Journey to DevOps
DevOps as the name suggests talks about merging Development and Operations but after working as a “DevOps Engineer”, DevOps for me, is a collaboration of Mindset, Enablement and Technology. Let's see how these 3 things when tuned correctly works best for DevOps
“Technology”
Whenever we think about DevOps we usually talk about various technologies used to achieve the goals which helps organizations move faster. There are various technologies available which solve the same problem. Example, if you want to implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) we can use terraform, aws cloud-formation, pulumi and many more.
The key here to understand is technical solutions exist to solve a business problem that you are facing and at the same time, there are constraints which you cannot avoid while deciding a solution. Example, if you are going to migrate your applications to say Kubernetes but your client has a multi year deal with AWS but GKE fits best for clients requirement. The client is more likely to go for a solution with AWS than specifically use GKE as Kubernetes platform.
Due to this especially in DevOps you cannot prefer a technical tool over another as each of them solve a business case for someone. This is one of the reasons that job descriptions of DevOps Engineers has a never ending list of tool which the person is supposed to be proficient. Hence, if you are willing to become a DevOps Engineer look at the tools and technologies widely used among the industry.
“Mindset”
What does mindset mean ? Its basically how a human processes thoughts or their way of thinking. Let me tell you an example, there is Sev1 issue going on in one of your production and in the triage call, conversations is going as follows:
Team A Representative: “I don’t think there is any issue with Team A’s services and I think the recent change by Team B is causing this problem”
Team B Representative: “Our services are working fine but Team A’s application is not responding as expected”
Incident Manager: “Let’s not play the blame game here we are here to work as a team and fix this issue at the earliest!!”
I do believe everyone has been a part of such conversation irrespective of the career phase you are in. The key in truly achieving DevOps is to have the right mindset embedded in people that working in DevOps. This change of mindset is not only required at the lower levels of hierarchy but also at the executive levels. If your team has the right mindset but doesn't have a leader with same mindset, it is most likely you are going to face a lot of challenges. This is brilliantly covered in article “What people don’t understand about DevOps (yet)” here.
Then the question arises, what qualifies for the right mindset? according to me it’s basically being open to new ideas/implementations that work best for everyone within your team/organization, once evaluated implementing them to benefit everyone within the same.
“Enablement”
I think of enablement as a means to continue the growth from one point to another. Even though devops revolves around various tools and technologies for solving business needs, it doesn’t matter how good the available tools are if you don’t use them right. It also depends on the internal processes within your organization that determines how fast you are going to move ahead.
If you have implemented right automation but there are no supporting processes that allow you to get the best out of it then that automation becomes a pain and vice-a-versa. The need for continuous improvement should combine the technical enhancements as well as the processes supporting those. When these two work together the life of everyone in your team becomes quite easy as they are enabled to accomplish things with a guided path to their goals.
Enablement does require a significant investment in people, processes and technology but it does take you one step closer to your destination.
In coming weeks I will be talking about what set of tools I am using and what business challenges I have solved using them.
Till then, stay tuned!
- NM
