Big Companies are Improving with DevOps

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Thursday, March 30, 2017 7:20 AM

    Rod at work - Wednesday, March 29, 2017 8:29 AM

    Your article is timely. Just this morning I received an email from our CIO discussing some possible, detrimental actions in the future for us. I can't share what at this time, just say that it would have consequences.

    Anyway, my point is this, if DevOps really does save money, then that would be very good for us. Things I hear about quicker to market is all well and good, but in a way irrelevant to where I work. In order to help in our current situation we need to reduce cost. Does DevOps do that? Is there documented studies showing it does?

    Depends on what costs you incur. Are you trying to get rid of technical staff? Certainly some of the aspects of implementing DevOps, such as automation (deploys, builds, tests) can possibly help. There is an offset with less knowledge and less people to work on software, not to mention the time to culturally alter development.

    Releasing faster? Not really a lower cost item. Working on the value items that customers need and not wasting time on items that don't add value? not a direct cost reducer either.

    Thank you, Steve. Then perhaps DevOps would be a difficult sell at the agency where I work. I very much doubt I could convince management to adopt DevOps, then.

    Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.

  • Michael L John - Thursday, March 30, 2017 10:51 AM

    Jeff Moden - Thursday, March 30, 2017 8:28 AM

    I guess I just don't understand why people think you can "implement" DevOps.  You can't implement a culture.  You have to enable it and then let it happen.

    I also don't understand why people think DevOps has anything to do with automating testing or deployment.  If that can be done, that's great, but that's a method... not a culture and it's not DevOps.

    DevOps is about intra and inter departmental communication and removing road blocks.

    When I first started in IT in the early 1990's, we were the geeks in the corner who couldn't communicate with anyone, had really expensive toys, cost a lot of money, and were treated like a necessary evil.

    We recognized that we needed to change the culture  We needed to know more about operations than the operations department, more about marketing than the marketing department, and so forth. 

    We transformed the department into strategic partners to the rest of the business units.  WHAT we developed was now on target, right the first time, and delivered measurable value to the entire organization. 
    This value did not apply to only to software development. Everything we put in place was designed to help everyone in the company perform their job functions better. 

    I guess that was DevOps without training, without a name, and without a lot of money spent.

    I think that's one of the better definitions (and success stories) of what I perceive DevOps to be... dismantling of silos and barriers between groups with the goal of increased quality while, at the same time, greatly reducing rework because people get it right the first time and that has the effect of dramatically improving throughput. It's an "improvement spiral" rather than a "death spiral". I've been fortunate to mostly work for companies that understood that and that included my stint in the USN way back in the '70s.

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

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