Three Practices for Effective DevOps Adoption

A couple of years ago, Endava realized that the difficulties in DevOps adoption are never the automation technology but rather the ways-of-working, which require a much more fundamental change in people's behavior and culture. Over time we found that there are three practices that have been repeatedly useful in helping successful DevOps adoption.

The practices are (real) agile development, incubator teams and pipelines. In this talk, Eoin will briefly review all three, discuss why they facilitate successful DevOps adoption and talk in a bit more depth about incubator teams, which may be less familiar to attendees than the other two.

Transcript

1. GOTOpia
   SEPTEMBER 2020
   EOIN WOODS
   Three Practices for
   Effective DevOps Adoption
   

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2. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1 2
   Agenda
   1. INTRODUCTIONS
   2. RECAP THE MEANING OF “DEVOPS”
   3. SOME COMMON DEVOPS ADOPTION PROBLEMS
   4. THREE PRACTICES FOR DEVOPS ADOPTION
   5. CONCLUSIONS
   

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3. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
   Dr Eoin Woods – “Owen”
   CTO at Endava since 2015
   • 1990 – 2003: Product companies in UK & US
   • 2003 – 2014: Capital Markets companies
   Leading the “DevOps at Endava” programme
   Author, speaker, community guy
   

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4. CLOSE TO CLIENT
   Denmark
   Germany
   Netherlands
   United Kingdom
   United States
   NEARSHORE DELIVERY
   European Union:
   Romania and Bulgaria
   Central European:
   North Macedonia,
   Moldova, and Serbia
   Latin America:
   Argentina, Colombia,
   Uruguay, and Venezuela
   6,468
   AS OF MAR 31, 2020
   GLOBAL EMPLOYEES
   AS OF MAR 31, 2020
   36 OFFICES // 31 CITIES // 15 COUNTRIES
   Banking & Financial Services
   Payments
   Insurance
   Investment Management
   Telco & Media
   Mobility
   Healthtech
   Retail & CPG
   FOCUSED INDUSTRY EXPERTISE
   

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5. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
   2
   Reminder: what is “DevOps”?
   5
   

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6. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
   DEVOPS
   AGILITY ►
   MOVING FASTER
   MOVING FASTER ►
   REGULAR CHANGE
   REGULAR CHANGE ►
   CONTAINERS & SERVICES
   CONTAINERS AND SERVICES ►
   OPERATIONAL COMPLEXITY
   Why DevOps? Why Now?
   

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7. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
   Defining DevOps at Endava
   CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS,
   DELIVERING AND OPERATING SOFTWARE
   AS A VISIBLE, MEASURABLE FLOW OF
   VALUE IN A CONTINUOUS AND
   SUSTAINABLE WAY
   (NOT PRIMARILY ABOUT AUTOMATION – WE CALL THAT “CONTINOUS DELIVERY”)
   

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8. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
   CULTURE
   FOCUS ON PEOPLE
   EMBRACE
   EXPERIMENTATION
   SHARING
   OPEN INFORMATION
   SHARING
   COLLABORATION &
   COMMUNICATION
   AUTOMATION
   CONTINUOUS
   DELIVERY
   INFRASTRUCTURE
   AS CODE
   MEASUREMENT
   MEASURE
   EVERYTHING
   SHOW THE
   IMPROVEMENT
   LEAN
   PRODUCE VALUE
   FOR END USER
   SMALL BATCH SIZES
   C A L M S – A REMINDER
   

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9. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
   3
   Common Problems in
   DevOps Adoption
   9
   

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10. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    Some Difficulties with DevOps Adoption
    

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11. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    Some Difficulties with DevOps Adoption
    Expectations
    Culture
    Tools Focus
    Silos
    Organisational
    Environment
    

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12. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    4
    Three Practices for DevOps Adoption
    12
    

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13. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1 13
    Technical teams providing
    transitional expertise and
    transferring knowledge
    Enabler Teams
    Help to build and evolve
    critical new infrastructure
    and coach & lead other
    teams
    Agile Working
    Functional agile teams
    with effective product
    owners
    Enables the reliable flow
    of useful change, crucial
    for DevOps working
    Automated, validating,
    single-route to production
    for all code changes
    Pipelines
    Technical artefact shared
    between Dev and Ops,
    contributes to reliability,
    and efficiency.
    

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14. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    14
    AGILE WORKING
    

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15. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    15
    AGILE WORKING
    Empowered, informed, decisive, product owner
    Empowered, cross-functional team
    High quality, maintained, prioritised, backlog
    Consistent, sufficient, software quality
    DevOps needs a regular, sustainable, predictable flow of valuable changes
    This requires …
    

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16. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    16
    PIPELINES
    BUILD UNIT TEST PACKAGE TEST DEPLOY
    INTEGRATION
    TEST
    NON-FUNCTIONAL
    TEST
    ACCEPTANCE
    TEST DEPLOY
    STABILITY & CONFIDENCE
    

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17. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    17
    PIPELINES
    STABILITY & CONFIDENCE
    STABILITY & CONFIDENCE
    

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18. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    18
    PIPELINES
    STABILITY & CONFIDENCE
    Single automated path from commit to production
    => Reliability, repeatability, consistency & efficiency
    Key collaboration point: not just technical benefit
    Visible manifestation of your path-to-production
    Increases confidence stage by stage
    => Includes manual checkpoints where needed
    

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19. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    ENABLER TEAMS
    DevOps implementation is difficult …
    and it’s never a technology problem (really)
    There is a lot to learn …
    and a lot of culture to instil …
    and a lot of behaviour to encourage
    Enabler Teams are one way we’ve found to help with this
    

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20. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    20
    ENABLER TEAMS
    Enabler teams work as peer-team within the overall engineering team to:
    • Develop culture by example
    • Bring and transfer technical knowledge
    • Build useful shared things that make everyone more productive
    

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21. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1 21
    SOME ENABLER TEAM MODELS
    Nurturing
    Expert team working with
    all scrum teams to foster
    practice & transfer
    knowledge.
    Once DevOps ways of
    working embedded,
    dissolve into teams or
    move on
    Technical expertise team
    goaled with bounded task
    to unblock transformation
    (e.g. “fix the tests”)
    Fixing
    Form the team, fix the
    problem, evangelize
    approach, transfer
    knowledge, dissolve
    Team that demonstrates
    DevOps working by
    delivering and owning an
    enabling shared source
    “product” (pipeline,
    deployment platform, …)
    Building
    Long standing team,
    membership rotating
    through scrum teams
    

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22. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1 22
    ENABLER TEAMS TYPICALLY DISSOLVE
    PROGRAM LIFETIME
    

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23. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    5
    Conclusion
    23
    

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24. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    The DevOps Era is Here
    • Cross-Functional Teams
    • Delivering and Operating
    • Flow of Value
    • Continuous and Sustainable
    DevOps
    

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25. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    DevOps Adoption is Complex
    Expectations
    Culture
    Tools Focus
    Silos
    Organisational
    Environment
    

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26. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    Some Practices to Consider
    • Get agile working first
    • Look for evidence of outputs not ceremonies
    • Small regular deliveries provide DevOps inputs
    Agile Working
    Pipelines
    • Pipelines provide reliability, efficiency, consistency, …
    • Shared tools lead to collaboration (perhaps surprisingly)
    • Useful for non-technical stakeholders too once visualised
    Enabler Teams
    • A lot to learn for any team
    • Develop culture, transfer knowledge, build useful things
    • Dissolve or rotate staff frequently
    

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27. GOTOpia 2020 // THREE DEVOPS PRACTICES // © COPYRIGHT 2020 EOIN WOODS // 20200915.1
    For Your DevOps Journey
    STAKEHOLDERS
    ENVIRONMENT
    DEVOPS
    ADOPTION
    CHALLENGES
    ADOPTION
    PRACTICES
    CULTURE SHARING
    AUTOMATION MEASUREMENT
    LEAN
    

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