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The Role of Soft Skills in Building Strong DevOps Leads

As an industry, we spend a lot of time talking about the process and technology that make up a good DevOps practice. We have a strong focus on the development, IT operations, QA” and security roles. We debate tools and automation strategies. We wax philosophical about DevOps culture.

What is either lacking entirely or simply glossed over in that conversation is what I would consider the backbone of any good DevOps team–the people.

You might assume by “people” I mean their skills with the technology or their expertise with a certain process. Those two things are important, but all things being equal, the people aspect of DevOps I am referring to is really more simple–or even more basic–than that. It all starts with the culture that is defined by the lead.

As with any cross-functional discipline, teamwork is essential to the adoption and success of your DevOps practice. At its core, DevOps is about collaboration among people from a variety of teams and departments. It brings together multiple disciplines, people and processes with the common goal of high quality and high efficiency output. DevOps relies so heavily on teamwork that without strong leadership, your DevOps culture and the success of your practice are destined for a rocky road at best.

A strong DevOps leader will need to bring together people in roles that have either been traditionally siloed or are now being done by fewer people. This is no easy feat, however building trust, earning respect, communicating effectively and motivating everyone toward the common goal is paramount to the success of the DevOps team.

These traits–trust and respect, communication and the ability to motivate–are not unique to DevOps leads, rather they are the key characteristics that make up any strong leader. By putting them in the context of DevOps, the importance of each in the process and culture is irrefutable.

Trust and Respect

Paul Zak, the founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and a professor of economics, psychology and management at Claremont University, led a study to better understand the neuroscience of trust. His team found that the effect of trust on work performance, engagement and loyalty were huge. Respondents indicated that employees with high trust had 106% more energy, were 76% more engaged and 88% said they would recommend their company as a place to work to family and friends.

The numbers might not come as a surprise, but how you achieve high trust might. First and foremost, be vulnerable. Do not be afraid to ask for help. This not only exhibits the trust you have in the people on the team, it also demonstrates the sign that you are secure in yourself as a leader.

The trust factor for a DevOps lead is multifaceted. The team must trust the lead enough to also trust his/her vision for the process. By showing vulnerability and leaning of the subject matter experts from each discipline for input, you start to build rapport with the team and the process becomes owned by the different functions involved. By asking for help, you invoke the natural tendency to cooperate. That cooperation leads to mutual trust. And by earning trust, you also earn their respect.

Communication

As with any cross-functional team, communication should be viewed as critical an element as your DevOps tools. A successful DevOps lead will be able to understand and speak the languages unique to each discipline. By understanding the nuance and meanings of the words used by the IT operations teams, QA, security and development, the lead can easily help communicate goals, set expectations and establish rules of engagement. Through daily communication, the team will be able to reduce friction and become far more effective as a group.

Motivating Toward a Common Goal

Former Boston Bruins coach Harry Sinden said it best, “Putting on the same jersey doesn’t make a team. You’re still a collection of individuals until you find a common goal.”

The DevOps lead who motivates the team toward that common goal will find success. But how do you do that? To find out what motivates the people on your team you need to talk to them and get to know them. Involve them in developing the overall strategy. Seek their input and make sure they feel they have ownership of the outcome.

Set milestones and celebrate accomplishments. Reward success. Provide feedback and coaching in the moment–both good and bad.

The team that feels like they are part of something are no longer a collection of individuals.

In the end, when you are assessing your DevOps practice and culture, make sure you take a long hard look at the people. They are truly the backbone of any DevOps practice. The need to technical prowess and experience should not be underscored, however, make sure you look for someone who has those skills plus all of the necessary attributes of a true leader. The success of your DevOps practice may depend on it.

— Sara Faatz

March 5, 2020
Implementing DevOps Goes Beyond Technology

The implementation of DevOps is primarily toward a change of process. All you need is to break down the feed store and bring in the competing individual inducements to acquire the actual benefits from DevOps. Regarding the change of process, it will either be embraced by those who are making the change and succeed, or it will get rejected and eventually fail.

The hardest part of successful DevOps is not the implementation of technology but much beyond it. It is understood that without technology, you can hardly enforce the DevOps culture. The technology side is all about automation, focusing on the infrastructure in the form of codes and establishing the pipeline process.

A survey found that among more than 2,000 of the IT industry executives, 54% of the respondents believed they had no access to self-service infrastructure; instead, they take some ticket-based approach toward infrastructure delivery. This also impacts productivity and increases time to market. The survey noted that only 23% of the experts said that infrastructures could be delivered in less than 24 hours. However, some 33% said it takes up to a month to give, while 26% responded it takes one month or more to do so.

Speaking in terms of technological perspective, we’re well aware of the fact that DevOps targets to achieve complete automation and integration, but practical implementation is not entirely possible. Establishing new aspects has been a great struggle, even if it is related to replace specific traditional methods with some new ones.

Mentioned below are the best answer to why implementing DevOps goes beyond technology. Let’s discuss them one by one.

Lack of Proper Vision

Without having a proper definition of the issue or solution, it becomes challenging to form a vision. Therefore, when experts become familiar with the process, they begin to follow a specific path to manage things in the correct order. Even though at some point they become stuck in the circle, too.

With time, it becomes difficult to get out of this vague circle, be more responsive to current situations and discover new methods for betterment all at the same time.

Without having a proper plan, it becomes not tricky but merely impossible to achieve some productive output. The lack of vision makes it challenging for the project owners to design a clear-cut plan when it comes to deciding milestones and deliverables.

The industry experts find it a bit risky because there are honestly few people who possess skills and expertise in this domain when compared to the number of tools present in the market. This also gives rise to confusion, which ultimately leads to an increase in the risk factor.

Cultural Defies

Another significant challenge is the removal of traditional methods and to adopt new ones. Undoubtedly, people are more comfortable when they follow conventional techniques as long as the outcome is useful toward the end of the day.

However, if the outcome is not what you’ve desired, or if you start realizing that your job requires various manual interventions, then it would be good to understand that this can hinder your overall productivity and leads to adverse effects in the long term.

Absence of Tool Knowledge

Previously, DevOps has introduced the principles of continuous deployment, testing and collaborative reporting. But, since most of the people prefer to continue working with traditional tools, adapting to the functionalities of the latest tools becomes a difficult job. This happens more when it comes to getting a hold on the changes made to the architecture based on cloud and on-premises during the entire process.

Lack of tool knowledge leads to organizations making poor choices of tools.

Risk Analysis

It is challenging to alter old methods and techniques and get them replaced by the latest ones. While implementing DevOps, when it comes to risk analysis, business experts design their dashboards by scaling hundreds of different reports. It is based on calculations and most of the time, it is quite easy to start but hard to climb. It happens when things are being put into action. The workers face troubles in keeping up with the pace. Therefore, adopting the latest methodology involves risks to a significant extent.

Ways to Minimize These Challenges

After doing research, I have come up with six best ways to minimize these issues and increase your chances of DevOps success. Let’s discuss them.

Boost Up Productivity

As mentioned above, no proper vision is a severe issue, and it also leads to poor and low levels of productivity. With new IT services coming in the market, people will understand the need for shaping their vision. It is crucial because only then they’ll be able to compete in the marketplace. DevOps comes with specific tools ranging from automation to monitoring. These tools can boost up the functions of an organization. An organization can unlock benefits from these automated tools so their developers can have a lighter load. This reduces time on deployment and by default, errors and mistakes are reduced too, which results in more productivity.

Encourage Diversity

DevOps successfully brings people together from different backgrounds and with different skillsets, and it delivers the results when this diversity is embraced. Having diversity in a DevOps team leads to higher productivity. This is extremely important with the rise of full-stack developers and the need for every individual to possess a variety of skills.

Learn From Mistakes

In the slow-moving model of working, people get afraid to accept they’ve made a mistake or even share any lessons they’ve learned while committing an error because it’ll directly affect their career. In the DevOps world, it is believed that by sharing those experiences, you are encouraging innovation. DevOps often calls for identifying mistakes and ask everyone to consider it as a learning opportunity, instead of an issue to be blamed. The perfect approach is to embrace mistakes and make improvements.

Review Security Practices

Security is essential in DevOps implementation. If the developers fail to enforce proper security practices, then they’re solely responsible for the effects afterward. By implementing automated tools or software security services early in the development cycle, teams can test the code throughout their software development process. Also, developers must ensure the presence of security elements while they deliver software timely.

Focus On the Usage of New Tools

The introduction of new tools has speed up the adoption rate of DevOps, and now it has become vital to ensure that these tools are correctly integrated within the existing infrastructure and meet all the security levels. But, much focus should be on the team rather than on devices because workers are the essential faction in the shift of DevOps.

Educating and Training the Staff

This area needs serious attention. It is crucial to conduct weekly seminars and training sessions to educate the employers on new methods and tools they might be using in the development process and prepare them for new challenges. This will not just boost up worker’s knowledge but will also foster DevOps success.

Final Thoughts

Successful DevOps implementation is not an overnight project. The entire process requires advocacy, time, effort and strong leadership in a way that is compatible with your organization’s goals and objectives. Prepare yourself for achieving DevOps success by overcoming the challenges and hurdles that were made by the people that came before you.

— Farwa Sajjad

January 30, 2020
Are US Workers Threatened by Automation?

There’s been plenty of predictions about the impact of automation on the workforce: from enhancing the ability of workers to do their jobs to those who argue intelligent automation will eventually decimate the human workforce. The issue even made it to the Democratic presidential 2020 primary race with candidate Andrew Yang’s “Freedom Dividend.”

Still, if a recently published survey from business process automation provider Sykes is any indication, American workers aren’t very concerned. In fact, two-thirds of those Americans surveyed indicated they have yet to see automation on the job: 66% said that automation did not assist them with repetitive tasks in 2019. That response diverged with millennials (those 25 to 34 in this survey), with 41% saying that automaton has assisted them in their jobs last year.

Most Americans show a positive attitude toward on-the-job automation. According to the survey, 63% of respondents said that they could be better at their jobs if automating certain tasks enabled them to do more in less time. Not surprisingly, the percentage was highest, 71%, with the youngest (18 to 24) age group. Further, two-thirds of respondents said they would more likely apply at a company that is investing in automation technologies.

Indeed, the majority (58%) of respondent employers are actually providing some or a lot of training or other resources to help employees keep current with technological change.

The vast majority, 84%, of respondents believe their jobs will soon involve new automation technologies and expect some of their work to be completed by automation in 2020. While most respondents were open to increasingly working with automation to complete their jobs, few want to work for bots. The majority, a sizable 87%, said they are more willing to take orders from a human than a software bot (13%).

What industries do respondents think will be the most impacted by automation? In order, the U.S. workers surveyed believe manufacturing (65%), telecommunications (50%), and transportation (38%).

When it comes to public programs designed to mitigate the impact of automation on the workforce. However, 57% of workers believe that the U.S. government has a responsibility to compensate workers whose jobs are lost to automation. Of those, only 32% believe Universal Basic Income is the way to address jobs lost to automation, while 25% look to the existing welfare system. About 43% of workers do not think it’s the government’s role to compensate those whose lost their job because of automation.

The Sykes survey is based on the responses of 1,500 employed within the United States.

— George V. Hulme

January 24, 2020
These Three Approaches Will Help Your Enterprise Be More Agile

Nearly every organization that tries to change its culture to be more agile and better adapt to changing environments discovers that it’s harder than it looks. Agile transformation can’t be superficial or only embraced by the IT department–it needs to be completely pervasive throughout the business.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach or playbook that can be used to fit any organization’s unique situation. Yet, there are some common takeaways and best practices that can be gleaned from organizations that have successfully undergone agile transformation. Here are three common themes I’ve come away with from talking with organizations at various stages of their agile journey.

Creating an Agile Enterprise Relies on Successfully Orchestrating Change in Culture, Organizational Structure and Technical Capabilities at the Same Time

Changing enterprise organizational structure without changing culture and technology will lead to factors that drag down any potential transformation. It’s equally true when addressing any one of the elements in a vacuum. Instead, enterprises must address all three at once, which makes for a tricky prioritization exercise.

In many cases, new solutions will lead to new problems that organizations must address as they arise. Agile teams enabled to self-organize and pursue customer problems with greater freedom may find themselves hamstrung by inflexible legacy technology. Changing technology to enable agility may uncover additional organizational difficulties, and so on. Agile transformation is a long journey, and enterprises must adjust on the fly to their own unique circumstances.

When Making Changes to Drive Agility, Think About What Scarf Everyone Wears

Missy Lawrence-Johnston, a principal consultant from ISG’s Organizational Change Management practice, suggests that leaders should remember a warm and fuzzy acronym when working toward change: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness (SCARF). The SCARF model was developed by neuroscientist David Rock, and explains how individuals react to change based on perceived threats and rewards.

If a change negatively impacts someone on one of the dimensions they consider important, they’re more likely to push back on it. For example, a manager who cares a great deal about their status will probably have difficulty embracing an organizational shift that works to cut down on organizational hierarchy. But that same change could be highly valued by a rank-and-file employee who prefers greater autonomy. How people react is individual, which is why the SCARF everyone wears is unique to them, as Lawrence-Johnston points out.

As enterprises make the changes necessary to embrace agility, keeping this concept in mind will make it easier to navigate the threat responses employees inevitably have.

Measure Culture by the Behaviors People Exhibit at Work Every Day

ISG research shows that culture and team enablement are the most important factors when transforming into an agile enterprise. While culture can seem like something nebulous and difficult to pin down, it’s best evaluated by noticing what people do every day. Odds are, any employee of a firm has at least one story that illustrates what they see as the culture of the organization where they work. An enterprise’s culture is the sum of these stories.

Agile transformation requires some fairly radical changes for businesses that are used to working in a waterfall mindset. This often looks like a shift from a hierarchical, rule-driven culture that focuses on command and control to a collaborative, self-organizing culture with servant leadership. Implementing this degree of change takes significant work.

When changing culture, it’s not enough to put up a fresh set of posters with new values. Living those values and building organizational structures to support them is the key to success.

— Blair Hanley Frank

January 22, 2020
Untapping the Potential of DevOps, Part 2: Common Mistakes

Many companies are turning to software to differentiate themselves and drive success. But with an increased focus on software comes ever-increasing customer expectations on performance and updates. One of the best structures that IT organizations turn to is DevOps—a strategy that is designed to deliver value quickly and strategically.

Being successful in DevOps takes careful planning and execution. Is the organization structured to execute on DevOps principles? Is the company aligned in culture and goals? But just as there are commonalities for success, there also are common threads that can lead to failure. When it comes to DevOps, it indeed holds true that failure is an opportunity to learn.

With that in mind, here are three of the most common mistakes organizations encounter when diving into DevOps.

Misunderstanding Goals and Definitions

Many organizations are still grasping at a firm definition of DevOps and what it means for them. Simply labeling existing IT as DevOps isn’t going to make a difference. Furthermore, having clearly defined goals is key for just about any meaningful business endeavor. How can you know that you have succeeded if you don’t have a clear picture of what success looks like?

Before jumping onto the DevOps train, first understand what it means for your organization and decide on concrete, measurable goals to make sure the transformation is adding value. One of the key benefits of DevOps is it lends itself extremely well to data and measurement. After all, DevOps is about delivering value with velocity. How fast can you get your solutions into the hands of your customers? How close to perfect can you get your releases through automation? This measurability is what makes DevOps so satisfying—embrace it. It is a great feeling to watch the performance of a new streamlined development pipeline improve.

Fear of Change

Being fearful of rapid changes and new technologies is a killer of innovation and success. An overly cautious approach with too much manual intervention will stifle the progress of a DevOps transformation. Understand there will be change and the change may be significant for your organization, particularly depending on the current structure and processes. One of the biggest changes may be culturally—DevOps certainly requires different tools and structures, but also requires a change in understanding about how your organization fundamentally views and delivers software. Use DevOps as a catalyst for change—the speed may be daunting but can reap major long-term benefits.

Overestimating DevOps

DevOps alone can’t re-calibrate applications or change corporate culture—real leadership is required to push through organizational inertia and bring teams together. This goes back to the cultural change mentioned above. Simply putting DevOps into place and then sitting back and waiting for results will not work. Teams will need DevOps champions, not just at the beginning, but always. DevOps is a constantly growing and changing strategy, built to adapt to customer demands. It holds great power to help teams perform at new levels, but people are always the most important. Empower teams to grow with this new strategy and enjoy the benefits of a sound DevOps strategy.

Adopting DevOps is necessary to stay competitive in any market. However, while uniting people, tools and processes sound simple enough it can be a much more challenging feat than meets the eye. A DevOps transformation does not happen overnight and bumps in the road are to be expected. However, keeping in mind some of these common challenges can help keep the journey on the right track.

Bottom line: Take it one day at a time and make sure to optimize a transformation for organizational goals and long-term strategy.

— Jonathan Fries

December 4, 2019
The 20 Best DevOps Podcasts
Skip the whole “starting a podcast is easy, all you need is a computer and a mic” pitch. The truth is podcasting is hard and it takes considerable work to create something special. The low barrier of entry intrigue is a double-edged sword, making it harder for good podcasts to get noticed in the incessant wave of new shows coming to market every day.

Fortunately, there are podcast fanatics out there who can help curate the signal from the noise to ultimately recommend the best podcasts. I’ve worked in the DevOps space for awhile now, most notably at AppDynamics and Sumo Logic, and also run Discover Pods–a site about podcasts.

Without further adieu, here are my picks for best DevOps podcasts.

Arrested DevOps

Hosted by Joe Laha, Bridget Kromhout, Matt Stratton, Trever Hess and Jessica Kerr, Arrested DevOps is probably the most complete podcast on this list. With over 130 episodes produced, they’ve found a nice balance between giving actionable advice around key DevOps strategies, team management, tool selection and integration along with having truly interesting guests from all over the world on their podcast.

Episodes typically come out about once a month and hover around 45 minutes.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

Software Defined Talk

Software Defined Talk just crossed 200 episodes, making it one of the most accomplished podcasts on this list. Hosted by the always-amusing Cote, Brandon Whichard and Matt Ray, SDT is likely the most entertaining DevOps podcast you’ll listen to as well. They focus on what’s trendy and what has staying power in the greater DevOps landscape, plus go into news and current events.

New episodes are dropped weekly on Fridays and are usually and hour to an hour and a half long. On an unrelated meta note, I appreciate how they share their technical podcast experience with their audience including changing their podcast hosting service and frustrations with some of the major players.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

Masters of Data

Hosted by Ben Newton, Masters of Data is almost entirely composed of interviews with industry professionals, authors and more, around the role data plays in their lives. Though the majority of discussions are focused on data within the technology landscape, what separates MoD from others on this list is the diversity. For example, Sarah Guo from the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, talks about how she uses data to make investing decisions. John Visneski from Pokemon talks about how they use data to better ensure privacy. David Shor worked on Obama’s reelection campaign and talks about how data gave them the upper hand.

Episodes are published about once per month.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

DevOps Chat

In full disclosure, this podcast is produced by the fine folks at devopsy.kinsta.cloud, however, it most definitely still warrants placement on the list here. By leveraging their standing within the community–and most importantly as an unbiased third-party–DevOps Chat is able to bring guests on from every vendor to provide a glimpse into how they’re tackling major DevOps issues at their company.

Episodes are released frequently, sometimes multiple times per week. They’re usually relatively short and make for a quick listen on a commute.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

The Changelog

Billed as “Conversations with the hackers, leaders and innovators of software development,” and I guess I can’t describe it any more succinctly than that. Hosts Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo have a good podcast rapport and produce a weekly show (typically 45 minutes to an hour long). Usually, they’re joined by guest in the greater developer community.

Interview-based podcasts in particular seem to run the gamut of quality. Most outsiders likely think they’re the easiest since you simply need to book a guest and speak into a microphone. However, they require more of the intangibles like interview rapport, research and personality to create a successful show.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

Puppet Podcast (Pulling the Strings)

I typically hesitate to recommended branded podcasts of any kind, but Puppet has earned the respect and doesn’t shill in their show. The podcast mostly comprises of industry discussions in automation and config management. Their latest episode discusses the most recent State of DevOps Report and the larger trends they’re seeing in the market exemplified from the survey.

Listen: Apple Podcasts

Azure DevOps Podcast

Hosted by Microsoft MVP, Jeffrey Palermo, the Azure DevOps Podcast is an interview-based shows with both practitioners and execs specializing in .NET and Windows-focused DevOps roles. Though I don’t quite agree with the podcast description using the words “hard-hitting interviews,” Palermo is able to conduct an interesting conversation with his guests as well as provide listeners with actionable strategies on pushing out new features and monitoring them in production.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher

Honorable Mentions

Some of these are no longer in circulation but many of their episodes are usually around evergreen topics and are–at the very least–entertaining listens on DevOps topics:
- ThoughtWorks
- Continuous Discussions (c9d9)
- DevOps Radio
- Software Defined Interviews
- DevOps Mastery
- Software Engineering Daily
- All Things DevOps
- Real World DevOps
- Nice Work
- The Hanselminutes Podcast
- Greater Than Code
- This Developer’s Life
- DevSecOps Community
There you have it, my favorite DevOps podcasts. They’ll interview your favorite thought leaders, discuss container strategies, CI/CD and more.

— Kevin Goldberg
November 15, 2019
Achieving Organizational Change Through Scaled DevOps

The rapid pace of technological change has had a major impact on customer expectation, forcing IT decision-makers to adopt agile processes to ensure the continual delivery of innovation. This has led to the mass adoption of DevOps practices, with 77% of organizations indicating they rely on DevOps to deploy software, or plan to, in the near future.

DevOps is a key ingredient for building and deploying better software faster. It enables developers to spend less time on onerous tasks and more time creating new features that drive competitive advantage and elevate customer experience.

But, for DevOps to streamline organizational change, it can’t be a one-off initiative. Scaled DevOps requires aligning team members on common goals and best practices and establishing a DevOps maturity model tailored to a company’s individual needs. This is no easy lift and has led teams to abandon DevOps initiatives before they even get started. While the road to scaled DevOps can be daunting, the benefits can have a positive ripple effect across the organization.

Business

The business benefits that accompany DevOps are endless. Think: expanding your customer base, spearheading organizational readiness and achieving unmatched speed. As the consumer landscape continues to change, you will be able to adapt accordingly to generate new features and pathways to customers. Plus, DevOps provides a prime opportunity to get more information from your client base and relay it back to developers, equipping your organization with opportunities to learn from its failures and develop a company-wide, reflective model that better accommodates customer demands.

Once your organization establishes a successful DevOps practice, it will be better prepared to take on other emerging trends and undergo a full-scale digital transformation. With DevOps as the catalyst for change, you can surpass competitors and disrupt the industry with innovative ideas, enabling you to stay ahead of the curve. Once an organization is fully committed to DevOps practices, the company will also enjoy a competitive advantage due to increased speed by empowering your business to provide customers with capabilities faster than rival industry players.

Culture

DevOps may require a daunting corporate culture makeover, but it also allows businesses to enjoy unbeatable cultural benefits by improving communication, establishing a foundation for continuous learning and boosting corporate morale with more meaningful work. When effective processes for communication are in place, employees can avoid the misunderstandings and missteps that often lead to failed initiatives and low morale. Once DevOps improves communication between teams, it sets the stage for more collaboration and cross-departmental education, allowing an organization to develop new operational efficiencies and empowering staff with highly specialized knowledge. With reduced inefficiencies, team members are empowered with more free time to create and meet new goals, plus budding talent from competitors will be drawn to your organization’s innovative environment.

Operations

Empowered by scaled DevOps, businesses will enjoy huge operational and technical rewards with automation, controlling costs and revamping security practices. Since establishing a DevOps practice requires the successful adoption of automation processes, a DevOps initiative includes the same key benefits that automation boasts by delivering the coveted digital experiences that consumers, employees and stakeholders demand. Automation not only meets these demands, but also sets the groundwork for a DevOps journey with CI/CD pipelines that automate software releases to rid your organization of manual release challenges.

On the financial front, as your company moves toward a consumption-based economics model for things like public cloud, your DevOps practice will help control costs and environments by alleviating unused tools. In the long run, improved security will also prove profitable because there is no fiscal nightmare worse than a breach. Upon defining your DevOps model, compliance and control are not only maintained, but rapidly transformed through automated policies and configuration management.

With knowledge of the transformational qualities that come with an effective DevOps approach, IT leaders are eager to adopt DevOps to improve efficiency, boost profitability, deliver superior customer experience and establish a culture of empowerment. However, they must understand that successful DevOps initiatives do not happen overnight. DevOps is reliant on continuous testing and education to ensure that companies can keep pace with their new collaborative culture, rapid delivery process and new technologies. Nevertheless, motivated by the promise of positive business, operational and cultural transformations, organizations will be more willing to prioritize the key credentials necessary to start, and maintain, an efficient DevOps practice.

— Tim Curless

November 14, 2019
The Secret to Digital Transformation is Human Connection

We know digital transformation is no longer an option for today’s organizations–it’s a requirement. End-users have come to expect an easy, digital-native experience, whether they are ordering a pizza or automating an entire network infrastructure, which is why businesses and governments are throwing trillions of dollars at new technologies and related services.

Organizations must build and deliver exciting new software applications, faster than ever before. They must continuously innovate, adapt and stay ahead of the never-ending demands of digital data, experiences and channels. These demands have contributed to the meteoric rise of cloud computing, DevOps methodologies, open source technologies, predictive analytics, AI and many other innovations.

However, even with all these investments, more than half of all new software or IT projects still fail. In fact, according to a study by Forbes Insights, 75% of executives say they’re still waiting to reap tangible benefits from disruptive technology. Here’s why: Technology alone does not solve digital transformation. It doesn’t address some of the most fundamental issues that inhibit or enable transformational success nor the most critical dependency, which is people.

To truly transform, organizations must go beyond just technology to embrace the human elements of this evolution. We’ll look at six factors driven by the human side of the business, and how each of these can help, not hinder, digital transformation when properly addressed.

Organizational Culture

One of the biggest challenges for companies as they embark on digital transformation is the needed cultural change. The technology decisions, while daunting, are easier compared to the cultural shift organizations must undertake to truly become digital leaders. Top down mandates won’t work, because for it to be successful, digital transformation needs buy-in from all involved. People need to connect to the change and feel they can have an impact, or at the very least, know their job is safe amid the change. Also, to achieve the speed of change and innovation, organizations need to empower everyone to make decisions, not just a select few.

Embracing an open culture can help with this. In an open culture, digital leaders look at their organization more like a community of individuals, all contributing to something bigger than themselves. Anyone can participate, lead and suggest a change or improvement. This methodology helps for the best ideas to win out, regardless of where they come from. Employees feel part of the process and ultimately, it empowers them to work toward the shared goal. Let me be clear, this isn’t a democracy or a lack of clear decision making power. However, it is using more open decision frameworks that move everyone toward a common goal, which brings us to the next big human factor.

An Inspiring Vision with Metrics of Success

It is often said to start with the end in mind. With digital transformation, this is absolutely true. For digital transformation to be successful, everyone in the organization needs to understand, and ideally agree with, the destination. Visions are not just words—they are driving the priorities, investments and decisions made by every team and employee. Without a clear vision, organizations can’t create an executable business strategy. The key is to make sure you have a vision that clearly describes what your organization will be like in several years–and then make that vision measurable.

All good visions come with goals attached to them. Yet according to research from Gartner, 50% of organizations have no digital transformation metric or way to measure progress for digital transformation. Set up clear, ambitious targets–stretch goals the entire company can work toward. These metrics allow organizations to clearly check on how they have progressed and where they still need to get to.

Cross-Organizational Teams and Processes

Another cultural barrier to digital transformation is siloed behavior and workstreams. Often, teams refuse, or just don’t know, how to break out of their silos. Digital transformation requires collaboration and breaking down boundaries, as data, insights, applications and processes need to flow seamlessly throughout an organization. It all goes back to having a vision and an open culture. Without a culture of trust and a shared agreement on the end goal from across the organization, you won’t be able to break down these silos.

With the vision and culture in place, adopting DevOps and agile processes is a great way to initiate this. It helps bring together business, technical and other people from across an organization to solve a specific problem or figure out how to better work together. Often, this takes a courageous leader, who doesn’t measure their value by the power or budget they hold, to broker these cross-organizational relationships and new teams.

People Development

In talking to IT and business leaders all over the world, they are faced with a common challenge: skill set gaps. This includes both soft skills, such as communications or management, and hard skills, such as technical capabilities. According to Red Hat’s survey on Global IT Trends & Priorities Research, the biggest blocker to an organization’s digital transformation efforts is people. More specifically, the survey found IT talent or skills gap was preventing organizations’ efforts from being successful. Technology and digital processes are changing so quickly, it’s hard to keep up. This is creating a digital skills gap in organizations across industries and around the world.

Rather than hoping to hire people with the skills and talent you need, I encourage organizations to develop the people you have. Take your loyal employees who already fit your culture and believe in your vision and invest in them. Also reward them for taking risks. Digital disruption does not happen by standing still or encouraging small moves–it takes big bets. Leadership must also be willing to stand up for employees who try new ideas and push the boundaries.

User Experience Focus

According to CareerFoundry, which manages a Web UX design school, the cost of a bad user experience is high. Really high. Its research estimates bad user experience costs e-commerce companies $1.4 trillion in lost revenue.

As we focus on the human connection part of digital transformation, user experience takes the front seat and is a top priority. We need to start with the user. What are they trying to do? What is the pain we are hopefully solving? Too many times organizations start with the cool technology and slap on the user experience as almost an afterthought. By starting with the user, projects are more likely to give users the feeling they are interfacing with a human being rather than a digital thing—and ultimately, will succeed because of it.

Personal Connections

One of the downsides of the digital era is we don’t have enough face time. We believe video conferences provide the same benefits as face-to-face meetings. We put our trust in digital handshakes instead of the real thing. However, to succeed at a company-wide digital transformation, you can’t rely on digital communication alone. Ironic, right?

One key reason for making face time is to build trust. As humans, we need to see someone, look them in the eye, shake their hand, respond to their cues. All of this helps us trust the other person. To put your organization through a major transformation takes trust–across the organization, but especially of the leadership. This means leadership needs to get out there and talk to employees, customers, partners and users. Take the time and the effort to make your transformational efforts relate to the humans doing the work and buying your products or services.

The Bottom Line

The most common mistake organizations make is believing technology alone can solve their problems. Technology is still needed for a successful digital transformation. In fact, I am not in any way advising we all sit around and have a lovely conversation and hold hands to solve these massive technology issues. However, technology must be combined with human connection.

In other words, it’s not just what you use to transform, but the how and the why of your transformation. The human elements require hard work across culture, hiring, people development, leadership and communication.

Human connection is the killer application for digital transformation.

— Margaret Dawson

September 26, 2019
Top 3 Challenges of DevOps Adoption

Customer expectations continue to relentlessly rise as new technological opportunities emerge. Today, organizations demand products and application features are delivered and implemented wherever and whenever needed. Everywhere you look, execution is at risk of falling behind imaginations and business imperatives. That is, of course, unless DevOps is starting to wield a strategic and philosophic influence.

DevOps has been one of the hottest enterprise trends for some time now, and a crucial concept in helping companies satisfy customer demands by bringing teams together to fuel better collaboration and innovation.

According to Deloitte, organizations adopting DevOps see an 18% to 21% reduction in time to market.

By removing the waste that impedes software development, operations are streamlined, and businesses can react faster to market demands. At the same time, automation enables companies to align business objectives with processes to immediately recover from IT failures. Deloitte also reports the speedy, DevOps-influenced, customer-friendly release of new products and services led to a 20% revenue increase.

While that is all good, DevOps is still a new topic to many. Large scale adoption is generally slow. It is important to note DevOps is not simply the implementation of new tools. It is about rebooting deep-rooted cultural habits, transforming old processes and ensuring all changes are made for the right reasons. Don’t embrace DevOps for the sake of it. Only proceed if you have clarity and purpose.

Breaking of the Deep-Rooted, Cultural Habits

DevOps is not a team. It is a culture of collaboration that yields a set of best practices and operational cultures. Sometimes companies wanting to adopt a DevOps approach are met with resistance from employees uncomfortable with change. Leadership needs to come from the top. Executives must support employees in dismantling the status quo and breaking down silos hindering successful implementation. Motivation rises when results are positive, concrete and observable. There is no magic formula but, if you get the right leadership and culture in place, chances are DevOps will land with resonance. Gartner reports 88% of businesses believe team culture is one of the top impacts on an organization’s ability to scale DevOps.

Changing Well Defined Processes to More Efficient Ones

The best way to identify inefficiencies is to map processes and recognize what is and isn’t working. Start by looking for waste–areas where resources are being exhausted without delivering real value. A silo-influenced lack of communication can significantly slow down businesses and there is a risk each department will think DevOps is not their responsibility. Some may be resistant to implementing change, which will cause unnecessary lags within the business. It is vital to understand it is not just the responsibility of software developers to ensure the processes work for them. DevOps is a process that brings development teams and other IT stakeholders together to achieve one common goal: delivering faster, higher quality work to market.

Beware of DevOps for DevOps Sake

With DevOps, companies can streamline and automate every task. That doesn’t mean it’s right for every element of every business. Often, companies will pick a couple of departments to trial a DevOps approach with–usually the development team. The temptation is then to continue scaling across the organization as soon as positive results are apparent. The issue here is that different departments all have different needs and challenges and, as we’ve already said, effective DevOps rollout requires an overhaul of processes and ways of working. Organizations need to be careful and think about specific business needs, instead of just being engaged in a rudderless trend chase. Know your objectives before engaging in sweeping overhauls. Keep learning and, above all, stay tuned to customer needs.

— Rodrigo Albuquerque

September 26, 2019
DOES19 London: Effective Team Management Foments New Ways of Working

In the IT space it feels like we collectively begin asking and ruminating on the same question all at once, chewing on all the possible answers and outcomes. Recently, one such question has begun popping up with more and more frequency: “How can we help teams, and especially product teams, be more effective?”

While more research is coming out to help guide teams through new and iterative ways of working, moving on from static and traditional models is far from the norm. So, it may come as no surprise that insights into different ways of structuring product teams would be a prominent topic at Gene Kim’s DevOps Enterprise Summit 2019 (DOES19) in London.

There, I sat down with Manuel Pais, an independent IT consultant focused on team interactions and the co-author of a new IT Revolution Publishing book, “Team Topologies.”

In our interview, Manuel shares some takeaways from his book as well as guidance on the importance of managing team “cognitive load” and how organizations can begin rethinking their approach to software delivery when it comes to cross-functional teams.

In addition to our interview on the Digital Anarchist set, I am also happy to include a video of Manuel’s presentation alongside co-author, Matthew Skelton.

If you’re interested in hearing from other IT and DevOps leaders, be sure to watch the other 30 video interviews from the conference up on the Digital Anarchist site.

Don’t forget! DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2019 is happening Oct. 28-30 at The Cosmopolitan Hotel. Be sure to register here if you haven’t already and join us for the premier event for technology leaders of large, complex organizations implementing DevOps principles and practices. You can also preview the event by watching presentations from past DevOps Enterprise Summits.

— Alan Shimel

September 24, 2019