Todd Vernon / Founder – CEO

Leveraging the Twitter Economy for a DevOps WorldThe Challenges behind building the first collaboration platform for DevOps

What is DevOps?

• DevOps is the logical outcome of the Agile software development movement.

• Agile was the solution to software Design/Build problems that resulted from treating software development like building a bridge.

• DevOps is the solution to the Deploy/Operate problem that Agile created.

DESIGN BUILD TEST DEPLOY OPERATE

AGILE DEVELOPMENT DEVOPS

What makes DevOps difficult?

• 24x7 job. The machine never stops running (it better not).

• Problems that need remediation are just as likely to occur at 2am as 2pm.

• Staffing 24x7 is impractical until major scale is achieved.

• Domain expertise is wide, aggravating the problem.

So, how do companies deal?

• Someone is always on the pager (always).

• Individuals do 1 week rotations.

• If you’re “that person”, you are out of bed on average 3 nights a week.

• When a problem comes to you (at 2am), you are all alone and probably the wrong person to fix the problem.

• You get others involved slowly due to social pressures.

None of this behavior is in line with solving the problem faster, keeping your business running, or simply making that job suck less.

Solution! Get everyone in the same room!

• Everyone lives at work.

• Your infrastructure alerts you.

• Everyone can immediately collaborate to solve the problem.

• The one person that recognizes the problem speaks up.

• Problem is resolved!

• Everyone climbs back under desk and goes back to bed.

Works perfect for the

company!Not so well for everyone

else!

Does everyone need to be in the room?

• Studies suggest no.

• A study done by New York University and Cornell University showed that physical and/or emotional distance lead to more creative problem solving.

• Solving a problem for a distant other resulted in more creative solutions than for self, or close others.

• Intrinsic decisions are safer, extrinsic decisions are more creative.

Decisions for Others Are More Creative Than Decisions for the Self

Published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Feb 2011Evan Polman, Kyle Emich

Is interactive remote participation good?

• In a study of Face-to-Face versus Threaded Discussions at the University of North Dakota behavior patterns were researched.

• Higher order thinking was achieved with the use of threaded discussions rather than face-to-face learning in classrooms.

• Participants cited the increased time to think about the problem, rather than social pressure to immediately respond to be a major contributor to the quality.

• More time was spent on exploratory or integrative thought than in face to face discussions.

Face-to-face Versus Threaded Discussions: The Role of Time and Higher-Order thinking.

Dr. Katrina A Meyer, University of North Dakota

Collaborative Problem Solving is not new…

• Vertical Collaboration (Domain Specific)

– Salesforce.com – Rally – Jira

• Horizontal Collaboration (Non-Domain Specific)

– GotoMeeting– WebEx– Join.me – Campfire – HipChat– IRC

How to build a collaborative platform for DevOps

• No existing Vertical Collaboration Platform for DevOps.

• The platform would have to:– Be mobile first. – Allow for synchronous engagement but enable

asynchronous problem solving.– Give all participants symmetric access to information

from enterprise monitoring platform.– Allow for scalable ‘lean-in’ to the problem but freedom

to lean out to reflect.

Twitter and FB as an interaction model

• In seconds you are up-to-date on what a friend or person of interest is doing.

• In a sense, you are always on, time slicing or task switching your attention.

• Friends are loosely tied to the information but still have the opportunity to reflect.

• Communications is asynchronous, but can escalate to synchronous as required.

Continuous Partial Attention (CPA)

• Yes, it’s a real thing.

• Not really multi-tasking, full attention isn’t required.

• Negative Definition:

– The increasing inability or desire to pay full attention to just one task, item or person and instead continually scan for other opportunities… while waiting for the next interruption.

• Positive Definition:

– Motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment.

• Irrelevant! If you live in DevOps you are already this person.

Linda Stone The Attention Project www.lindastone.net

Productivity and Interruption

Dealing with Interruptions can be Complex, but does Interruption Complexity Matter?D Cades - George Mason University, N Werner – George Mason University, D Davis – George Mason University, C Monk – George Mason University.

Does the Difficulty of an Interruption Affect our Ability to Resume?D Cades - George Mason University, J Trafton Naval - Research Laboratory, D Davis – George Mason University, C Monk – George Mason University.

Difficult Unfamiliar Task

Easy or Rehearsed Task

Primary Task Interruption Task

Disruptive

Less Disruptive

Minor Disruption

The Benefits of Collaboration via CPA

• Reduce new participant spool-up time.• Allow for scalable ‘lean-in’ on solving problems.• Make critical events, less of an event.• Notice data patterns in the data (ie Data Porn)• Solve problems faster by getting some of

everyone's attention.

• If you’re the person with the Pager, GET BACK TO BED SOONER.

What we did at VictorOps

• Provide a Mobile first, always available enterprise alert timeline.

• Made the application real-time.

• In 2 seconds I know the condition of my IT infrastructure.

• In 4 seconds I can contribute by posting a thought.

• Team members lean-in, not get sucked in.

• Not just states, but events and transitions.

• Added a smart alerting platform to vectors problems to the correct skill set.

We all work differently than we used to

• Mobile has been a major shift in our behavior pattern.

• Consumer behavior has changed first (as is typical).

• Business is just catching up (as is typical).• Business is tied more closely with traditional

workflow and is slower to migrate.• Mobile first, only works if you change up the

paradigm. Embrace the usage patterns.

Thanks!

Research References:

Decisions for Others Are More Creative Than Decisions for the SelfPublished in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Feb 2011Evan Polman, Kyle Emich

Face-to-face versus threaded discussions: The Role of Time and Higher-Order thinkingDr. Katrina A Meyer, University of North Dakota

Linda Stone The Attention Project www.lindastone.net

Dealing with Interruptions can be Complex, but does Interruption Complexity Matter?D Cades - George Mason University, N Werner – George Mason University, D Davis – George Mason University, C Monk – George Mason University. Does the Difficulty of an Interruption Affect our Ability to Resume?D Cades - George Mason University, J Trafton Naval - Research Laboratory, D Davis – George Mason University, C Monk – George Mason University.