Three reasons DevOps culture stalls, and how to avoid them

Watching technology spread throughout almost every industry has been one of the most fascinating things I’ve watched over the course of my career. I’ve worked with many companies where the initiative was there, but the results were lackluster. Whether it was called a digital transformation or a DevOps transformation or cloud migration or something else, the failure and stall patterns can be extracted.

In this talk, join Mike Stahnke, CircleCI's VP, Platform, describe three reasons why DevOps transformation stalls and ways to overcome each roadblock.

Transcript

1. 1 Three reasons DevOps culture stalls and how to avoid them. Michael Stahnke VP Platform Engineering CircleCI @stahnma
2. @stahnma
3. @stahnma Ops Forward Enterprise Dev Forward
4. @stahnma DevOps outside of webops.
5. 5 @stahnma
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8. CONFIDENTIAL • DevOps Relevancy and the State of Being Stuck in the Middle • Key Blockers to Going from 
 Mid to High DevOps Evolution • Breaking Out of the Middle • Cloud = Not DevOps, DevOps = Better Cloud Capabilities • The (Future) of DevOps 8 Themes
9. @stahnma Things are often halfway across the ditch
10. CONFIDENTIAL Today 83 percent of IT decision makers report their organization is implementing DevOps practices. YET, the past four State of DevOps Reports have shown the vast majority of organizations are stuck in the middle. 10
11. @stahnma So, we’re stuck in the middle.
12. @stahnma You’re not alone. In fact, you’re a majority.
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14. 14 Leadership Support
15. @stahnma Executives have a rosier view 
 of DevOps progress than 
 the teams below them.
16. @stahnma C-Suite Management Team Teams contribute improvements to tooling provided by other teams 64% 46% 35% We balance lowering technical debt with new feature work 61% 44% 33% Security teams involved in technology design and deployment 64% 48% 39%
17. CONFIDENTIAL Mid-level organizations • Introduced automated testing and version control • Hired and/or retrained teams and are working to improve their CI/CD pipeline • Started to optimize for individual teams, 
 and are greatly positioned to start to optimize 
 for larger departments, the “teams of teams” 17
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19. @stahnma Change Mandate vs Amplification
20. @stahnma Senior Leadership controls a small number of things. 1. Incentives 2. Inspiration 3. Org Structure 4. Budget
21. @stahnma Cycles where you can’t move as fast. But the rules don’t apply to everybody.
22. @stahnma cyn·i·cism
 
 noun
 
 an inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest; skepticism.

23. @stahnma Hating is easier than trying.
24. @stahnma Bringing folks with you.
25. @stahnma Internal Champions
26. @stahnma What incentives move people? EPS usually isn’t it.
27. 27 Standardization
28. @stahnma This has been where I’ve drilled in for years.
29. @stahnma Overindexed on autonomy
30. @stahnma Should every team be making all of their own decisions?
31. @stahnma You don’t “win” on standardization until you’ve removed something completely, not just reduced it.
32. @stahnma The cost introducing a new technology rounds to zero when compared to the efforts required to completely retire it.
33. @stahnma The cost introducing a new technology rounds to zero when compared to the efforts required to completely retire it.
34. @stahnma Should every team be making all of their own decisions?
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41. 41 Willingness to Change
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45. @stahnma They won’t let us do that.
46. @stahnma Evaluation of things as simple as language. Us/Them or We?
47. @stahnma Stop talking about culture. Start doing stuff.
48. @stahnma We’re special because of X, Y, Z
49. @stahnma Renaming a team isn’t really change.
50. 50 Closing
51. 51 Closing Leadership Drive
 From the ground and from the top. Standardization
 You can move faster with fewer choices. Willingness to Change
 The same constraints will lead to the same outcomes. It’s not only “culture” @stahnma
52. 52 Thank you Michael Stahnke @stahnma