How do you move a traditional OPS organization, to leveraging DevOps principles and ideas? This talk is a retrospective on the journey Centro has been on to transform our Engineering culture. We’ll discuss where we were, where we are and where we’re going.

1. 1
MOVING FROM OPS TO DEVOPS
Centro’s Journey to a New Way of Working

2. 2
HELLO? IS THIS
DEVOPS?
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

3. 3 Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Dev Ops

4. 4
HIRING FOR THE DEVOPS MANAGER ROLE
Duties and Responsibilities
LEADERSHIP COLLABORATION PRIORITIZATION
• Roadmap
• Prioritization
• Scheduling
• Work with project
managers
• Sets standards for sound
design and code delivery
• Removes blockers
• Sets the work pace for the
team
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

5. 5
Jeff Smith
Centro
Director, Production Operations
• @DarkAndNerdy
• jeff.smith@centro.net
• www.allthingsdork.com
@darkandnerdy

6. 6
Centro is a digital advertising company
that provides a SAAS solution that
streamlines and automates campaign
planning, buying and execution for digital
advertisers.
WHO IS CENTRO?
TECH STACK
RUBY ON RAILS, JAVA
POSTGRES, AWS, DATADOG,
STACKSTORM, TERRAFORM,
SALTSTACK@darkandnerdy

7. 7
ALIGNING TEAMS AND TASKS
Sometimes capabilities can overlap
PROCESS ENGINEERING SOFTWAREENGINEERING
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy
• Augments/enhances existing
processes
• New processes are out of
scope for this team
• Responsible for creating new
processes along with the tool
• New processes are out of
scope for this team
NO ONE IS ACCOUNTABLE

8. 8
WORDS PRODUCE BEHAVIORS
https://blog.matthewskelton.net/2013/10/22/what-team-structure-is-right-for-
devops-to-flourish/ Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

9. 9
THIRD SILOS ARE ALMOST ALWAYS A BAD IDEA
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

10. 10
DEVOPS TRANSFORMATION STEPS
Things to Monitor
Identify and Correct What’s Wrong
Expand the Scope of Operations
Behavioral Changes

11. 11
WHAT WAS WRONG?

12. 12
1 2 3
Parkinson’s Law
PATERNALISTIC OPERATIONS
Developers have no admin
rights on dev instances
Forces an OPS
dependency
Developers had NO
access to production
Creates a fog around
how production
functions
Developers could
not create alerts
Forces developers to
rely on OPS for
problem identification
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy

13. 13
Time, Flexibility,
Fewer Interruptions
INEXCHANGEFOR
TRADEOFFS
Control, Security,
Approval
Nothing is free
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy

14. 14
1 2 3
Requires trust and education
CORRECTING THE BEHAVIOR
Developers get root to their
dev instances
We don’t support dev
instances.
Destroy/recreate
Developers get access to
common safe tasks
Requires automation
effort on OPS side
Migrated to
Datadog
A new cost/host
spending model
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy

15. 15
SHARING INFORMATION ON INFRASTRUCTURE
Lunch and Learns, Pairing, Infrastructure Documentation
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy

16. 16
EXPANDING THE SCOPE
OF OPS

17. 17
EXPAND THE SCOPE OF WHAT OPS MANAGES
PRODUCTION STAGING
DEV
ENVIRONMENTS
CI
ENVIRONMENTS
LOCAL
DEVELOPMENT
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy

18. 18
BUSINESS OPERATIONS
DEFINITION
Operations management refers to
the administration of business
practices to create the highest level
of efficiency possible within an
organization. It is concerned with
converting materials and labor into
goods and services as efficiently as
possible to maximize the profit of an
organization.
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy

19. 19
BUSINESS OPERATIONS
DEFINITION
Operations management refers to
the administration of business
practices technologies to create the
highest level of efficiency possible
within an organization. It is
concerned with converting materials
and labor into goods and services
developing systems and processes to
help deliver services as efficiently as
possible to maximize the profit of an
organization.
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy

20. 20
OFFERING OPERATIONAL EXPERTISE
Don’t assume people who write the software know the best way to run it
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy

21. 21
BEHAVIORAL CHANGES

22. 22
1 2 3
BEHAVIOR CAN IMPACT PERFORMANCE
Participate in
Developer Rituals
Standups, Iteration
Planning Meetings,
Retrospectives
Start with
“Yes….but”
Assume you CAN do
something but figure
out what needs to be
done to make it safe
”Can you give me
some context”
Go beyond just
fulfilling requests. Ask
for the full picture
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy

23. 23
METRICS TO TRACK
Planned vs Unplanned Work
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
@darkandnerdy

24. 24
TRACK RECURRING ISSUES
Copyright © 2016 Centro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• 2% of our tickets are for Console Access
• What are the things that are driving
console access requests
• How can we automate this request to
remove ourselves from the problem
@darkandnerdy

25. 25
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT?
Don’t allow your OPS department to be a nanny
Find ways to remove the nanny state, but maintain
operational safety
Monitor and track the type of work you’re doing
Monitor how your organizational language impacts behaviors

26. 26
Jeff Smith
@DarkAndNerdy
jeff@allthingsdork.com
THANK
YOU.
@darkandnerdy