Justin Arbuckle, VP EMEA CHEF, at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2014 Passion, drive and relentless pursuit of almost mythical productivity improvements while ignoring the organizational necessities of building adoption and showing incremental successes early can make devops evangelists appear to be crazed Captain Ahabs. As your teams lash themselves to the mast waiting for the inevitable confrontation with an organization that ‘has always done things this way..’ you bellow into the gale…’cant you see that this is so much better!!’ It doesn’t have to be that way. Large enterprises have a great deal to both learn and teach about implementing devops at scale. Moby Dick is one of the greatest american novels ever written and is a brilliant analogy for what to avoid if your aim is to tame the devops whale in enterprises where you do not control all the elements. The big sea is very different from a garage… From this cautionary tale, we learn; The importance of committing – don’t just talk about devops. Do it. Decide to go to sea. Building a diverse willing team from across your business. Secret stowaway projects deliver early and then stall. Listen to the advice of other captains. There will be problems along the way and you will need them on the way back for sure. De-Centre your excellence. Its easier to land the whale with a lot of little boats than one big one. Devops changes the very fabric of how large enterprises have evolved to deliver IT systems…and yet you will find your message has enormous resonance for many. The secret to effectively seeding devops and growing its influence in your organization lies with the organization itself and how you make your devops journey everyone else’s too.