devops in the wild

DEVOPS IN THE WILDMERI WILLIAMS

CHROMEROSE LTD

@GEEK_MANAGER

LET’S START WITH A STORY

8 YEARS AGO…

I took over as Tech Lead for a product at a large company.

It was a financial product within the largest SAP installation in the world.

(yeah, I know, YUCK)

AT THE TIME…

There were over 100 tickets open.

Only possible to release new code to production every three months.

Half the tickets were related to the last 3 releases.

I FELT A BIT LIKE THIS…

WHAT DID OPS THINK OF DEV?

WHAT DID DEV THINK OF OPS?

BOTH SIDES WERE A LITTLE BIT RIGHT …

AND A LOT WRONG

(BUT APPARENTLY I WAS THE FIRST ONE EVER TO ASK BOTH SIDES)

WHAT DID WE DO?

On Dev side, we upped our game:

• Introduced TDD and comprehensive tests

On the Ops side, we learnt to trust:

• After first quarterly release that introduced no new issues (and closed 20+ tickets), agreed to monthly releases

Most of all, we learnt to COMMUNICATE and planned TOGETHER.

WE FELT LIKE THIS

SINCE THEN, DEVOPS HAS BECOME A HOT TOPIC

BUT I’D ARGUE THAT NOW, IT’S A SURVIVAL SKILL

SOME DEFINITIONS

DEVELOPMENT = the building of the product

OPERATIONS = the running of the product

DEVOPS = philosophy of communication and collaboration between these two important specialties

FIRST, SOME ANTI-PATTERNSAN EXCELLENT LIST FROM DEVOPSGUYS

TRAPS TO AVOID

• Mandating a DevOps “process”

• Assuming Agile == DevOps (though they are good partners in crime)

• Rebranding Dev or Ops or any other team as “DevOps”

• Starting a separate “DevOps group” (another silo…)

• Enabling/allowing a hostile takeover

MORE TRAPS TO AVOID

• Believing DevOps is a meaningless buzzword

• Believing DevOps is a silver bullet (this shit is hard, yo)

• Assuming DevOps means Devs Managing Production

• Assuming DevOps is Dev-Driven Release Management

• Excuses like wrong people / wrong time / “we’re special”

THAT WAS DEPRESSING, HUH?DON’T WORRY, THERE’S GOOD NEWS TOO

SO WHAT DOES WORK?

CAMS

Culture Automation

Measurement Sharing

Per John Willis: http://www.opscode.com/blog/2010/07/16/what-devops-means-to-me/

CULTURE

Start with people.

Value Dev AND Ops. Openly. Encourage collaboration.

Focus on fast AND stable.

AUTOMATION

INVEST in automating everything you can.

Configuration, provisioning, release deployment, monitoring, orchestration, testing, systems integration testing, etc

MEASUREMENT

SHARING

GDS ARE IMPRESSIVE IN THIS REGARD

DevOps philosophy + continuous delivery + monitoring + automation =

AND DON’T FORGET THE GDS BADGER OF DEPLOY

FURTHER READING

The original DevOpsGuys post about anti-patterns:

http://blog.devopsguys.com/2013/02/20/twelve-devops-anti-patterns/

Niek Bartholomeus’ excellent presentation about introducing devops to a more traditional environment:

https://speakerdeck.com/niekbartho/devops-for-dinosaurs

The DevOps section of GDS’ Digital Service Manual:

https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/operations/devops.html

Anna Kennedy put together a brilliant list of resources after DevOpsDays:

http://annaken.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/devops-community-resources.html

DevOps Weekly newsletter: http://devopsweekly.com/

PS: REMEMBER TO LOVE YOUR SYSADMINS