DevOps Culture and Organizational Structure DEV Community

Whether it’s with two pizzas in a conference room or the adoption of real-time collaboration tools and easily updated documentation, organizations must make an effort to bring DevOps teams together. The particular activities and tasks will vary, depending on the existing corporate culture, proximity to like-minded IT folks and leadership. Get ideas from the experts’ advice below, and formulate a plan to introduce everyone to DevOps, get them excited about it and ensure ongoing communication.

• One effective approach to scaling DevOps is by creating a “center of excellence” or a “DevOps guild” that brings together experienced practitioners from various teams to share knowledge, best practices, and resources.
• Look at existing DevOps team structures that other organizations use in certain circumstances.
• At this point in the DevOps maturity, the tools and processes need to be built, maintained, and operated like a product.
• The DevOps Revolution has, at its core, a focus on fostering collaboration between development and operations teams.
• In this team structure, a team within the development team acts as a source of expertise for all things operations and does most of the interfacing with the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) team.

Specifically, DevOps is a system for software development that focuses on creating an ongoing feedback loop of analyzing, building and testing while leveraging automation to speed up the entire process. To achieve this kind of seamless and constant loop of software building and testing, you need to create teams of cross-functional disciplines that work in concert. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is an innovative concept of managing infrastructure operations using code. Unlike traditional environments wherein manual configuration files and scripts are used to manage configuration, IaC performs operations using code in an automated environment. It treats infrastructure as code applying version control systems, monitoring tools, virtualization tests to automate and govern the operations as you do with code releases.

romote collaboration and chatting

As the DevOps team collaborates with multiple departments and people, providing them with the right tools and technologies is very essential. Alert escalation and incident management tools play a handy role in helping members receive timely alerts and keep themselves updated with what’s happening across the infrastructure. As with the development and operations teams that have opposite objectives, development and security operations have conflicting objectives too. Traditionally, development teams and operation teams focus on policy management, code inspection, etc., and security teams retroactively monitor and mitigate risks. As such, security has to be incorporated in the planning stage of development.

While breaking down silos is critical within the development and operations teams, it’s important to recognize that the principles of DevOps culture can be applied beyond the realm of IT. By extending the DevOps mindset to other areas of the organization, such as product management, marketing, and even human resources, businesses can foster a more collaborative, efficient, and devops team structure agile environment. Implementing shared tools and processes can enable visibility and collaboration across teams. In the “2015 State of DevOps Report,” researchers found that “organizations that use version control for both application and infrastructure code have 50 percent fewer failures.” Building a DevOps culture requires a shift in mindset and organizational practices.

What are the benefits of DevOps?

Moreover, version control provides a historical record of the evolution of your codebase. By looking back at previous versions of the code map, developers can gain insights into how the codebase has evolved and grown over time. They can identify patterns and trends and use this information to make informed decisions about the future development of the codebase. With a clear code map, new team members can quickly get a high-level understanding of the code structure and flow.

According to Martin Fowler, a renowned software development expert, “The key to delivering quickly is a rapid integration and deployment process, which is at the heart of DevOps” (Fowler, 2013). Open communication and collaboration are essential to the success of a DevOps culture. As Gene Kim, author of “The Phoenix Project,” stated, “DevOps is not about automation, tools or processes. It is about culture” (Kim, 2013). By breaking down silos and encouraging teams to work together, organizations can achieve greater efficiency and innovation.

Get started with DevOps

As such, change is something that developers want, and operations worry about. Implementing DevOps teams (section 4.4) is a crucial step in embracing DevOps culture. We examined the key steps in creating successful DevOps teams, such as assessing current practices, forming cross-functional teams, and implementing shared tools and processes.

Finally, keep a keen eye on costs and understand how the outsourcer will charge for its services. You don’t want to reinforce the separate silos as they currently exist for any longer than absolutely necessary. This can be a good interim strategy until you can build out a full DevOps program. The DevOps team translates between the two groups, which pretty much stay in place as they currently are, and DevOps facilitates all work on a project. While there are multiple ways to do DevOps, there are also plenty of ways to not do it.

What are the challenges of adopting DevOps?

DevOps starts with developers and IT operations and management staff — but doesn’t end there. Many DevOps initiatives fall short of goals or are abandoned because of roadblocks in IT infrastructure security, unresolved conflicts in data management across departments and other missed opportunities. These problems stem from failing to include the diverse network of people that make IT happen.

A clear, well-structured code map can make it much easier for developers to understand the codebase and how its various components interact with each other. Conversely, a cluttered or confusing map can make the task of understanding and working with the codebase significantly more difficult. Maintaining high code quality is crucial for the long-term success of any software project. Poorly written or structured code can lead to numerous problems down the line, from performance issues to security vulnerabilities. Code mapping can help prevent these problems by improving the quality and maintainability of your code. Troubleshooting and debugging are an integral part of software development.

Automation

It might also be helpful to insert “champions” into struggling groups; they can model behaviors and language that facilitate communication and collaboration. Modern DevOps teams employ value stream mapping to visualize their activities and gain necessary insights in order to optimize the flow of product increments and value creation. Their work is a must-read for anyone who’s trying to figure out which DevOps structure is best for their company. The right DevOps team will serve as the backbone of the entire effort and will model what success looks like to the rest of the organization. There is no “one size fits all” however – each team will be different depending on needs and resources. If you’re just getting started with DevOps, there are several team organizational models to consider.

As DevOps is not just a tool or a technology, it is important to see a top-down cultural shift across the organization. Teams should break down silos and find a common ground to seamlessly communicate and collaborate. It should happen right from business perspectives to deployment and maintenance across all stakeholders, departments, and stages of development. With different tools, technologies, processes, and people, achieving this is a herculean task.

Mapping the DevSecOps Landscape

Code mapping is a visual representation of the structure and flow of your code. It’s like a roadmap, laying out the entire landscape of your code, showing all the paths, intersections and dead-ends. While many organizations focus on tools and technologies, people and culture are ignored. However, choosing the right people for the right tasks and inducing the DevOps culture across the organization delivers results in the long run. Right from the service desk to operations and development, everyone should be responsible and linked with tickets raised so that they are updated with the happenings in the infrastructure.