Shadow org charts

[Reading time: 1 minute 30 seconds]

Org charts are mysterious things anyway, steeped in ceremony and suffused with mysterious power.

Here’s the mystery’s mystery, just for you: shadow org charts.

Freeeaky.

I can picture your raised eyebrow, though. What am I going on about?

Well, it’s something you’ve doubtlessly encountered many times: there’s the published org chart, and then there’s how things are actually done.

There’s perhaps a respected engineer who has at least as much influence on the architecture as the architect, although she’s nowhere to be seen on the org chart.

Reusability vs autonomy

[Reading time: 1 minutes 29 seconds]

"There are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris."
-- Larry Wall

Given this, reuse is certainly a no-brainer: it allows us to be lazy. Yay!

In the context of architecture (and thus, of course, organisation structure), there is a risk of aiming for the wrong thing.

You may be thinking that reusability begets autonomy.

If you’re getting your product right, the two may indeed be related. But they’re not the same, and they’re not connected.

The law of conservation of bullshit

[Reading time: 2 minutes 21 seconds]

Bullshit.

“The law of conservation of bullshit”

Call me childish, but it’s all I can do not to cackle with glee at that expression.

It’s kind of what’s behind many rules or observations about organisation and team size.

If you’re just a handful of engineers, sharing information is not so difficult. Everybody gets together and communicates naturally. Information flows as though on its own. Everybody knows everything that’s going on.

Diving into the connectedness of DevOps

[Reading time: 2 minutes 1 second]

A few days ago, I wrote to you about how everything is connected in DevOps.

Remember this picture?

+--------------+            +--------------+
|              |            |              |
|    Culture   | <--------> |  Technology  |
|              |            |              |
+-------------++            ++-------------+
              ^              ^
       ^      |              |      ^
       |      +--------------+      |
       v      |              |      v
              v              v
+-------------++            ++-------------+
|              |            |              |
|  Practices   | <--------> |     Goals    |
|              |            |              |
+--------------+            +--------------+

Let’s take a look at one of its juicier aspects today: Culture vs Technology.

The DevOps ratchet

[Reading time: 56 seconds]

I’m really proud of my newest metaphor: the DevOps Ratchet.

Let me tell you about it :-)

Today, I was conversing with an engineering manager about how to introduce DevOps to an organisation.

We discussed several typical pitfalls I had observed, and also approaches that I found to work well.

As I’ve mentioned before, my preferred approach is to burn the candle from both ends: introduce new tools and technologies, and at the same time establish a conversation about culture and the changes to it that may be necessary.

The DevOps crux

[Reading time: 2 minutes 33 seconds]

Among climbers, there’s a thing called Crux of a route.

It’s the make-or-break section of that route: the hardest part, whose conquest decides whether you send the route, or end up catching air.

As I’m creating a new workshop on DevOps for seasoned Agile practitioners, I’ve been forced to think about the shape of this thing I call DevOps.

I can see something emerging in my mind, but I can’t quite tell yet what that shape will be.