DevOps Transformation

DevOps had been introduced to the IT industry around 2010. The idea of DevOps is to “increase profitability, elevate work culture and exceed productivity goals” by integrating Development team and Operation team (DevOps Handbook). I am lucky to lead the DevOps implementation for one of the IT teams in the organization I work for. So far implementing DevOps has been a fun and educational journey. 

“The Phoenix Project” and “The Unicorn Project” were two great books to get started with DevOps. They are written in a novel format to demonstrate how an organization (Parts Unlimited) will succeed with transitioning to DevOps. Parts Unlimited, a retailor selling car parts, was implementing an important IT project to stay competitive in the market. Both books share the story on how through transforming to DevOps, Parts Unlimited overcame its struggle and became successful. 

 “The Phoenix Project” describes the story from the organization's leadership level and introduced the philosophy of the Three Ways. “The Unicorn Project” introduces the story from the developers´/IT team’s perspective and introduces the Five Ideals. I will list the Three Ways and the Five Ideals at the end of this article. “The DevOps Handbook” is another great book of DevOps, giving a clear definition of what are the Three Ways and how an organization can achieve them. I am currently reading it. 

In my article, I would like to share my afterthoughts of reading both “The Phoenix Project” and “The Unicorn Project”. By writing out my afterthoughts, it helps me to internalize what I have learned from both books and hopefully can also help you to know a little more about DevOps.  

1.      “Understand the true business context that IT resides in.” 

In “The Phoenix Project”, Bill the VP of IT Operation realized that IT was viewed as a separate organization inside the Parts Unlimited. The separation not only led to a culture of constant blaming issues due to the IT failures, but also resulted in IT prioritizing projects or tasks that were not aligned with overall business goals of the organization. 

As mentioned both in “The Phoenix Project” and “The Unicorn Project”, after talking to business partners to understand their pain points and their needs, both the IT leadership teams and the IT developers better understood what should be value-added activities for the business. For example, after working as an in-store salesperson, Maxine, a leading IT engineer in Parts Unlimited realized that the development team was not developing features meeting business needs. After reaching out to the CFO to truly understand the business targets, Bill, the VP of IT operation in Parts Unlimited, created a chart to identify the critical business projects for IT and risks from IT could damage business daily operation.

The full integration of IT and Business cannot be achieved only by the IT organization taking the initiatives. It is the whole company´s responsibility from the top down to understand and ensure that in this digital age, IT is a part of the business. For leaders from IT, it is critical to tighten the IT priorities with business needs. For leaders from business, it is equally important to include IT in strategic decision making and understand the business responsibilities in each IT project. 

2.      Cooperation within IT  

There is a natural conflict between the IT Development Team and IT Operation Team. The development team needs to deliver fast solutions while the operation team needs to ensure each deployment will not have negative impacts on the current system. However, this conflict creates great opportunities for the Dev and Ops team to work collaboratively to achieve the ultimate goal efficiently.

The Dev and Ops teams should not be a separate entity. In Parts Unlimited, Dev and Ops were leading by two leaders who originally did not communicate with each other. After starting to cooperate and bring two teams together, both leaders realized that many gaps they can close by working collaboratively. 

During my daily work I also see the benefit that when the operation and development team has the same goal, the flow of development and deployment is easier. We gain better support from each other and create stronger synergies.

3.      A simple process is much needed and appreciated.

Even though we are moving to Agile, Scrum, or DevOps, it does not mean we are doing things freely without a structure. On the contrary, a clear but simple process and structure must be identified, well communicated, and strictly followed. For example, it was mentioned in both books that Parts Unlimited projects went live without going through the release control process. These unauthorized releases created many major issues within the production system. What was worse, the IT team could not figure out the root cause of the issues due to untransparent releases. I am grateful that the organization that I work for has a good process for the development release. We had faced the system failure after one release. However, since we knew what changes went into the deployment pipeline, we could quickly determine what was at the root of the issue and resolved the issue in a timely manner. 

If we want the process to be followed, we must have a simple and transparent process. Every member on the team should know what the process looks like. The process should not just be created by the IT managers sitting alone in a conference room. It is vital to get feedback from the team who are executing the process daily. 

I was assigned to improve our demand intake process at work. To come up with a process that the team will follow, I conducted interviews with each team member to capture their pain points from our current processes. All interviews went really well that I was able to capture the points we need to improve and gained great suggestions from the team. The new process was the result of intuitive collaboration and was thus defined the whole team!

 4.      “Focus, flow, and joy” 

 “The Unicorn Project” introduced “5 ideals” in the work environment: “Focus, Flow and Joy” is one of them (the 2nd idea). This ideal resonates with me very much. I work best when I can deliver my work smoothly with great fun. When I know I am empowered and have great relationships with my team, I do not mind the extra hours I put into the work. 

The enjoyment from “Focus, Flow and Joy” is similar to the joy I gained from the dragon boat competition. When the whole boat focused on one goal, paddled at the same speed, and had great relationships, you could see that the boat was flying through the water.

 5.      Moving to the cloud. 

 More and more companies are moving to cloud computing to reap many of the benefits. In regard to Parts Unlimited, the company was facing server workload issues due to increased incoming traffic on their customer websites. To solve the issue promptly, moving to the cloud was introduced in the book. 

I am currently working on a cloud implementation project at work. Just through my two-month work with the cloud. I have gained much knowledge about cloud computing and am impressed by its benefits: cost saving, scalability, elasticity and security.

The transformation to DevOps is not only a technical task but a culture shift in the organization. It is not going to be completed within a day and it is always a continuous improvement process. I know there is still a long way to go, but I am excited that I am on the right path! 

 "The Three Ways" from “The Phoenix Project” :

1. The Principles of Flow
2. The Principles of Feedback
3. The Principles of Continual Learning

"The Five ideals" from “The Unicorn Project”:

1. Locality and Simplicity
2. Focus, Flow, and Joy
3. Improvement of Daily Work
4. Physcological Safety
5. Customer Focus