This document summarizes Target's journey to transform their engineering culture through DevOps. It discusses how they overcame challenges like slow delivery, siloed teams, and outdated tools by enabling engineers, cultivating a grassroots movement, simplifying processes, and aligning executives. Some results of these efforts include a 53x increase in enabled business capabilities, over 80 deployments per week, and establishing a learning environment to develop teams. The next steps discussed are expanding globally and seeking advice from others on challenges of scaling DevOps across a large enterprise.

1. DevOps@TGT
Heather Mickman
@hmmickman
Ross Clanton
@rossclanton
(re)building an engineering culture

2. #DOTGT
a bit
about us
53 years of service
347,000 team members
1,805 stores
Target
Omnichannel Retailer
Fortune 50
source: abullseyeview.com
7 HQ locations
38 distribution centers
3 data centers

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our story
involves two
important
sets of
people
people who consume technology solutions people who create technology solutions

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and how we
navigated
culture organization system complexity

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engineers feeling
devalued, frustrated
to overcome
some not so
unique
challenges
zombie projects consuming
time, money, and people
loss of agility
focus on siloing + local optimization

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the first
thing we
knew we
had to do
was …

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so far our
journey
has
involved
enabling, unleashing
cultivating, growing a movement
getting alignment
figuring out how to across the enterprise

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so Target
wanted to
create cool,
digital guest
experiences

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multiple “sources of truth”
connected by unique
point-to-point integrations
but getting
the data
needed was
easier said
than done

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shared
services
queues
having to
in addition
we had a
matrixed
operating,
delivery
model that
moved
slowly
NOW SERVING
938 12541253
1252
1251
which led to
which led to

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discovering
the power of
APIs
that would be the
API I’ve almost
finished coding …
there’s got to be a
better way to get to
our data!

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“alien” concepts new tools simplifying
to solve
meant
listening to a
radical
group of
change
agents (aka
engineers)
have you heard about
CI/CD? Agile?

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and the
results
speak
volumes
53x
business
capabilities
enabled
including
we continue to focus on enabling new business capabilities
our focus: enable market, not business, disruption
we aren’t driving the increase but our APIs have to be ready
source: comScore Key Measures, October-December 2014
> 90 API products
> 80 deployments per week
> 17 billion monthly API calls
< 10 incidents per month
in 2014
traffic up
42%
280k
orders fulfilled 2014
Black Friday weekend
APIs built
to handle
serious
traffic
holiday 2015

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we had to
transform
pockets of
change
agents
movement using
internal in-conferences
into a BIG
internal social media
monthly share-outs quarterly hackathons

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bringing in
outside
voices, we
made it fun
Just heard the news.
#DevOpsDays
is on Thursday, October 2
(Got so excited she spilled Starbucks on her laptop.)
Rob Cummings
Fletcher Nichol
Michael Ducy
Jeff Sussna
Ian Malpass
Andy Domeier
Sean O’Neil
Jez Humble
Tom Duffield
Matt Konda

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sharing our
story,
nurturing the
grassroots
to grow
500
1000
February
2014
June
2014
October
2014
February
2015
June
2015
October
2015
community members
internal event attendance
37
975
target.github.io

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and
connecting
with larger
issues
facing
company
under pressure to fundamentally change our
approach to technology delivery from the
most important, demanding, savvy people in the world
ourselves
internal customers
competitors
Target Guests
we needed engagement to move forward

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direction
course
and align
executives
to set
direction,
course
CI/CD maturity framework, assessment toolkit
identified, aligned champions to work with senior
executives to:
• establish DevOps and automation goals and
priorities
• drive continuous delivery maturity assessment
• champion DevOps and Automation within their
portfolio
≈
engineering
practices
Continuous Integration
4-8 weighted
data points
per practice
to assess maturity
Configuration Management
Quality Assurance
Data Management
Deploy
Environment & Infrastructure
scoring
0 = This practice is not followed at all by the team
CI/CD
adoption score
calculated
using data points
1 = The team has started to learn this practice but is not yet applying it
2 = The team has started to apply this practice but has little experience with it
3 = The team is applying the practice at least 50% of the time
4 = The team applies this practice most of the time but has some notable
exceptions
5 = The team applies this practice consistently

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then align
our peers by
drawing on
external
expertise
Brooklyn Park, MN • March 19, 2015
Keynote
• Gene Kim
Speakers
• Jason Cox
• Scott Prugh
TTS Leadership DevOps Summit
• Jonny Wooldridge
• Courtney Kissler
• Nicole Forsgren

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thus
combining
tops down
support with
a strategic
focus
the
BIG
question
“How in the hell are we going to scale?”
modernize tools,
methodologies
adopt Agile and DevOps
increase speed, agility
pay down tech debt

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operating
model
• simplify structure, accountability
• enable full-stack product
ownership
• standardize services
• establish practices area
delivery
model
• shift to product focus
• drive end-to-end accountability
• adopt Scrum framework
modernization
strategy
• loosely coupled architecture
• APIs
• cloud ready
• self-service, lightweight tools
1. make
structural
changes
Financial Prioritization
Financial
Appropriation
IT Strategy &
Benchmarking
Emerging Technologies TTS Comms
Mergers & Acquisitions TTS OCM
IT Ops & Process Enterprise Governance
Financial Prioritization
Financial
Appropriation
CDCI

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converge
movements
grow pool of
coaches
converge
movements
grow pool of
coaches
connect experts
drive learning
align priorities
maintain laser focus
2. connect
important
dots

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3. build an
internal
incubator
environment

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4. develop,
expand
learning
service
offerings challenges 30+ day experience introducing, leveling
up Agile Scrum, DevOps, Lean skills
flashbuilds* 1-3 day events to create a usable
feature, solve a problem
open labs 90-minute sessions twice weekly for
questions, answers, and good old
fashioned inspiration
*check target.github.io for details
immersive learning

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aligned
with
strategic
priorities
and folks
ready to
#DO
5. prioritize
demand
based on
constraints
key partners include coaches working with teams who
are able to connect the Dojo with teams …

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which has
helped move
fast
and a first round of immersive learning for our senior executives
results
so far
(since April 2015)
throughput
outcomes
personal
14 6 200+
challenges flashbuilds learners
building team
from delegating tasks to individuals to
get things done
to working as team to come up with the
best solution, one that all supported
lead engineer
confidence
from worrying about calls in the night
during production deployments
to being able to go to bed knowing what’s
ready for deployment works and there will
be no calls
senior engineer
collaboration
from environment not conducive to real-
time collaboration
to environment that enables face-to-face
communication, progress
scrum master
consistency
from 3-month process involving 2-3
dozen requests to other teams with
inconsistent results
to 30-minutes to deploy consistent full-
stack environment
velocity
from single person spending 6-12 hours
to merge/promote code every 2 weeks
to everyone being able to merge/promote
code in minutes
foundation
from having an idea that sounds really
great in theory
to being able to use new tools to be
successful in reality (including
uncovered unknown required work)

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what have
we learned
in 6 months?
expect the
unexpected
befriend your
landlord
don’t
overly
focus
on one
area
a successful
Challenge needs
a good charter
MVPs rock

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next step in
scaling
taking
the
global

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be exclusively
inclusive
our advice
to others?
unlearn what you
have learned
empower your
change agents
don’t wait to
connect with broader DevOps
Enterprise community

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here’s
what we’re
looking for
help with
how do you scale
across an enterprise?
and follow our journey
Target Tech Blog
http://target.github.io
The Goat Farm
http://goatcan.do
tweet us
@hmmickman @RossClanton