Erno Aapa
Make yourself
replaceable
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Erno Aapa
ernoaapa
Engineer @ Sharper Shape
Founder of DevOpsFinland
"I am replaceable!
...or at least try to!"
I'm Replaceable 

like.... battery?
WHAT!?
ernoaapaPhoto by Michał Kulesza @ Tookapic
Refer to putting one person or
thing in place of another
replaceable
/rɪˈpleɪs/
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Means that any time 

you can be kicked out easily!
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"NO!... I'll rather make my self priceless
and raise my salary up to the sky!
Buhahahah!
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Cross working,
more agile,
big impact
Specialists,
processes,
less impact
Startups
Enterprise
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"It takes one week to

make yourself priceless
but

months or years to 

make yourself replaceable"
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Steve Jobs was here!
Google Trends: Adobe Flash Player
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Don't bet your whole career on top
of one technology
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Replaceable
Time for new
Changing work
Prepared for new
Priceless
Lock down
Repeating work
Same forever
Become more agile and productive
Missing one person don't affect to
performance
More united, collaborative team
Team
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Customer don't lock down to one provider
You don't lock down to one customer
That's what both parties actually wants!
Consulting / freelancer
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• I'm not the only one who know or do my tasks
• I teach what I know to my colleagues
• I try to make it as easy as possible to 

anyone take my job
• I help company to find a way to get rid of my work
• I'm always prepared to move forward
Replaceable
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But don't push your work to
others, that's laziness!
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Photo by Ronda Darby @ Unsplash
Even presidents are replaceable, 

why wouldn't you?
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Buy as-a-Service all you can!
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GitHub QuayWercker Kubernetes
Service
Service
Service
Service
provided
by
O
perations
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Force team to not 

depend on anyone!
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ƔDeveloper
Autom
ation!
GitHub
Ɣ
Other
Developers
Review code changes
and give feedback
ƔƔ
Testing!
Production
Ɣ
Other
Admins
Maintain the
automation and
environment ƔƔ
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Push team to be cross functioning
Photo from snapwiresnaps.tumblr.com ernoaapa
Story of two companies
Intrepid
Titanic
From Ansible newsletter 9/15 / Matt Jaynes ernoaapa
$60.000/Month
ƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓƓ 20 servers
Revenue
Sysadmins
Servers
Operation costs
$5M/Year
ƔƔƔ 3 Administrators
Titanic
From Ansible newsletter 9/15 / Matt Jaynes ernoaapa
$115M/YearRevenue
Sysadmins
Servers
Operation costs
Ɣ ¼ Developer
ƓƓƓƓ 4 Servers
$2.500/Month
From Ansible newsletter 9/15 / Matt Jaynes
INtrepid
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Intrepid
Titanic
Operation costs per $1M revenue
$144 000
$260
That's over

500 times more!
From Ansible newsletter 9/15 / Matt Jaynes ernoaapa
Photo by Greg Rakozy @ Unsplash
At the end...
it's just bits of
information
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200.000 years ago
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Small piece of information
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Matt
Cindy
Craig
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Matt
Cindy
Craig
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Sick!
Shit!
Shit!
Matt
Cindy
Craig
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Distribute basic information
Matt
Cindy
Craig
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No single point of failure
Who is priceless?
Write down the
core knowledge what
the people have
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Image processingHenry
Matt
Cindy
Craig
Shelia
Who is priceless? Write down who other
have knowledge about
same area
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Image processingHenry
Matt
Cindy
Craig
Shelia
Software development
Coordinate systems
Signal processing
Cloud and automation
Image processing
Who is priceless?
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Image processingHenry
Matt
Cindy
Craig
Shelia
Software development
Coordinate systems
Signal processing
Cloud and automation
Image & signal processing
Software development
Coordinate systems
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Developer
Operations
Manager
"Can you leave the project NOW?"
"Does production run if you leave?"
"Does the team work, even you're away?"
Frontend
Security
Backend
Building
Monitoring
Testing
Infrastructure
Deployment
Sensors
Autom
ation
Coordinates
Image/Video
Datamanagement
Softw
are
Analysis
3D modeling
Try different ways
Team missing information Knowledge not distributed
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Sharing the information
is not easy
you cannot force
other to learn
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1 Minimize amount of information
2 Remove unnecessary, automate rest
3 Rotate roles and tasks
4 Repeat, Repeat, Repeat!
5 "Can you do this...?" - "NO! But I'll teach"
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Changing culture 

is not easy
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"If company can run without me,
then I have done my work properly!
Please give feedback
Thank you!
Backgrounds: Mehmet Demiray, Turkey
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Make yourself replaceable at DevOpsCon 2016 Berlin