Frozen DevOps? The Not-so-technical Last Mile @ Business Intelligence Technology Provider, Apr 2024

Why are so many organizations stuck in the “middle” of DevOps evolution? What’s preventing them from achieving higher levels of performance despite all the automation, tooling, and good practices in place? We now have research-based clues to answer these questions, supported by the patterns and recommendations in Team Topologies.

In this talk we cover the self-imposed limitations of blindly following some “myths” around DevOps. Almost 80% of organizations are stuck in the “frozen middle” of DevOps evolution because of lack of organizational sense making abilities. The margin for growth for these organizations is tremendous, but they need to think beyond technical capabilities to unlock the potential of their teams to deliver with more autonomy and a sense of purpose.

The data shows that Team Topologies provides the necessary organizational and team interaction patterns that help organizations achieve performance metrics such as delivering a new customer change request to live in under one hour, or diagnosing and recovering from a serious issue in production in under an hour.

Fundamentally, we need to supercharge the fundamental principles of DevOps: fast feedback loops, minimal waste, removing bottlenecks, and continuous learning & improvement.

Transcript

1. TeamTopologies.com @TeamTopologies Frozen DevOps? The not-so-technical Last Mile Manuel Pais co-author of Team Topologies 11 Apr 2024 @manupaisable
2. Team Topologies 5 Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2019 teamtopologies.com/book
3. Remote Team Interactions Workbook 7 Using Team Topologies Patterns for Remote Working Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais IT Revolution Press, 2022 teamtopologies.com/workbook
4. “Team Topologies provides a practical set of templates for addressing the key DevOps question that others leave as an exercise for the student” - Jeff Sussna 8
5. 9 DevOps
6. 10 2018 → Early Majority 2019 → Late Majority 2020 → Late Majority 2021 → Late Majority 2022 → Late Majority InfoQ Trends - “General DevOps”
7. 11 https://puppet.com/resources/report/2021-state-of-devops-report
8. 12 “Success at scale requires optimizing not for the individual, and not for the team, but for the wider organization - the “team of teams”. Highly evolved organizations have discovered the patterns that work well for a fast flow of change”
9. 13 Low performing orgs 2018 = 11% 2019 = 7% 2020 = 5% 2021 = 4%
10. 14 High performing orgs 2018 = 10% 2019 = 14% 2020 = 16% 2021 = 18%
11. 15 Mid performing orgs 2018 = 79% 2019 = 79% 2020 = 79% 2021 = 78%
12. 16 Mid perf 2018 = 79% 2019 = 79% 2020 = 79% 2021 = 78%
14. Why are so many organizations frozen in the DevOps middle? 21
15. 22 We have Cloud, CI/CD, SRE & Observability Mid perf
16. 23 “Organizations should not expect to become highly evolved just because they use cloud and automation… They are held back by organizational structure and dynamics”
17. ⏳ ⏳ Blocking Non- Blocking Cloud Infra Deploy
19. “Devops was always as much about org structure and incentives as any of the technical details.” - Andrew Clay Shafer 26
20. 27 Organizations where teams have strong identities that are well understood, with clearly defined responsibilities, are far more likely to be higher performing
21. 29 We have Cloud, CI/CD, SRE & Observability Mid perf
22. We have teams with a clear mission and purpose that is understood by other teams 30 High perf
23. 31 Everyone collaborates with everyone else Mid perf
24. 32 “Collaboration is expensive [for real-time work]… it’s not scalable or repeatable. ”
27. 35 Slow feedback loop (weeks/months)
29. 37 “if you simply adopt the team types, you’re missing one of the key takeaways... which is paying attention and being deliberate about teams’ setup and their desired interaction”
30. Team API 38 • Services & software owned by the team • Wiki and documentation • Practices and principles • Communication: tools, channels, patterns • Roadmap & priorities
31. 39 https://github.com/TeamTopologies/Team-API-template
32. Team API 40 • Services & software owned by the team • Wiki and documentation • Practices and principles • Communication: tools, channels, patterns • Roadmap & priorities • Current and future team interactions
33. Team A 41 Teams we currently interact with: Team Name Interaction Mode Purpose Duration Test Automation Enabling team Facilitating Understand test automation and data mgmt examples for iOS 2 months (from Mar 30 to May 29, 1 day per week) Monitoring & Telemetry Platform team Collaboration Store and visualize data on product features usage 3 weeks (from Apr 13 to Apr 30, 2h per day)
34. “Collaboration” might be masking blocking dependencies 42 🤯
35. Team A 43 Teams we expect to interact with soon: Team Name Interaction Mode Purpose Duration Infrastructure team Collaboration Change and test AWS modules to support our new AI backend service 1 week ?? (May??? June???)
36. Team A 44 Teams we expect to interact with soon: Team Name Interaction Mode Purpose Duration Infrastructure team Collaboration Change and test AWS modules to support our new AI backend service 1 week ?? (May??? June???)
37. Team A 45 Teams we expect to interact with soon: Team Name Interaction Mode Purpose Duration Infrastructure team Collaboration Be able to change Terraform AWS modules for backend services 3 half days (from May 6 to May 8, 9am-1pm CET)
38. Team A 46 Teams we expect to interact with soon: Team Name Interaction Mode Purpose Duration Infrastructure team Facilitating Understand internal Terraform structure & naming conventions 1 half day (on May 6) Infrastructure team Collaboration Be able to change Terraform AWS modules for backend services 3 half days (from May 13 to May 15, 9am-1pm CET)
39. Team dependencies tracking 47 https://github.com/TeamTopologies/Team-Dependencies-Tracking
40. 48 Everyone collaborates with everyone else Mid perf
41. We welcome purposeful interactions that have clear goals and duration 49 High perf
42. Case Study 50 “DevOps Over Coffee - Adidas”
43. Case Study 51
44. 52 We have fully autonomous “build & run” teams Mid perf
45. 53 “If cognitive load is left “unbounded” then… performance metrics will be negatively affected, preventing teams from evolving to higher levels”
47. 55 https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar Apr 2021
48. 57 Adopt: Platform engineering product teams “We consider platform engineering product teams to be a standard approach and a significant enabler for high-performing IT.” -- ThoughtWorks Tech Radar, Vol.24, p.9
49. 60 A valuable platform reduces the cognitive load of stream-aligned teams.
51. “Cognitive load is the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory” - John Sweller 62
52. Intrinsic (skills) Extraneous (mechanism) Germane (domain focus) 63
53. Intrinsic Extraneous Germane 64 “How do I deploy this app to K8s, again?”
54. (Intrinsic) ] Extraneous [ Germane 65
55. 66 extraneous cognitive load for stream-aligned teams germane cognitive load for platform teams →
58. 69 “Highly evolved firms use a combination of stream-aligned and platform teams as the most effective way to manage cognitive load at scale”
59. teamperature.com 70
62. 73 We have fully autonomous “build & run” teams Mid perf
63. We have an ecosystem of loosely coupled teams that promotes fast flow & manageable cognitive load 74 High perf
64. Case Study 75 teamtopologies.com/examples
65. 76 Flow of change
66. 77 Flow of change
67. 78 Flow of change
69. 80 We have a platform team that solves common problems for teams Mid perf
70. 81 “the existence of a platform team does not inherently unlock higher evolution DevOps”
71. “A digital platform is a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge and support which are arranged as a compelling internal product.” – Evan Bottcher, 2018 82 Source: https://martinfowler.com/articles/talk-about-platforms.html
72. 83 “Successful platform teams treat their platform as a product. They strive to create a compelling value proposition for application teams”
73. But what is “Platform as a Product”? 84
74. 85 A (platform as a) product is optional to use - no team is forced to use it
75. “Any time standards, practices, processes, frameworks, or architectures become a mandate, I’ve seen little to no adoption.” - Courtney Kissler 86
76. 87 A (platform as a) product is carefully designed and curated for its customers
77. 88 A (platform as a) product evolves to take advantage of technology changes
78. 89 A (platform as a) product uses modern product management & follows the adoption lifecycle
79. 90 Happier users (engineers) No technology bloat Designed for cognitive load
80. 91 “[Highly evolved platform teams] understand their internal customers and offer a curated set of technologies for infrastructure and development capabilities”
82. 93 Platform engineering is not replacing DevOps, but rather enabling its goals
83. 94 We have a platform team that solves common problems for teams Mid perf
84. We treat the platform as a product, a curated experience for our users 97 High perf
85. Platform as a Product is hard work! 98 • Metrics are stacked against you • Customer-centricity mindset takes time • Trust is hard to gain (esp in remote context) • Adoption lifecycle = “you’re never done” • Shared services legacy that doesn’t go away
86. Case Study 99
87. 100 “the key to escaping the middle phase is a successful platform team approach, which makes sense given the fact that implementing a platform approach well requires well-defined team responsibilities and interactions”
88. Resources 101 teamtopologies.com/resources (links, slides, video) teamtopologies.com/examples (uSwitch, WealthWizards & more)
89. academy.teamtopologies.com
90. ◦ Platform Value ◦ Platform Customers ◦ Platform Experience ◦ Platform Adoption Cycle TT25 - Platform as a Product 103
91. Platform Bundle (15% OFF)
92. 105 1-day training for platform decision makers “fantastic course with large amounts of insight” “an eye opener on the importance of trust in high performing teams”
93. 107 Manuel Pais FlowOnRails Twitter: @manupaisable LinkedIn: manuelpais Matthew Skelton Conflux Twitter: @matthewpskelton LinkedIn: matthewskelton Copyright © Team Topologies Ltd and FlowOnRails 2018-2024. All rights reserved. teamtopologies.com