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About a week ago I kicked off a research project.
I had certain impressions and gut feelings about how DevOps was introduced and applied across organisations; in fact I was curious on the general perspective towards DevOps.
In order to move beyond my gut, and towards solid data, I’ve started to approach DevOps professionals to ask if they would share their experience with me. I focus on people perhaps more towards the strategic side of DevOps work: managers, VPs, those kinds of roles.
I’m excited that only a few days in, not only do I have dozens of replies, but I’ve also got permission from many of them to conduct followup interviews to dive even deeper.
I’ve promised myself not to look at the data yet and accidentally jump to conclusions, but to let it accrete for a while.
But of course I couldn’t contain myself and had a very brief, secret peek. If you promise not to tell anyone I looked, I’ll share my very preliminary observation with you.
Here’s the scoop:
- technology was overwhelmingly quoted as the easy part
- culture and collaboration were considered extremely important
- culture and collaboration were widely quoted as what was hard about DevOps
The picture that emerges probably doesn’t come as a big surprise. But what’s surprising to me is how clear the picture appears to be so far.
I’ll be very interested to see how this survey continues, and what nuance the follow-up interviews will bring.
And I’m excited to see what solutions we can come up with for the issues the survey points out.
More of that in future emails. For now, let’s bask in the generosity of the DevOps community. This is going to be an exciting journey!