Delving into the complex world of DevOps can often feel like a daunting experience. It is not uncommon for organisations to find themselves trapped in a conversation surrounding DevOps 'tools' that focus on a very specific area, instead of looking at the overall end-to-end picture.
During the last few months I've had a number of practical conversations with UK organisations, and have found that there are several patterns that continue to emerge again and again.
These patterns can be summarised as follows:
- Most organisations have an IT expert that began to focus on DevOps
- When this focus moved beyond a plan on PowerPoint, it has been limited to the adoption (or proof of concept/pilot) of one or few tools
- There is a significant lack of understanding throughout all the DevOps stages that need to be covered in order to succeed
- Sometimes there is a perception that DevOps is something that could be provided by a single technology
- There is some clarity that DevOps brings business benefits, but they are not well articulated, and are not the primary driver
- There is no real management buy-in for DevOps activities – it is very much driven bottom up and often only in an IT silo on either the ‘Dev’ or the ‘Ops’ side
I have also come to realise that if you want to understand more about DevOps on the web there is either:
- A lot of ‘fluffy’ high-level documents that provide very little added value or
- Very deep 25-50 page documents with detailed views about DevOps – often produced by tools vendors for a technical audience
These findings have prompted me to write this short 5-minute guide that aims at providing a pragmatic understanding of DevOps in its entirety, enabling people to consciously take appropriate actions.
Even if you believe that you have DevOps in place, this guide will help validate your approach.
This is intended to be an orientation guide to navigate the complex DevOps arena.
