Making the Most of Your DevOps: A Slack Takeover with Gene Gotimer
Thought leaders throughout the software community are taking over the TechWell Hub for a day to introduce themselves, answer questions, and engage in conversations.
Gene Gotimer is a principal consultant at Coveros Inc. and works with his customers to build software better, faster, and more securely by introducing DevOps practices. @Gene Gotimer presided over our most recent Slack takeover to discuss all things DevOps.
Getting All the Benefits from DevOps
“Who would you include in efforts to create processes and policies for delivering applications in a DevOps environment?” —via SurveyMonkey
“If you want all the benefits from DevOps, it has to be everyone in the organization,” Gotimer said. “But ‘everyone’ never seems to be an option when starting out, and probably wouldn't work out even if it was.”
He recommends starting with incremental change and deciding what part of your process is the biggest, most obvious, or most frustrating roadblock. Then figure out who is in charge of that factor and see if you can help them make it less of a roadblock.
By the time that roadblock is removed, you’ll have an ally or group of allies who can help you tackle the next roadblock and evangelize the benefits of DevOps.
DevOps without Agile?
“Can you start DevOps without being agile?” —@Owen
Sure, Gotimer said, “as long as you set expectations that a) it will be a little slower, and b) that is because you will be adopting agile practices and culture at the same time that you are starting with DevOps.”
DevOps and agile aren't separate. The same principles of agile from the Agile Manifesto show up throughout DevOps.
Gotimer said the key to transitioning to an agile or a DevOps environment is to understand that you are changing culture. Tools and automation will help and practices will keep you disciplined and focused, but unless you change the culture to be more in line with agile principles, you won't get far with either agile or DevOps adoption.
Requirements for CI/CD
“What do you do when your company is talking CI/CD when they don't even have use cases/requirements covering much of your company's architecture?” —@Jeanette Kreutner
Gotimer said the requirements and use cases do exist, but maybe they aren't written down formally—or at all.
“You can almost always tell that someone has a good feel for some things the systems should do or maybe shouldn't do,” he said.
If you want to document use cases for your company’s architecture, Gotimer had some advice: “An easy way of identifying some of those is just to offer to turn something off, or unplug it from the network, or cut its memory in half, etc. Someone will inevitably scream, ‘We need that because … !’ Boom, you've got a requirement or use case.”
Read the full transcript of Gene Gotimer’s takeover here.
