at the supermarket gets to a farm. DevOps is a way for Developers to try to come up with a way of blaming IT pros for their failure ridden code - by making the startling assertion that it's the IT Pro's fault that the code isn't working and that the IT Pro isn't up on the latest trends and is some sort of dinosaur that needs to be made extinct. In terms of the Golgafrinchan Arks, spruikers of DevOps are definitely on Ark-B. - Anonymous
March 05, 2015
@Volker, couldn't agree more! The old school mindset with finger pointing at IT or Devs or End Users is coming to a close and a new breed of innovation using DevOps, collaboration and smaller feedback loops is under way. - Anonymous
March 08, 2015
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
March 23, 2015
I can't say that my observations about IT and its operational, technical, and political nuances will contribute anything new, but I do assert that much of what is wrong with IT begins with the human side of things, not the technical side. IT work, by its very nature, is glass-ceiling work. In almost every case, the CTO never ends up as the CEO, so the universe of possible jobs as witnessed from the IT worker's perspective is entirely visible within his or her own department. There are no "other" departments into which he or she can move.
That means that being in a professional IT environment often entails a bit of backstabbing and political intrigue. The carping back and forth between IT workers, end users, and business managers as each tries to deflect the blame for a project gone wrong is symptomatic of too many people trying to grab a bigger piece of a very small pie.
DevOps is a buzz word. The variety of its meanings suggests that it really has no meaning other than to serve as an icon for whatever does not yet reign in the world of IT. As such, it is hard for me to advocate its pursuit. What I think are far more worthy pursuits are to seek good manners among business associates, to be open to the possibility that doing something that will contribute directly to another person's success is a better goal than doing something for one's own success, and to be ready to "man" (or "woman") up to personal mistakes in the context of seeking what is a better solution.
IT needs to move beyond its obsessive fascination with creating new slogans and phrases to describe existing technologies. So much of what seems to excite people today is really quite old. It's just that it is dawning on the minds of people too young to have known about it when it was first introduced. IT is not about youth, and oddly enough it is not simply about data or its manipulation. It is about the constructive use of information to make the lives of people better, more fulfilling, and more purposeful. This seems to have been lost in the shuffle. I hope that those who do the thinking in the IT world will give it more weight in the future. - Anonymous
March 30, 2015
I quite like "DevOps" as a buzz word. If it means a sort of joining of Developers and ITPros, then it has to be useful term. Developers and ITPros are usually miles apart, in space, time and communication. It is also quite a useful term for users, because it actually sounds like it means something, and easy to remember.