Building a DevOps Culture

Book Preface

After a few years of talking about “What is DevOps?”, a general consensus has started to form around DevOps being a cultural movement combined with a number of software development practices that enable rapid development.

As a technical process, tools have emerged that enable teams to work more quickly and efficiently. Tools alone are not enough to create the collaborative environment that many of us refer to now as DevOps. However, creating such an environment is a huge challenge; it requires assessing and realigning how people think about their teams, the business, and the customers.

Putting together a new set of tools is simple when compared to changing organizational culture. DevOps is a departure from traditional software development practices for just this reason. By celebrating anti-social superstar developers, or allowing code to go to production that wasn’t properly tested, or deciding that the only reason the code doesn’t run is because Operations is stupid, we are not doing our best to enable the business and create value for our customers.

There are those among us who were “doing devops before DevOps.” The most successful, rewarding projects I have worked on in my career were those that had an open, professional culture, but by attaching a common vocabulary, we can give others a blueprint for adjusting their organization’s culture toward one that is more DevOps-like.