Johannesburg, 21 Oct 2016
What is DevOps? What powers it? How is it different to the already embedded Agile approaches? Should I even pay attention to it or should I just wait for the next thing?
DevOps is a cultural and professional movement that focuses on how we build and operate modern high velocity organisations. The key and absolute most important word in the definition is 'culture'. Culture powers 70% of the DevOps movement and is also the most difficult aspect of an organisation to change, says IQ Business.
Culture is the set of unwritten rules that the people in an organisation follow. These are the socially accepted rules that teams adopt or invent in order to work together. In most cases, the culture of an organisation can only be observed when the team/organisation is placed in a stressed situation. Consequently, the predominate culture of most organisations is not aligned to knowledge work. The DevOps mindset cannot survive in these types of cultural situations.
The DevOps culture should be embracing of three big things: empowered autonomy, appreciative enquiry and radical truth telling.
Empowered autonomy
On the far left, we encounter organisations that thrive on command and control management techniques. This leaves little to no room for people to innovate and solve problems for their clients. On the far right, we have chaos where little to no direction is given and the people in the organisation are often solving the same problem repeatedly or solving the wrong problem. DevOps needs an organisation towards the middle of the spectrum. One where strategic outcomes are clarified and an organisational wide intent is clarified. Thereafter, teams or individuals are empowered to solve problems with as much autonomy as possible. However, empowered autonomy does not mean a lack of accountability. It requires a higher level of personal accountability than ever before.
Appreciative enquiry
Most, if not all, organisations have a slew of regulations, policies, procedures and 'organisational baggage' that people need to understand and overcome in order to do their jobs. Whilst there is room for logical policies and procedures, there should never be a blinkered view of this. DevOps culture promotes challenging existing norms, existing policies and existing procedures. The culture of appreciative enquiry should be promoted as a means of uncovering those hurdles in an organisation that prevent rapid forward movement and should be embraced as a mechanism for speed and agility.
Radical truth telling
A culture of honesty and transparency has always been a utopia to strive for. However, the reality is that most organisations punish people for mistakes made, this leads to zero reward for honesty. Instead a culture of blame shifting and self-preservation is cultivated. An organisation that promotes radical truth telling receives instant feedback (good and bad) on every aspect of the business, from the people that care the most about the business. Based on the honest feedback, the people and the organisation can quickly adjust course to capitalise on the positives and steer away from the negatives.
Since DevOps needs this culture in order to thrive, organisations need to align their strategic goals and needs with those of the people that work for the organisation. Without the alignment of the goals and needs, DevOps cannot be expected to transform organisations.
This is the first step (according to the Spine Model - http://spine.wiki) in addressing the human system.
The second and third steps are values and principles. The Agile Manifesto has provided the guidance for software engineering teams in regard to preferred values and principles. These four values and 12 principles need to be adopted by the organisation and practised by everyone in the organisation for it to become the standard way of working. When the organisation's default behaviour resembles the intent of the Agile manifesto, then the organisation has adopted a DevOps mindset and has created a DevOps sustaining culture.
Time to get started
IQ Business has a set of focused training and consulting initiatives aimed at identifying and moulding the culture of an organisation that enables their DevOps movement. Its understanding of the business and technical challenges guides its approach in creating high velocity organisations. The DevOps offering from IQ Business, together with the agile, digital and customer experience management offerings provide a turn-key approach for organisations that have identified a need for change.
IQ Business is proud to have been a part of Africa DevOps Day hosted by FNB. Thought leaders from the leading organisations in South Africa shared a common message that in DevOps, culture comes first. Thanks to the talent of The Sketching Scrum master (@sketchingsm), the keynotes of the conference can be viewed/downloaded from here.
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