This document outlines how DevOps can help struggling projects by discussing common reasons projects fail and providing a method for implementing DevOps. It proposes that projects often fail due to poor alignment, insufficient resources, and unrealistic requirements. The document then recommends forming a combined team of developers and operations staff, giving them a clear mission, and allowing for pizza purchases to foster collaboration. Implementing DevOps in this way can provide predictable delivery, improved quality, and happier teams. For already failing projects, it suggests forming a "war room" team to determine how to get the project back on track through radical changes.

1. One Weird Trick
How DevOps Can Help Your Struggling Project
Dave Thompson, CTO @ RightBrain Networks
6 December, 2016

2. What are we going to talk about?
● Failure
● How to fail less

3. Projects Fail
In a recent survey by Innotas[1]
, 55% of
respondants reported they have experienced a
failed project in the past 12 months.
1: https://www.innotas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/The-Project-and-Portfolio-
Management-Landscape-Report_2016_final.pdf

4. What is Project Failure?
Proposed definition:
A project is a failure when it does not satisfy the
business objectives it was intended to achieve.

5. Why Do Projects Fail?
Common factors include:
● Poor alignment between projects, teams, and
business objectives
● Insufficient resources
● Incomplete, contradictory, and unrealistic
requirements

6. How To Spot a Project in Danger
● High stress between teams
● Poor collaboration
● Pattern of missed deadlines
● Too big to fail

7. There is a Solution!
These are the problems that Agile set out to
address, and that DevOps is continuing to
battle.

8. But What Is DevOps?

9. DevOps Isn’t
● A bucket of tools
● A nifty new job title for systems engineers
● Practices like CI, CD, etc.

10. How Much Would You Pay For...
● Predictable Delivery
● Improved Quality
● Collaboration Between Software and Systems
Engineers

11. We’ll Even Throw In
● Happier Engineers and Customers

12. Sounds Great, But How Do I
DevOps?

13. Our Revolutionary, Patent-Pending
DevOps Method
● Create a combined team of systems and
software engineers
● Give them one important mission
● Buy them a pizza occasionally

14. Wow, It’s That Easy!
Let’s See That Again in Slow Motion.

15. Create a Combined Team
● To do DevOps, it is necessary to combine Dev
and Ops.
● You may be anxious, or even frightened.
● This is normal.
● Push those feelings deep, deep down.
● Fun fact! Both Dev and Ops can smell your
fear.

16. Give Them One Important Mission
Under normal circumstances, Dev and Ops tribes
would divide into homogeneous cliques and
communicate only via highly-formalized rituals such
as the Rite of Ticketing or the Circle of Blame.
By tasking the combined group with a single urgent
objective, you can temporarily overcome their mutual
distrust.
If it worked for Churchill, Stalin, and FDR, it can
probably work for you!

17. Buy Them Pizza Occasionally
For group cohesion, the new team should be small
enough to feed with two pizzas* (per Bezos rule), so
this isn’t too expensive.
As BF Skinner, Father of Operant Conditioning
taught us, itermittant reinforcement is most effective
in conditioning a response.
*Beer is also popular.

18. How It Works
● Forming a combined team facilitates cross-
functional communication.
● A shared objective orients the whole team,
creating alignment which encourages trust that
everyone is on the same side.
● Delegating authority to the team fosters a
sense of ownership, allowing rapid decision-
making and fast delivery.

20. Act Now, and We’ll Include
● Source Control, Versioning, and Release
Management
● Continuous Integration and Delivery
● Infrastructure as Code
● Monitoring, Alerting, and Log Aggregation

21. At No Extra Charge!
These technical tools naturally emerge from the
collaboration between software and systems
experts in their effort to help each other to
succeed as a team.
They are an outcome, not a method, of DevOps

22. But How Does All This Junk Help
My Project?

23. Oh, Right.
● Using the DevOps Method™, you’ve created a
team with cross-functional skills, ready to take
on a big mission.
● That big mission could be your project!

24. Scoping the Project
● Are the success criteria clear?
● Is the size of the task appropriate for about 5-8
people?
● Is it possible to delegate most decisions to the
team?

25. Execution
● Typical Agile practices are recommended.
● Servent leadership is critical to the success of
this model.
● Clear priorities and ownership must be
maintained at all times.
● Overcommunication is key.

26. But what If My Project is Already
Failing?

27. The War Room

28. The War Room
This is probably obvious, but it’s easier to
prevent a failure than to fix one.
War Rooms are an extremely expensive
emergency response. They should only be
used in the face of catastrophe.

29. ● Don’t Panic!
● Identify the key contributors
● Form them into a team, per The Method™
● Put them in a room together
● Give them the mission of determining how to
make the project succeed.
● Be generous with the pizza
How to War Room

30. How to War Room
Be prepared for bad news. If you’re at this
point, pleasant surprises are uncommon.
To get back on track, you’ll probably need to
radically cut scope, reset delivery expectations,
make staffing changes, and other
uncomfortable stuff.

31. What’s Next
If your War Room effort has succeeded, you
should take the team out to celebrate.
You have just created a DevOps team the hard
way!

32. Questions?