Influencing Cultural Change

This is the presentation I gave to DC Continuous Deployment on my experiences attempting to make positive cultural changes at a past employer. I share anecdotes on what worked (and didn't) and what lessons I learned.

Transcript

1. Influencing Cultural Change DC Continuous Delivery 2/19/2014 Thursday, February 20, 14
2. #me •Etsy - Senior Operations Engineer •LOPSA Baltimore •http://crabbyadmins.org •The Twitters: @Ryan_Frantz •Blog: http://www.ryanfrantz.com Thursday, February 20, 14
3. Cliff’s Notes •Soft skills are the hard skills to master •Setting goals •Measuring progress •Becoming relevant Thursday, February 20, 14
4. Why discuss culture? •Technology is (relatively) easy •Culture is people •Deal with problems; work with people Thursday, February 20, 14
5. http://newspaper.li/static/c64325cb237dd1387f35f70b21f08fa1.jpg Thursday, February 20, 14
6. http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs45/f/2009/070/3/6/Spy_vs_Spy_WallPaper_2560X1024_by_Zarious.png Ops Dev Thursday, February 20, 14
7. Eureka Moment http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2013/083/6/9/illuminate___light_bulb_effect_text_by_cinitriqs-d5z3biq.jpg Thursday, February 20, 14
8. Goal Encourage responsibility, accountability, and collaboration through Operations’ transparency Thursday, February 20, 14
9. Thursday, February 20, 14
10. Testify! •Lunch n’ Learns •Tools: Dashboards, Ticket System, Wiki •Design Documents •Blameless Postmortems •Open-air Displays of Metrics Thursday, February 20, 14
11. Lunch n’ Learns •Monthly •Knowledge sharing •Relaxed atmosphere Thursday, February 20, 14
12. Tools •Dashboards •Ticket System •Wiki •Helpdesk HOWTOs •Design docs •Postmortem docs Thursday, February 20, 14
13. Design Documents •Project plans (1-page summary) •Boon to change mgmt process Thursday, February 20, 14
14. Blameless Postmortems •To start: VERY painful •Lots of outages •Lack of trust •Invited everyone •Measure: volume, duration, frequency Thursday, February 20, 14
15. Open-Air Displays Thursday, February 20, 14
16. Thursday, February 20, 14
17. Results •We got into peoples’ heads •Silos began to erode •Tool adoption •Trust, confidence, RELEVANCE Thursday, February 20, 14
18. Takeaway: Culture is People http://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com/wootdesigncontestentries/afanco/ITS_PEOPLE!_-_Soylent_Green_Factory_Tour-9bv54v-d.jpg Thursday, February 20, 14
19. Takeaway: Soft Skills http://www.educationsupplies.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/4/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/001201.jpg Thursday, February 20, 14
20. Takeaway: Set Goals http://pamakidscoach.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/finish-line-tape-1.jpg Thursday, February 20, 14
21. Takeaway: Measure Progress http://www.lap-laser.com/uploads/tx_templavoila/top_linelaser.jpg Thursday, February 20, 14
22. Takeaway: It Takes Time http://www.photo-dictionary.com/photofiles/list/403/772stopwatch.jpg Thursday, February 20, 14
23. frantz@etsy.com @Ryan_Frantz Thursday, February 20, 14