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I’m talking of DevOps adoption of course.
There are many smart books about it, such as the famous DevOps Handbook or the excellent Accelerate.
They are supremely good, powerful books. They tell you everything you need to know.
…except they don’t, do they?
I think one of the more insidious problem these books have is that they’re too good.
Things that you intuitively know to be hard, they make sound simple.
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Imagine you said this to somebody: “All you’ve done over the last decade was completely wrong”.
…whoa, hold up.
How dare you say that to an accomplished professional?
That’s a pretty harsh thing to say, isn’t it? And it’s so harsh, it’s actually rude.
You know what: I’ve had people think I said that to them. I’ll be honest: I’m far too bad at confrontation to say such a thing, even if I meant it. Of course I didn’t say it.
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No two organisations are alike of course – but here’s a playbook that has worked well for me.
Fundamentally, there are two things you need to balance:
the need to offer clarity on the philosophical underpinnnings of DevOps: what the fundamental considerations and goals are
the need to take concrete steps, actually build something, get your fingers dirty, collect immediate experience
The second – concrete steps – is important because engineers are an impatient bunch. They, generally speaking, will not tolerate theory without practice for long. And they’ve long read that DevOps is about some kind of technology: Jenkins maybe, or Kubernetes, or AWS. So that’s what they expect to see.
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Predictability is important, OK we get it.
But how do you achieve it?
Amusingly, many people seem to start with step 2: doing something about it.
How about we start with step 1 instead: figuring out what makes predictability.
What makes you feel safe, confident, protected?
There are many sources of predictability, or unpredictability:
But all of these elements can be subsumed under the process itself: because what is a process but an agreement to transform something into something else.
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One of the things that never ceases to amuse me is that the same principles you should use to raise little kids apply just as much to grownups.
Consistency is one of these principles.
Every parenting book tells you to be consistent with your kids (and holy cow is it hard). Why?
Because consistency breeds trust. Comfort. Structure. Reliance. All manner of good things.
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Trusted processes are needed to build great products.
But what does it mean for a process to be trusted?
It needs to have several qualities:
This all sounds pretty obvious and straight-forward – until you try to map out what it actually means.
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