Alex Yates points out a problem in how many people think of DevOps:
There is so much that is wrong with that conversation.
We could talk about the bottlenecks and the large amount of work in progress backed up in test – and the ways that could be fixed,
We could talk about the infrequent ‘big bang’ release in three months and the manual, error prone heroics that will probably be required to deliver it – and the ways that could be fixed,
We could talk about the misguided approach regarding branching strategies or the shared development database – and the ways they could be fixed,
We could talk about testing silos and the likelihood of drift and inconsistencies between different environments – and the ways they could be fixed,
We could talk about the word “DevOps-ing” – and why it should be burned along with anyone who uses it un-ironically. (And anyone who uses the word “irony” inappropriately or puts their commas at the end of the line.),
But I’m not going to talk about any of those things. I’m not going to talk about any of the things the customer said. I’m not going to talk about any of the technical issues or the possible solutions to those problems.
I’m going to talk about something much, much more important.
Read on to see what is much, much more important: culture.