The document shares insights from Meri Williams about her experience implementing DevOps in a large financial company, highlighting the challenges of separating development and operations functions. It emphasizes the importance of communication, collaboration, and specific practices like test-driven development and automation to improve efficiency and reduce issues. Anti-patterns that hinder successful DevOps integration are discussed, with a positive focus on culture, automation, measurement, and sharing as key components for success.

1. DEVOPS IN
THE WILD
MERI WILLIAMS
CHROMEROSE LTD
@GEEK_MANAGER

2. LET’S START
WITH A STORY

3. 8 YEARS AGO…
I took over as Tech Lead for a product at
a large company.
It was a financial product within the
largest SAP installation in the world.
(yeah, I know, YUCK)

4. AT THE TIME…
There were over 100 tickets open.
Only possible to release new code to
production every three months.
Half the tickets were related to the last 3
releases.

5. I FELT A BIT LIKE THIS…

6. WHAT DID OPS THINK
OF DEV?

7. WHAT DID DEV THINK
OF OPS?

8. BOTH SIDES WERE A
LITTLE BIT RIGHT …
AND A LOT WRONG
(BUT APPARENTLY I WAS THE FIRST ONE
EVER TO ASK BOTH SIDES)

9. WHAT DID WE DO?
On Dev side, we upped our game:
• Introduced TDD and comprehensive tests
On the Ops side, we learnt to trust:
• After first quarterly release that introduced no new
issues (and closed 20+ tickets), agreed to monthly
releases
Most of all, we learnt to COMMUNICATE and planned
TOGETHER.

10. WE FELT LIKE THIS

11. SINCE THEN, DEVOPS
HAS BECOME A HOT
TOPIC
BUT I’D ARGUE THAT NOW, IT’S A
SURVIVAL SKILL

12. SOME DEFINITIONS
DEVELOPMENT = the building of the
product
OPERATIONS = the running of the product
DEVOPS = philosophy of communication
and collaboration between these two
important specialties

13. FIRST,
SOME ANTI-
PATTERNS
AN EXCELLENT LIST FROM DEVOPSGUYS

14. TRAPS TO AVOID
• Mandating a DevOps “process”
• Assuming Agile == DevOps (though they are
good partners in crime)
• Rebranding Dev or Ops or any other team as
“DevOps”
• Starting a separate “DevOps group” (another
silo…)
• Enabling/allowing a hostile takeover

15. MORE TRAPS TO AVOID
• Believing DevOps is a meaningless buzzword
• Believing DevOps is a silver bullet (this shit is hard,
yo)
• Assuming DevOps means Devs Managing Production
• Assuming DevOps is Dev-Driven Release
Management
• Excuses like wrong people / wrong time / “we’re
special”

16. THAT WAS
DEPRESSING,
HUH?
DON’T WORRY, THERE’S GOOD NEWS TOO

17. SO WHAT
DOES WORK?

18. CAMS
Culture Automation
Measurement Sharing
Per John Willis: http://www.opscode.com/blog/2010/07/16/what-devops-
means-to-me/

19. CULTURE
Start with people.
Value Dev AND Ops.
Openly. Encourage
collaboration.
Focus on fast AND
stable.

20. AUTOMATION
INVEST in automating
everything you can.
Configuration,
provisioning, release
deployment, monitoring,
orchestration, testing,
systems integration
testing, etc

21. MEASUREMENT

22. SHARING

23. GDS ARE IMPRESSIVE
IN THIS REGARD
DevOps philosophy + continuous delivery +
monitoring + automation =

24. AND DON’T FORGET THE
GDS BADGER OF DEPLOY

25. FURTHER READING
The original DevOpsGuys post about anti-patterns:
http://blog.devopsguys.com/2013/02/20/twelve-devops-anti-patterns/
Niek Bartholomeus’ excellent presentation about introducing devops to a more
traditional environment:
https://speakerdeck.com/niekbartho/devops-for-dinosaurs
The DevOps section of GDS’ Digital Service Manual:
https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/operations/devops.html
Anna Kennedy put together a brilliant list of resources after DevOpsDays:
http://annaken.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/devops-community-resources.html
DevOps Weekly newsletter: http://devopsweekly.com/

26. PS: REMEMBER TO LOVE
YOUR SYSADMINS