DevOps is a phenomenon that is built on foundations of Agile Methodology, Progressive Thinking, and Manufacturing. Recently, Companies began looking for answers to IT delivery difficulties outside. They were impressed by quality improvements Agile method brought to software development. They were excited by improvements Progressive Thinking brought to Employee Happiness. And they were inspired by productivity improvements Lean practices brought to Manufacturing.
But why Companies are looking to start from scratch now? What was wrong in the conventional procedures?
Before DevOps, IT operations were costing companies millions of dollars. Old practices were very wasteful and melted company profit margins. These expenses were passed on to the consumers in form of higher prices.
Companies tried out outsourcing to save some money but reckoned the cost savings were offset by the difficulties with constant communication and coordination.
Companies were also slow-moving elephants because of the complexity of old IT operations. Manual processes were error-prone and every change required complex verifications. Companies were in permanent fear of client retaliation or stock market devaluation if software releases caused failures. Thus, the stress was on avoiding failures. Any Flops meant punishments; a breeding ground for blame and silos.
But, emerging Startups and Technology companies began driving away enterprise customers with reduced prices and alternative services. These new players were very fast in delivering services and adapted quickly to changing conditions.
This created a need for the new ground-up approach. Something that will make it easy to release software, helps reducing prices for customers and increases the ability to compete. And that’s how DevOps was born.
Extension of Agile principles to IT operations:
DevOps they say is the continuation of Agile principles from Software Development into Software Release. It applies Agile’s small batch and incremental approach to iteratively Build, Measure, and Learn. And generates business value by anchoring Flow, Feedback, and culture of Experimentation & Learning.
In an Agile method, features are released into the staging environment at the end of sprint for user acceptance testing. And once each quarter, bundled features are deployed to production by IT operations.
DevOps takes this one step further and facilitates software teams to push features all the way to Production with the help of automation. Each code check-in goes through a pipeline of automated checks for Quality, Reliability, and Security. Defects are found early in this process and bring down fire-fighting issues.
Progressive Thinking:
DevOps exercises the philosophy of Progressive thinking to IT Operation. It takes into account Human factors and sets a High trust culture to improve the condition of humans at work. Importance of creativity channels into higher employee satisfaction and happiness. Employee turnover goes down and the company begins to attract brighter talent. Companies thus benefit higher productivity and value.
A High Trust environment invokes a sense of ownership among employees. Productivity rises as employees take contentment in their work. They perform tasks with a sense of ownership, and not for a paycheck.
Microsoft is a good example of a recent transformation. Satya Nadella, since becoming its CEO in 2014 has emphasized on High trust culture that has catalyzed its growth into becoming one of the most valuable American company from most hated.
Manufacturing Learnings:
We know how reliable Japanese cars are. The idea for the reliability dates back to the Lean movement that started in the ’70s in Japan. Japanese car makers Toyota was developing a waste-less way to manufacture a car. The idea was, Quality was important than Quantity. Operators were told to pull a cord and stop the Assembly line if they found any defect in cars. And everyone was then urged to jump on the problem to fix.
Stopping an assembly line was a big NO in other car manufacturing plants. Frequent stoppage leads to backed up work, missing deadlines, and loss in the form of labor cost. Still, Toyota did not want to produce low-quality cars and create unhappy buyers.
Lean principles like Identifying and fixing problems early on to halt problems from leaking downstream were applied. These ideas paid off in the ’80s once consumers started realizing how reliable their cars were. The word spread from there on and since then there has been no looking back for Japanese car makers. They have expanded the Lean practices ideas to other manufacturing units.
DevOps borrows Lean practices that help software teams achieve high quality through Short Lead Times, Small batches of work, and Continuous Improvements (Kata). Lean practices help teams achieve faster feedback, a culture of constant experimentation backed by scientific data, creating constancy of purpose among team members, Promoting Empathy, and Giving importance to individuality.
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In Conclusion, DevOps is a blend of technical, architectural, and cultural practices which improves software quality. It supports organizations to deliver high value, compete faster and better customer satisfaction. In my next article, I will discuss in details the real benefits of DevOps.
If you are interested in reading in detail about DevOps, I will recommend 2 books; The Phoenix Project and DevOps Handbook.
