The Changing Role of Operations

The expectations and responsibilities for a modern operations team are high. Today, ops is expected to build and design delivery pipelines, have continuous statistic collection as a part of their monitoring services, and complement the development process with continuous integration and delivery practices, all while still maintaining critical back-office applications that most wouldn’t wish upon their enemies. How did it get that way? What separates the operations teams that lead from the ones who react? To dig in, we’ll consider a reactive team mired in fire-fighting and incapable of making headway, then watch as change that betters the team’s output and perception throughout the organization is slowly introduced. We’ll cover root-cause analysis efforts, bringing pain forward, experimentation, shifting left on quality, and selling automation and DevOps practices to management. This talk will not focus on tools, but rather procedural and cultural improvements that highlight the journey operations has undergone, and how we can prepare for the future.

Transcript

1. The Changing role of Operations Michael Stahnke Director of Engineering @stahnma
2. The Changing role of Operations Michael Stahnke Director of Engineering @stahnma
3. The Changing role of Operations Michael Stahnke Director of Engineering @stahnma
4. @stahnma What is a system?
5. @stahnma What is a system?
6. @stahnma What is a system?
7. @stahnma 1. a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole, in particular. 2. a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized scheme or method.
 
 
 

8. @stahnma What is administration?
9. @stahnma 1. the process or activity of running a business or organization 2. the action of dispensing, giving, or applying something.
 
 

10. @stahnma What is operations?
11. @stahnma an active process; a discharge of a function.
12. @stahnma Running complex connected things in an active process.
13. Michael Stahnke Puppet, Inc Director of Engineering @stahnma @stahnma
14. @stahnma The stories
15. @stahnma
16. @stahnma DevOps Engineer, SRE, Systems Engineer, Cloud Engineer
17. @stahnma
18. @stahnma
19. @stahnma phones, network, dns, smtp, dhcp, storage, virtualization, clustering, printers, directory services, data center layout, bill back, filesystem management, backups, disaster recovery, moving furniture, user management, web servers, disk usage, system upgrades
20. @stahnma Where we came from
21. @stahnma Figure out everything
22. @stahnma Last line of IT
23. @stahnma Last line of IT
24. @stahnma Job ill-defined
25. @stahnma Job ill-defined
26. @stahnma Cost Center
27. @stahnma Best case: unnoticed
28. @stahnma “It is impossible to exceed expectations.”
29. @stahnma The stories
30. @stahnma The stories
31. @stahnma
32. @stahnma Correct at the time.
33. @stahnma Slow(ish)
34. @stahnma I knew who built it
35. @stahnma Storage Failure
36. @stahnma Reuse before buy before build
37. @stahnma Making change hurts
38. @stahnma Change moratoriums
39. @stahnma Major trends
40. @stahnma
41. @stahnma
42. @stahnma Put this stuff into production for me
43. @stahnma Put this stuff into production for me…again
44. @stahnma Put this stuff into production for me…again
45. @stahnma
46. @stahnma Put this stuff into production for me…
47. @stahnma Back to our burden of proof
48. @stahnma
50. @stahnma What is the evolution?
51. @stahnma Developer practices
52. @stahnma Software defined everything
53. @stahnma Glue code is essential
55. @stahnma
56. @stahnma (self) Service Oriented
57. @stahnma
58. @stahnma Superset
59. @stahnma Breadth-First in most cases
60. @stahnma
61. @stahnma
62. @stahnma
63. pipelines, continuous integration, version control practices, deployment strategies, monitoring, statistics, metrics, automation tools, automated testing, continuous delivery, security
64. pipelines, continuous integration, version control practices, deployment strategies, monitoring, statistics, metrics, automation tools, automated testing, continuous delivery, security phones, network, dns, smtp, dhcp, storage, virtualization, clustering, printers, directory services, data center layout, bill back, filesystem management, backups, disaster recovery, moving furniture, user management, web servers, disk usage, system upgrades
65. pipelines, continuous integration, version control practices, deployment strategies, monitoring, statistics, metrics, automation tools, automated testing, continuous delivery, security phones, network, dns, smtp, dhcp, storage, virtualization, clustering, printers, directory services, data center layout, bill back, filesystem management, backups, disaster recovery, moving furniture, user management, web servers, disk usage, system upgrades and
 others
 … and
 others
 …
66. pipelines, continuous integration, version control practices, deployment strategies, monitoring, statistics, metrics, automation tools, automated testing, continuous delivery, security phones, network, dns, smtp, dhcp, storage, virtualization, clustering, printers, directory services, data center layout, bill back, filesystem management, backups, disaster recovery, moving furniture, user management, web servers, disk usage, system upgrades and
 others
 … and
 others
 …
67. @stahnma
68. @stahnma Primordial operations Dev Ops
69. @stahnma Building Servers.
70. @stahnma Know you’re correct.
71. @stahnma Storage Failures
72. @stahnma Owning it
73. @stahnma Adapting it
74. @stahnma Experiments
75. @stahnma Hack Days, Hack Time
76. @stahnma Failure are valid data
77. @stahnma Change lockdown?
78. @stahnma Build confidence
79. @stahnma
80. @stahnma Shift —> Left
81. @stahnma Bring the pain…forward
82. @stahnma
83. @stahnma A DevOps team Dev Ops DevOps
84. @stahnma A Cross-functional team
85. @stahnma Build upon this by hiring
86. @stahnma Experience with SDLC
87. @stahnma Drive to learn
88. @stahnma Adaptive
89. @stahnma Adaptive
90. @stahnma Fallacies of distributed systems
91. @stahnma
92. @stahnma CONSTANTS
93. @stahnma CONSTANTS • There is no bubble • The building blocks (primitives) evolve, but always exist • There is always tech to manage • Automation is how we scale • Capabilities more important than technologies
94. @stahnma
96. @stahnma We used to do everything* * For most values of everything
97. @stahnma Everything is larger now
98. @stahnma Software becoming part of the business changed our world
99. @stahnma Gone are the days of heroes
100. @stahnma Today we plan for the future
101. @stahnma Mistakes will be made
102. @stahnma There is always new tech
103. @stahnma There is always something new to manage
104. @stahnma Operations has expanded.
105. @stahnma
106. @stahnma Operations runs software.
107. @stahnma Software runs the business.
108. @stahnma Operations runs the business.
109. @stahnma cheers. @stahnma