By Benjamin Lallement, DevOps coach and CI/CD expert
After just over two weeks of working remotely, the world is experiencing a historic moment with the COVID-19. Here in Montreal, our daily lives have turned upside down and I imagine yours too.
The digital transformation of businesses is under severe strain. The COVID-19 gives us a new performance indicator that is quite interesting to analyze! Faced with this change, the question I ask myself today is:
“Will the establishment of your DevOps culture withstand this tsunami?”
I will develop the three main aspects of the DevOps culture: tools, processes and collaboration. After reading this, you will tell me if your DevOps transformation has passed the test.
Resilient tools
Working at distance forces companies to have a set of efficient tools and high-performance technologies. Let’s start with the VPN connection, which should operate at full speed and remain stable! Next the teams will quickly choose efficient, light and simple tools. Heavy, complex and unsuitable tools will disappear. Beware of the pitfalls, the tools chosen must respect the company’s requirements in terms of security, compliance, confidentiality, otherwise beware of hacking and information leaks! A company that has already standardized its tools and technologies in terms of efficiency, communication, code repositories, deployment or monitoring will gain in efficiency compared to the unprepared one. The principle of normalization and standardization as indicated in the excellent DevOps report by Puppet takes on its full meaning!
Let’s talk about the process: the importance of measuring the process
Remote teams must adopt a simple and fast delivery process. Taking those operating in silos with a lot of approvals, production plans and heavy compliance processes will inevitably take much longer than before. The mailboxes are overflowing, the meetings follow each other… difficult to concentrate to approve the good delivery. This is where companies working in product mode stand out with autonomous teams in their decision-making and delivery processes. They keep control of their developments and decide which risks to take without impacting the rest of the company. The importance of measuring your delivery process makes perfect sense.
Have you measured your lead time for changes since the impact of COVID-19? It would be interesting to compare the companies which have kept their delivery rhythm and those which await a vaccine against this virus before resuming a normal rhythm?
Organized collaboration: the defeat of the champions of the meeting
Remote collaboration changes habits, even if the Agile Manifesto recommends face-to-face communication, in these times of confinement, you must be able to work remotely effectively without being in constant contact. The champions of the meetings are depressed, the melee shortened, the events better prepared, the unnecessary meetings are canceled. Curiously, remote work improves collaboration: the teams synchronize regularly, each person organizes, documents, becomes autonomous and responsible. A well-organized and autonomous DevOps team has priority over the others, commercial decisions are quick and production feedback remains at its usual pace.
Conclusion
With this unprecedented global crisis, how long did it take you to organize, how many meetings per day did you set up to synchronize a whole team?
Is your DevOps transformation put to the test with forced remote work or on the opposite is it asserting itself?
Tell us about it. See you soon.
Benjamin Lallement, DevOps coach and CI/CD expert
