Building a DevOps Culture

by Mandi Walls

Building a DevOps culture requires more than installing a configuration management system, using a source code repository, and telling your teams "Ok, now we are all doing DevOps." Organizational culture is comprised of a shared set of values and behaviors. Tools help us create process, which in turn influences our behaviors. Unfortunately, tools alone aren't enough to create a stable culture for collaboration that we now think of as DevOps. Building, or in many cases rebuilding, our team cultures to reflect changing goals and values is a challenge faced not just by teams transitioning to DevOps, but by organizations large and small as they try to keep up with current business practices and customer expectations. This article outlines strategies for building a DevOps culture, including aligning incentives, defining meaningful and achievable goals, and creating a supportive team environment.

Genres: Technical, Business, Technology, Nonfiction, Ebooks, Software, Computers

26 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2013

Reviews

[Steve Esso]

Short, concise and easy to read. A lot of nice IT Managements insights, and though they're often related to Building DevOps Culture, I think the same insights may also help IT Manager in driving their team toward the adoption of other ideas/cultures.

[Alexander Belugin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do-not-read :) Книга оказалась короткой статьёй о том, как вводить культуру devops в существующую организацию/команды. Уверен, 5 мыслей из этой заметки можно узнать и из любой другой полноценной книги на тему.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of a short article, which says nothing about DevOps, but rather talks about preparing to introduce DevOps to your team.

But instead of then elaborating on how to practice the principles (which were not explained, btw), maybe with examples, suggesting routines and rituals the team can follow to enter into the necessary mindset, or how common pitfalls could be overcome, anything actionable at all really... the text essentially just stops.
Kinda like "It will be a change in mindset, so work together. Now go and good luck. Thanks for reading."

[Joe Power · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick tour de force of building DevIls culture

A short but we'll detailed guide to introducing a DevIls culture to an organisation. It covers a lot of ground but gives an important sense of what the end goal feels like.

[Ed Barton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick Monograph

This quick read on the principles of building a DevOps culture is a decent overview. Focusing on results, collaboration and integrated dev, product, QA and ops, this is the new normal for most tech companies now. A quick, good read.

[akhy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice quick read

It's a nice quick read about the journey on building DevOps culture in an organization, starting from smallest important things. I was expecting more about later phases in DevOps adoption, but that's it.

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Livro curto mas com boa síntese de idéias, recomendo.

[Roy Folkker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good quick read if you are looking for a primer

I found this to be a very concise real-world paper on what to expect going for a DevOps cultural shift.

[Ivo Peksens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good, short overview.

Good, short overview of basic DevOps framework. Rare are books that get to the point and this is an example.

[Jakub Anderwald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very condensed, up to the point this could've been a few short blog posts. It does give both the high level insight into what DevOps culture is, as well as practical examples. It only skims on how to build that culture. On one hand authors could support it with the practical ways to build that culture and examples from the real world. On the other hand, I get a feeling this is an introduction to use their consulting services, so I understand why they didn't give all the information for free.

[Daylight Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic read, describes devops as it must become, great insight

This is a fantastic read. I was extremely encouraged to read a book which talks about the ENTIRE SDLC software dev life cycle as ONE process where everyone is part of ONE team. I'm a dev who has worked tech support, QA, Performance engineer and now lead a few devs and different groups forget to focus on themselves as ONE team creating ONE product together as a team. Devops must make you think that or you should just forget about devops. Great book. Will check out more from this author.

[Yevgeniy Brikman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an article (not a book) that very quickly covers a few of the ideas behind the mindset of DevOps teams. I found the material a bit too high level and would struggle to apply it in the real world. Concrete examples, both of good practices and bad, would've made this stronger. Adding a second half that discusses more technical issues would've made it better still. As it is, your time is probably better spent reading a book like "Service Reliability Engineering".

[Jim Teal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great short read on the cultural impact on the organization

It's more than tooling! It's people, process, culture, and a mindset that makes for a successful DevOps team and/or organization.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short but good overview of DevOps culture...

Nice little summary of the non-technical aspects of DevOps culture. Good for a quick overview from a management perspective. Not so useful for technical folks...

[Steve Fenton · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting brief read about culture... not a great deal about DevOps - at least a strong definition required up front.

[Stefan Teixeira · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has some great insights about organizational culture, it's also a very light read.

[Karl Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome! Short and very informative.

[Leandro López · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good intro to DevOps for managers

This book is clearly managers oriented, though as a technical person I think it's a well written introduction to the subject.

[Gonçalo Borrêga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shorter than short... Almost looks like a good marketing piece of content (no products mentioned - the book is about cultural change, not tools), but overall a good summary.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and sweet enough to help encourage further reading and people-development.

[Kiran Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read

Book is good for beginners, looking for more information on DevOps. Which should help a beginner to understand the definitions