Session delivered at Microsoft Ignite 2018 (https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/66335) .
This session focuses on the human aspects of a DevOps implementation, and how the background and motivations of the people involved affects the technical decisions taken by the team. Learn how things such as ego, cognitive bias, and prejudice directly affect a DevOps team, and how some blockers to a DevOps strategy are not technological but human.
9. Leadership
Listen to all the involved
parties; we can always have an
unexpected gain
It doesn't matter how much you
believe to know about
technology or business
¿Sure? Perhaps your system is old but are you sure that there is no room for improvements? Have you verified that the workflow dependencies are as simple as they can be? Who knows? Perhaps you can automate certain parts reducing human interaction, gaining time in the road.
Yes, it is possible that the result won’t be a fully automated pipeline, but it will be a healthy improvement.
So, you must realize that sometimes is not a technical problem but an attitude one, hence take the responsibility of improve your workflow Alwways have in mind that legacy is anti-change
Everyone can learn
But we cannot expect that is an automatic process
Image used with CommitStrip.com permission, original link: http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2018/04/17/when-sysadmin-lends-a-hand/
Ok, these answers, most of the times, come when you believe that your current knowledge or approach applies for most of the situations, for most of the context and, because of that, we don’t take time to understand the other people’s context, and that’s something we must be able to do in the DevOps work field.
If we are working with DevOps we are supposed to bring innovations, to bring new ways of work, but sometimes we listen this phrase from the team members, not so DevOps friendly, right?So, we need to avoid fall in this trap, it could be the best for billing (at first), but not for achieve changes.
We have to listen all the involved parts, because we never know when the less expected member can contribute something really helpful or critical for our projects or our teams. We need to be eager to listen everyone and provide them space to share their contributions.
In the same way that must make us realize that it doesn’t matter how much do we believe to know about technology or business, because specially in DevOps the context always changes, it could be a new required technology or a new business issue, so is very important to be ready to learn something new, from the context or from your workmates, that’s how we can get real leadership in the DevOps approach.
Then we have a past, but we cannot let that such past condition our decisions, not in the DevOps world. It can provide us a starting point but not the complete solution, we are required to evaluate most of the choices that can solve a problem and provide the best approach, but sometimes that solution or approach won’t be our trusted one, we need to face it and always go beyond of our trusted one solution and investigate according to the context and the state of the art.
We need to properly understand the problem that we are about to solve by using technology, and then try to implement is as simple as possible (but no simpler!) trying to keep a balance, avoiding overengineering just for the sake of prove our own knowledge, having always in mind (of course) what are the current rules or law that we are enforced to comply, but always having a balance, not going to the extremes.
Also, when dealing with technology in a DevOps world, we have to be humble to accept that there are a lot of technologies that we are not aware of their existence, so we have to be curious to learn about new technologies, new approaches, what’s happening, what’s new, and perhaps (or not) such new exciting technology could be the key to solve our current problem, please always experiment.
We cannot forget the potential human blockers, that can inhibit us from provide value, from reaching our automation goals, I mentioned a few examples of blockers and I expect that You’ll be able to recognize them in your workday, to detect them in early stages and do the best to solve them.
But at the same time, such kind of personal issues could be so big or so deep, whatever the situations are, we cannot be afraid to ask for professional help, perhaps a psychologist, perhaps a sociologist, they are the ones trained to deal with human personality issues, and we need to be humble to understand that sometimes external help is necessary, So Try It!