Proponents of DevOps talk of how they are breaking down the walls between development and operations, often they will talk about feedback loops – especially if they are Agile advocates. Feedback loops – we used to call it “talking” and as companies get larger and become Enterprises talking becomes harder as silos form.
Restarting the conversation between the silos is one of the hardest parts of enabling DevOps, the silos have formed to support the Business – to keep the lights on and the Customers happy. These companies have a culture that supports those silos with people who are passionate about their part of the world and engrained feedback cycles. The “horses” who run the bits that actually make the company money, and the “unicorns” who want to keep the company making money naturally look at each with distrust. In the world of infrastructure the Unicorns are the trendy devs who’ll throw in some piece of code before chasing after the next sexy thing. The horses are the neighsayers (sorry couldn’t resist) – slow to respond, cautious about change, focused on risk not speed.
History has shown that for a company to adopt new methodologies you must start with the culture, you need to change its feedback loops to support a new world. These changes can be hard on people and can lead to us losing valued colleagues and friends – or perhaps we are sometimes the ones that move on.
The challenge we all face is how we can break our own personal feedback loops – how do you make sure that your own convictions do not become internal, negative, feedback loops. Even those of you who are at the bleeding edge today, how do you make sure that you stay current?
Sadly we cannot all live in the City by the Bay (would be nice though eh?) which seems at the moment to be in the grip of its own positive feedback cycle. What I Love is that in today’s ultra-connected world the San Fran cycle seems driven not by Twitter or Facebook, but by good old fashioned physical interactions.
As you can probably guess I have been thinking about how do I stay current, how do I not become that which I hate. I am not sure I have the answer, I suspect there isn’t a single, static solution. Below is a selection of the things that I hope will help my feedback cycles – please share what you have found in your digital travels!
Meetups (http://www.meetup.com/cities/gb/17/london/) (I have promised myself I will get to one this year)
Listening to Podcasts (The Cloudcast is a regular) and watching You Tube channels for conferences (I’m currently working through https://www.youtube.com/user/DOES2014/videos) whilst travelling or doing chores.
Reading, I’d recommend:
Phoenix Project (the seeming bible for DevOps) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business-ebook/dp/B00AZRBLHO
Service Design Patterns: Fundamental Design Solutions for SOAP, WSDL and RESTful Web Services http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0061LAM5K
Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test and Deployment Automation http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003YMNVC0
12factor.net (and its eBook)
Self-Leadership and the One Minute Manager https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000JMKT50
Who Moved My Cheese? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Amazing/dp/0091816971
Random insights – Thoughtworks Blogs:http://www.thoughtworks.com/insights
Finally there is always the trusty Register! http://www.theregister.co.uk
http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-06-13
Please note that this post was orginally posted on LinkedIn
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