Growing a (DevOPs) culture

@c_g_oneill

What is devops culture?

Agile culture

What is devops culture?

Agile culture - characterised by:

● Customer focus● High bandwidth communication● Continuous improvement

Our starting point● New team (5 system engineers, 1 developer)● New activity (software development)● New context (recently merged company)● New location● New product● New tools (Docker, Consul)● New process● New PO

Our goal

Develop the capability to transform a customer environment from any given state to any desired state in minutes instead of months

Learning models - where were we?

● Aikido; shu-ha-ri● Dreyfuss; novice-advanced beginner-competent-

proficient-expert● Maslow (?) - Unconscious incompetence-

conscious incompetence-conscious competence-unconscious competence

Learning models - where were we?

● Aikido; shu-ha-ri● Dreyfuss; novice-advanced beginner-competent-

proficient-expert● Maslow (?) - Unconscious incompetence-

conscious incompetence-conscious competence-unconscious competence

Implies coaching by context free instruction, “Do it like this”

Probing the complex domain

● Customer focus - On-site customer● High bandwidth communication - Co-located,

dedicated, x-fnc team● Continuous improvement - One week sprints

Probing the complex domain

On-site customerNegative patterns (dampen) Positive patterns (amplify)

Customer not on-site Customer available (daily)

Demonstrating work done Review comprises demo of working features and discussions on product direction

Technical “stories” User Stories, (quantified) business value as main prioritisation tool

Communication by documentation Extensive collaboration with (future) end users

Customer as The Other Customer as guide

Probing the complex domain

Co-located, dedicated, x-fnc teamNegative patterns (dampen) Positive patterns (amplify)

Communication by mail Animated stand-ups

Communication by service desk tool Whiteboard huddles;l

Documentation instead of collaboration/conversation

Pairing at work stations

Role play (“not my job”) Liquid sub-teams

Fear (“only X knows that/it will be so much quicker if X does it”)

Tasking that facilitates knowledge sharing, risk mitigation

Probing the complex domain

Negative patterns (dampen) Positive patterns (amplify)

Stories spanning multiple sprints Stories DONE

No customer at review PO, stakeholders & users at review;l

Retrospectives skipped Retrospective every sprint

Lack of improvement experiments Improvement stories in every sprint, evolving definition of DONE, explicitly allocate learning time in-sprint

Static or ever-growing impediment backlog Actively managed impediments

One week sprints

How’s it going?

● Customer focus - proving difficult to achieve and maintain, latest developments are promising, getting to production is key

● High bandwidth communication - good, tipping embedded, within the team

● Continuous improvement - well established, we’re forever hunting for feedback mechanisms

ReferencesThe As-If Principle - Richard Wiseman (UK, US)

‘Pencils’: Strack, F., Martin, L.L., and Stepper, S (1988). ‘Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: A nonobstrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 768-77.

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making: David J. Snowden, Mary E. Boone, Harvard Business Review

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin

Novice to Expert: the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, Stan Lester

A FIVE-STAGE MODEL OF THE MENTAL ACTIVITIES INVOLVED IN DIRECTED SKILL ACQUISITION, Stuart E. Dreyfus and Hubert L. Dreyfus