Month: April 2017

Yesterday evening, Eugene proposed a framework listing 3 areas to focus on when serving the SMC team for the coming months:

• Process inventory: Review and expand on the existing process inventory which Hemanth started some time ago
• Update inventory: In view of the ongoing projects and changes, ensure the Inventory reflects current situation
• Identify and capitalise on opportunities: With a better view of the process inventory, review and seek out areas to improve on

https://techbeacon.com/gene-kims-7-secrets-devops-success

1. Change often begins in operations: “For early adopters, it’s operations leading the charge, followed by architecture,” Kim says. “These folks have the full end-to-end view of the value steam and can see the problems that need to be solved.”

2. DevOps transformations start small—but not too small: The sweet spot is where DevOps is introduced to solve a very specific business problem with clear, anticipated benefits, like shorter lead times or increased reliability. That is why DevOps initiatives are often driven by second-line managers, such as a director of operations in a business unit.

3. Business-savvy technologists take the lead: The leaders most likely to recognize the “just right” opportunity to introduce DevOps are engineering or IT professionals who are close enough to the business to appreciate its biggest challenges intimately, but with a clear understanding of the technology in play.

4. DevOps change agents take risks: “All of these DevOps leaders are given some degree of air cover, but they go beyond that to the point that it puts them in some personal jeopardy,” Kim says. Why risk their careers? “They have a level of certainty that the capabilities they are creating for the organization are needed—not just to win in the marketplace, but to survive.”

5. DevOps demands a culture of trust: When it comes to successful DevOps transformation, culture is key. In fact, it’s one of the top three predictors of DevOps performance, according to five years of analysis done for the annual State of DevOps report, whose cosponsors include Kim’s IT Revolution and HPE. Power- or rule-oriented cultures are not well suited to the type of collaboration and information sharing that DevOps requires.

6. DevOps expansion requires leaders to evolve: When solving problems at the business-unit level, these tech professionals have a high degree of control over the transformation. As they get promoted, they have less overt control and must learn how to lead through influence. “That’s much more challenging,” he says.

7. CIOs are key enablers of DevOps: While not all IT executives will be directly involved in the introduction of DevOps in their organizations, CIOs play a key role in removing obstacles and setting up DevOps teams for success.

https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/an-efficient-approach-to-continuous-documentation

Excerpts:

• Start with nothing more than a single blank text file.
• Each of these notes could be captured in seconds, at the moment the thought came up. More detail can always be added later, but that’s strictly optional. Whatever you do, make it so that your daily journaling is easy enough that you stick with it, even if it means writing only a tiny bit each day.
• After a few weeks, review your notes and look for recurring themes.
• Create a new document for each of the themes you’ve identified, and then spend a few moments summarizing the more interesting parts of your journal related to that theme.
• Your summarized notes will start to become more structured, because you’ll be intentionally looking for common threads during each review. Once that happens, it’s a sign that you’re ready to start building out a formal knowledge base.