Murughan Palaniachari conducted a DevOps LEGO game session using LEGO sets to teach DevOps principles and practices. The game involved forming multi-disciplinary teams to build LEGO models within a 15 minute sprint based on a product requirement. Teams applied DevOps roles like development, QA, and operations. After building, teams presented their models and discussed the DevOps principles they applied, like collaboration, communication, feedback, and empowerment. The team demonstrating the most DevOps practices and delivering the highest quality product were declared the winners. The game was an effective way to learn how DevOps eliminates silos and promotes shared culture, automation, measurement, and knowledge sharing.

1. Learn DevOps through LEGO
Murughan Palaniachari

2. Who am I?
Murughan Palaniachari
Heading DevOps @ Euromonitor
Website/Blog
https://elevate-org.com/
LinkedIn
https://in.linkedin.com/in/murughan
Twitter
@Murughan_P

3. Books influenced me towards DevOps Movement

4. Source: https://elevate-org.com/2016/12/14/top-10-devops-values/

5. What is DevOps by Gurus?
Godfather Patrick Debois describes
DevOps is HUMAN problem
It’s a movement of people who think it’s time for a
change in the IT industry.
Damon Edwards and John Willis describes DevOps
as CAMS
Culture
Automation
Measurement
Sharing
Source: https://elevate-org.com/2016/11/28/what-is-devops-by-gurus/

6. DevOps Game LEGO – Mission & Goal
I have used LEGO Deep Sea Exploration Vessel – Lego, you can use any LEGO set.
Story for this Lego Set “Our mission was to recover sunken treasure with the Deep Sea Exploration
Vessel! A shipwreck with a cargo of gold bars has been spotted at the bottom of the ocean. we need
build high-tech diving equipment.”
Product Owner Expectation:
need to build high-tech diving
equipment.

7. DevOps Game - Rules
Supplies
• Each team gets one Lego item set
• Printed sheet with expected output
Game Rules
• Minimum 4 team members to max 8
• Each team should have a role of Development, Database, QA, and Operations.
• 15 min to build LEGO
• DevOps principles & practices have to be applied while building LEGO
• At the end, one representative from each team should talk about the Principles and Value of DevOps they
have applied while building
• Evaluation is based on the DevOps Principles applied and Product delivery.

8. DevOps Game LEGO with team
I have conducted this session @ Microsoft Bangalore through Containers Developers Meetup.
In this LEGO game, we had multiple teams participated, each team took one business requirement to deliver.

9. DevOps Game LEGO – Sprint work
We had 5 teams was building scuba scooter, Lifeboat with 2 crew members, the submarine with domed cockpit,
Remote submarine, and shark cage respectively.

10. DevOps Game LEGO – Done state
By 15 minutes team has done with product and getting ready for Retro.

11. DevOps Game LEGO - Retro time
A representative from each team Demoed quality product and shared the DevOps principles & practices they
have applied while building.

12. DevOps Game LEGO - Winners
The team who has applied most of the DevOps principles & practices and delivered quality product,
they were the winners!

13. Learnings from LEGO game
• Everyone follows the same Culture.
• Each team has members of Development, Database, QA, and Operations by this we eliminating Silo teams.
• Knowledge sharing happens among team members, this will enable Generalized than Specialized team members.
• Team members from DEV, Database, QA, Operations are involved from the start of Project.
• Everyone is responsible for delivering.
• The team built trust with each other.
• The team is communicating and collaborating at every point of a time.
• Work is visible to everyone, the team has up-to-date information on the status of the work so that if any WAIT is happening that can be addressed
immediately and enable a fast flow of work from left to right i.e. Business to Customer.
• Valuing feedback as all the different department team members are in one team here, feedback from QA is being immediately incorporated.
• Reduced Batch size so that small work can be deployed quickly and frequently in order to decrease the overhead of QA testing at the end,
Integration happens at the end and so on.
• The team is empowered to fail fast and continually learn from success and failure.

14. Thank you
Murughan Palaniachari
Heading DevOps @ Euromonitor
https://elevate-org.com/
https://in.linkedin.com/in/murughan
@Murughan_P
murughan1985@gmail.com