Fixing DevOps

I recently posted a one-liner on LinkedIn, that attracted a great deal of interest and thought-provoking discussion.

If I was paid a £1 for every consultancy, company or private contractors who claim to come in and “fix DevOps” for us and then fail, I would be a very rich man 🙂

In light of the comments and queries, I decided to expand on what I mean by Fixing DevOps and failing at it. First, let me start by explaining what was the trigger to write the line.

One Cheeky Email

As a Head of Software Engineering I have been targeted  by Sales representatives attempting to sell software products and software development services for quite some time now; a few days ago I received yet another email promising to Fix all the DevOps headaches we might have and change our company to become a DevOps Nirvana if only we would to bring them in.

I have been working in the financial sector for 9 years and witnessed a number of times promises that hardly ever been delivered on. I know that my industry colleagues have had similar experiences.

Thus, the above one-liner shared on LinkedIn, was born.

Some problems of large organizations

Historically, the organization I work for had nothing to do with technology. Banks offered financial services for centuries without the use of Software. Computer systems and software were adopted in the 60ties. The technology was used as an aid to business, means of making money easier and faster. Today banks would not exist without IT systems. There is more virtual money in the economy than tangible assets.

In many large organizations, technology is still looked at as an afterthought, the necessary evil that has to be dealt with in the most cost-effective way possible. Latest advances and innovation are hard to introduce. New technologies and processes are adopted at a much slower pace than technology focused organizations like Google or Amazon.

Large and complex organizations can’t exist without modern technology as well as technology makes no sense without their core business. The truth is, both sides have to work together but in reality, the way organizations are constructed prevents it from happening.

Technology is siloed into one organizational unit and business into another, each with its respective leader. Technology becomes a service organization for business. Local goals emerge, driven by local targets resulting in both organization pulling into different directions and the customer finding little to no improvement.

Let’s reiterate some of the DevOps principles at this point:

• Focus on delivering value to a user
• Thinking big picture – End-to-End product delivery, from inception to delivery and beyond
• Never-ending feedback loop on the product, it’s quality and behavior in production
• Cross-functional and autonomous teams
• Ruthless automation of everything

#BuzzWords to the rescue

I observed the following pattern in the history of DevOps adoption with the involvement of technology leaders at different organizational levels.

A Leader hears a ‘buzzword’: DevOps. Next steps are:

• some research into benefits,
• multiple visits by DevOps consultancies, referring to case studies within a similar large organization,
• a consultancy (or few) comes in to perform DevOps assessment,
• a report is produced with information about organizational challenges,
• recommendations on how to change and what tools to adopt

Tools become the focus area of proposed improvements as organizational changes are too problematic for A Leader. Consultancy begins the new engagement, ramping up resources and bringing in new tools. The process of “fixing the DevOps” in the organization starts.

A Leader chooses a small area of Organization to roll out new approached and tools. Neither the consultancy nor small area of Organization has enough remit nor possibility to influence any organizational changes, resulting in: consultancies automating a few basic processes, leaving behind a large backlog of future/unfinished work and a hefty bill.

Small, local improvements make little impact in the large organization. The experiment is deemed as a failure and adoption stops (until next Leader arrives or a good sales strategy from different consultancy).

Summary

Many DevOps consultancies are selling The Dream, utilizing template case studies based on the size of targeted organizations, rather than being tailored to individual requirements of said organizations. Challenges posed by organization structure in DevOps adoption are overlooked during sales negotiations. Resulting engagement creates an invalid perception of DevOps as not being fit for purpose, causing more damage than good.

The truth is that for any change to be successful, creating long-lasting effect the initiative has to come out from within, driven by ‘outside the box’ approach.