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Rebuilding the airplane in flight.
That’s how transitions feel, isn’t it?
And, put that way, it seems like a terrible idea.
But on the other hand, what’s the alternative?
Close your IT department, or indeed your entire company, to leisurely rebuild your systems?
If the first idea was bad, this one is downright ludicrous.
So you have no other choice but to slowly change your organisation, step by step, element by element.
That, of course, is a very difficult thing to do: because one thing that all employees of large companies complain about is that they’re spread too thin, are made to work on too many projects and initiatives at once.
Adding one more - a DevOps transition - will only make things worse.
So… maybe don’t do that?
Or rather, take a page out of the Lean playbook, and focus on reducing your work in progress before anything else.
Stop starting, start finishing.
Buy yourself time and, crucially, mental energy, to tackle something as sweeping as DevOps introduction.
To stretch that poor metaphor even further, make sure your airplane can stay aloft even as you take your spanner to it, by not unbolting all parts at once.
I suppose it’s an amusing mental image, but it surely isn’t good aircraft in-flight maintenance.
Don’t assume introducing DevOps is any different, just because it would be more convenient.