Devops without a Million Dollar Investment
Lakshmi Baskaran - Devops without a Million Dollar Investment
Do you want to hear about how I terribly failed in leading my first devops transformation? I don’t intend to give you a process handbook or a blueprint for a successful devops adoption. But I aim to walk you through a perfect narration of my journey that will prepare you for the unknown in devops.
Five years ago, when I was working for one of the big corporates, I had access to ample budget. Around the same time is when the devops movement was gaining popularity and most organizations - big and small were introducing devops for software development. I was learning about devops through conferences, meet ups and in every other professional catch ups. I was sold that devops is the next big thing after agile which is believed to increase efficiency in software delivery.
Soon enough, I was leading a devops transformation in my organization.
Here are the list of things that resulted in my first unsuccessful attempt in devops transformation:
- Waited forever for an approval on a million dollar budget to kick off devops transformation - not realizing transformation of culture doesn’t need money, it only needs changing people’s mindset towards software development and delivery.
- Created devops transformation roadmap. Little did I realize that devops transformation is not a project that has a start and end date. It is a journey. A journey where we iteratively Adopt - Test - Learn devops principles that are suitable for the organization and team.
- Hired expensive consultants to promote and execute devops. I failed to identify devops influencers within my teams and train them in devops promotion and execution.
Having failed once and learnt what it means to promote a positive devops culture, here is what I did in my future devops transformations which resulted in a positive outcome
- Initiated devops transformation with limited budget. The budget was mostly used for tooling and automation and less on fostering culture.
- Devops is best run agile. We did not step into a devops transformation with a blueprint or a process handbook. We created, adopted and documented devops principles based on what resonated with each of our teams.
- The first and foremost milestone in devops adoption is to promote cultural transformation. Tooling and automation will follow suit.