It’s hard to find a unified definition of what DevOps is. DevOps is a way of living, a way of working, a way of understanding our clients, for some, even a new way of looking at life.
Are you a DevOps believer? We might be looking for you… check out our open positions to join our team.
Several books delve deep into DevOps definitions. This kind of lecture gives you a good understanding to start the cultural transformation to achieve DevOps.
As we have experienced at Intraway, I’ve concluded that four key pillars must be conquered to get the most out of DevOps.
Tools
Tools allow us to build things, write better code, manage stuff. We love tools because we are technical people and when we think about DevOps we think about Puppet, Jenkins, Docker, Maven.
However, having the greatest tools in the world is not the key to success to improve value for our clients. We also need to look at the next pillar.
Process
Without DevOps, the development process is a waterfall process. Some developers use Agile methodologies. When we take a look at the whole process, we will find that there is a waterfall approach.
While we might be doing an excellent job, we might be obstructed by the processes in place. We should take a break and review those processes to identify mistakes and what we need to fix them to meet the ultimate goal:
“Repeatable, reliable, and automated deployment of value for our clients.”
People
Collaborating is key to success when working with DevOps. The whole team (“developers,” “QA,” “operations,” “dba” ) must work together towards a common goal. It’s not just to work all together in the same room. We must leave our comfort zone, set common goals, generate internal feedback and modify roles.
We aim to leave in the past emails asking for infrastructure or manual deployments. We must work together to install a small but production-like environment in our development pipeline.
In the end, we should achieve infrastructure defined as a code. We have to put that code in source control. We need to versioned that code so that for a particular build we know precisely what we needed to do.
Culture
So far, we have the right tools; we have a polished process and a well-focused team of people working together. What’s missing? Culture.
Culture is a set of values and behaviors that allow us to succeed when implementing DevOps. The main characteristic of this culture must be increased collaboration between all teams and an attitude of shared responsibility. We should eliminate all kind of silos.
The Culture must be shared by all in our the company, from the head to the root.
We won’t achieve DevOps only with the right tools or the best processes. We must aim to get the full package. We have to breathe DevOps.
Are you a DevOps believer? We might be looking for you… check out our open positions to join our team.
