DOES18

Prove it.

An important question! What do you think, #DOES18 community? @DOES_EUR

RT @paulycomtois: How do you convince leadership that DevOps is not just a cost center, but actually a competitive advantage?

demonstrate the value - e.g. the ability that Nationwide showed last year to respond to customers in a disaster like Harvey (or Florence)

small incremental wins, like Chris said...prove it

@cshl1 self fulfilling prophecies self fulfill

OH: "There are a whole generation of CEOs that are 'IT dumb', who will eventually retire or forced out, b/c they need to compete with companies who are 'software savvy'" cc @cshl1

Don't account for it like that. Account for the poly-skilled team driving business benefits. Build enough into the costs there to pay for the 'community enhancements'

I have used the DORA research to help create a reasonable business case that shows the benefits. https://opensource.c...

if IT is a cost center, you already lost, Darwinian evolution will run its course, let them die off

experiment with a few teams/products and demonstrate how they can succeed and then let those teams tell their own stories

have them read this https://itrevolution... or Mark Schwartz's book on the Seat at the Table

@cshl1 In my case it showing the value to the bottom line. This means I must be measuring and have a baseline to compare against as well as being able to communicate the value in a format the leadership can consume.

When was the last time we sold a product that used no software at all?

@madgreek65 a losing strategy if you are starting under funded and unempowered, especially when you consider the natural arc of skill acquisition starts with a decreased performance before improvements and the prevailing politics are against you

is this what happens when you just rebrand "IT" into "DevOps"? DevOps is not the what. It's the how. Hard to get rid of the "how"

OH from @chris_t_omalley: "Every CEO knows that they need to invest, and that almost always has to do with writing software"

OH: "So many of these companies using DevOps are identifying a $1B market, and entering the market and taking 10% of that market within a year."

They are mentioned almost daily. We don't want to be the next Equifax. We're actively working to inject security at the front of the process rather than at the very end.

Philosophically, we've been treating security as something that depended on lack of change. These security breaches show that this doesn't work.

@cdavisafc That said, I find that the idea of increased security through constant change is so "out there" that most enterprises struggle to even grasp the idea.

It has caused us to re-evaluate how we are performing security in our entire SDLC.

Give them a reason to WANT to participate.

start with business objectives

I always start with getting them to move their doc, architecture, even meeting minutes in source code management system. Then, add on top on that CI, automated checks, collaboration workflows.
"oh, that's what you mean when you say 'everything as code '"

I'd say again Value Stream Mapping can help people understand each other's role. I think teams that are 2 or 3 levels removed already face an "invisible" wall if you don't explicitly get them together.

I love the fact that #DOES18 we have so many talks of spanning biz/tech divide: @topopal is speaking with Legal Counsel who helped make open source at Capital One so! @chawklady presenting with Chief Privacy Officer at Nike

I tend to focus on what individuals value. For example, if on boarding new associates is challenging, then let's automated and federate the process. This quickly creates advocates of your initiatives. https://opensource.c...

have we really gotten the people in the tech org to participate yet? The key is when the narrative connects everyone to the outcome as a hero in the new version of the story.

@paulycomtois And the way that we do this is to address their pain points. The hard part is getting them to refocus on the problem they are trying to solve rather than focusing on the WAY they've been solving it. We are so busy "doing" we loose sight of why.

I love getting people together to share how it works and why it's important. We do a lot of lunch-and-learns where people outside of the tech community are encouraged to show up. We then incentivize the attendees to keep it going.

@littleidea @cdavisafc great points on keeping everyone focused on the outcomes.

Believe it or not, I'm *finally* seeing finance adopting some of the principles and automation. I can't think of something more "business" than that team embracing DevOps.

next frontier is the left hand side of the value stream - need to flow work from idea through deployment. This requires moving to a product mindset and having complete visibility of the work and what bottlenecks exists before work enters the backlog of your teams

There are a lot of "Digital" initiatives happening outside or around IT because IT & Ops don't move fast enough. Companies are engaging with outside vendors who specialize in user experience.

The @naic architects recently had a discussion with our HR, and they are very interested in working with us to automate their processes as well as bring in a Just Culture. Our legal department has also been interested in working with us in GitLab.

@paulycomtois An example would be finance collaborating with the devs around when to capitalize MVP and planning for Agile type projects that leave room for flexibility. *swooons*

@paulycomtois I am seeing this as well.

putting legal contracts into Git for version control and pull requests for updates

Automation is a big one. Not enough folks appreciate the value of automation, even for things you do infrequently: consistency, testability, reviewability, composability, etc. Much easier to review/test/debug code, than manual processes.

DevOps for documentation or even lawmakers, for employee onboarding, for training / learning.

They need to span the entire value chain. See the presentation from Barclays at #DOES18 London for a great slide on how much impact you get on speed to market by just addressing Dev & Ops - thanks @jonsmart

@carmendeardo Git for everyone! Or at least some form of version control other than dated folders. :)

@carmendeardo For many of my businesses, the "frontier" feels more like the "Oregon Trail".

depends on what we mean by 'devops' but systems thinking and flow are universally applicable, improving communication, humanizing 'the others', and aligning incentives works great, try it

@littleidea will pretty much take care of that if you hire him

I have successfully used Value Stream Mappings to raise awareness of the entire process.

@paulycomtois Just remember to not stop at the VSM. It's important to revisit it every quarter, and create an actionable plan to continually share knowledge and value.

Agree on VSM, also showing examples of success stories and lessons learned from industry and non-industry peers

the teams themselves know the most about how to get faster/better - Leadership needs to provide Systems thinking to optimize the larger system

definitely Value Stream Mappings to see where "it hurts". Then, make it all about removing constraints to achieve business goals. DevOps as a means, not an end to everything.

This takes a lot of executive buy-in. It also requires a culture of openness and a desire to be challenged. The @naic has a reward system that I use to reward positive behaviors like this with actual money.

@cshl1 I'll usually do the first pass for free, and go deep for a bit of sushi

Measure delivery of customer value! How frequent can you push? Customer value instead of meeting some abstract milestone.

this question has so much nuance, what mechanisms create a culture motivated to pursue truth by inquiry? that's the answer

@paulycomtois yes, Continuous improvement has to follow. A focus. "DevOps Kaizen"