Enabling DevOps culture with a Platform Engineering team - DoD Edinburgh

DevOps is about creating a culture of shared responsibility in delivery teams. It is recommended to embed operations skills into delivery teams to reduce friction and enable them to deliver products to customers faster but whenever there is a need for significant investment in tooling and automation and teams lack the skills to self-manage a full application and operations stack, having a separate Platform engineering team can help. Organizations that consider establishing such a platform engineering team should be very cautious not to accidentally create a separate DevOps team.

In this presentation we will talk about when and why Platform engineering team can be helpful. The team’s chief responsibility is to operate a platform which enables delivery teams to self-service deploy and operate systems with reduced lead time and complexity. The emphasis here is on self-service infrastructure and supporting tools, with delivery teams still responsible for supporting what they deploy onto the platform. He will also talk about challenges and lessons learned leading and being part of such teams. He will explain “The Three Ways: The Principles Underpinning DevOps” as mentioned in “DevOps Handbook” & “The Phoenix Project” and how it can be used to resolve some of these challenges faced by the team.

Transcript

1. Adarsh Shah Technology Leader, Coach, Hands-on Architect
 Independent Consultant shahadarsh www.shahadarsh.com Enabling DevOps culture with a Platform Engineering team Challenges & Lessons Learned Priyanka Rao Project Manager, Agile Coach
 Independent Consultant pri_posterous
2. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Common team structures Dev & Ops collaboration Collaboration Dev Ops Site Reliability Engineering Dev SRE HandOff - Meets Standards? Cross-functional team Dev Platform Engineering team Platform Platform Api driven App Dev 1 Ops App Dev 2 Customers Self-service pipelines Monitoring tools Analytics Infra provisioning Container platform
3. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Platform Engineering Team is responsible for operating a platform which enables delivery teams to self-service deploy and operate systems with reduced lead time and complexity. Platform Engineering team
4. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Vision
5. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Platform Engineering team Platform <platform> Api driven App Dev 1 Ops App Dev 2 Customers Self-service pipelines Monitoring tools Analytics Infra provisioning Container platform
6. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous The Principles Underpinning DevOps The Three Ways Systems Thinking Amplify Feedback Loops Culture of Continual Experimentation & Learning
7. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Challenges & Lessons Learned with Platform Engineering teams
8. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous #1 Challenge: Avoid creating another silo
9. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous • Enablers not just Doers • Cross-team internships • Constant pairing with App dev teams • Lunch and learn sessions • Not a service center • Common goals & incentives Avoid creating another silo
10. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous #2 Challenge: Tackling Knowledge silos within the team
11. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous • Story pair rotation (pair stairs) • ‘Support-pair’ rotation • Glossary of terms • Postmortem • Skills matrix exercise Tackling Knowledge silos within the team
12. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Pair stairs Martha Katie Mark David Martin Martha Katie 1 Mark 3 0 David 0 1 1 Martin 0 2 1 0
13. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous • Story pair rotation (pair stairs) • ‘Support-pair’ rotation • Glossary of terms • Postmortem • Skills matrix exercise Tackling Knowledge silos within the team
14. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Skills Matrix exercise Python Pipeline Kubernetes AWS Vault Consul Terraform Martha 1 2 3 2 2 3 3 Katie 3 3 2 1 2 1 3 Mark 1 1 2 3 1 2 2 David 1 1 2 2 3 1 1 Martin 1 1 2 1 1 2 1
15. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Next sprint Python Pipeline Kubernetes AWS Vault Consul Terraform Martha 1 2 3 2 2 3 3 Katie 3 3 2 1 2 1 3 Mark 1 1 2 3 1 2 2 David 1 1 3 2 3 1 1 Martin 1 1 2 1 1 3 1
16. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous #3 Lesson learned: Building the right features
17. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous • Promote Product thinking • Observe and talk to customers • Key Performance Indicator driven • Innovate (problem solve) and experiment • Product Owner Prioritization Building the right features
18. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Path to Production exercise Logging Monitoring Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Security Delivery Infrastructure Support Now Format AD integration Pipelines Soon Aggregation SLAs, KPIs Secrets mgmt Container platform Later Retention, Masking API for infra provisioning Near Release BCP test Failover test Pen testing Post Release
19. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous
20. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous #4 Lesson learned: Being Agile
21. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous • Story Writing • Analysis is required but its technical analysis • Standup, Retros & other agile practices • Product Owner Prioritization • Decide on team norms • Project reporting Being Agile
22. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous #5 Lesson learned: Embracing rapid adoption
23. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous • Showcases + future plans • Enablement • Maintainability • Build trust (communicate why, how, when - release notes & instructions) Embracing rapid adoption
24. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Dev Ops Dev & Ops Team structures evolution
25. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Dev Ops Dev & Ops Dev Cross-functional team Team structures evolution
26. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Dev Ops Dev & Ops Dev & Ops collaboration Collaboration Dev Ops Dev Cross-functional team Team structures evolution
27. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Dev Ops Dev & Ops Dev & Ops collaboration Collaboration Dev Ops Dev Cross-functional team Dev SRE HandOff - Meets Standards? Site Reliability Engineering site reliability & uptime is critical? Team structures evolution
28. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Dev Ops Dev & Ops Dev & Ops collaboration Collaboration Dev Ops Dev Cross-functional team Dev SRE HandOff - Meets Standards? Site Reliability Engineering site reliability & uptime is critical? Team structures evolution teams lack skills to self-manage app and ops stack? Platform Platform Api driven App Dev 1 Ops App Dev 2 Customers Self-service pipelines Monitoring tools Analytics Infra provisioning Container platform Temp Platform team? Platform Engineering team
29. @shahadarsh @pri_posterous Summary • Different team structures for DevOps • Platform Engineering • Challenges • Avoid creating another silo • Building the right features • Being Agile • Embracing rapid adoption • Tackling knowledge silos within the team • Evolution of team structures
30. Adarsh Shah Technology Leader, Coach, Hands-on Architect
 Independent Consultant shahadarsh www.shahadarsh.com Questions Priyanka Rao Project Manager, Agile Coach
 Independent Consultant pri_posterous