Thinking differently about . . . DevOps

Last week, I claimed that technology leaders attempting to change the culture of their organisations should start with themselves. I think that this is especially true for technology leaders who are trying to introduce DevOps to their organisations. I am one of the people who have tried to do just that, and have not always been successful: as usual, this article is inspired by the opportunities I have had to make mistakes.

The concept of DevOps has been around for over ten years now, and has been described by more expert people than me, so I won’t attempt to give a precise definition here. (And I will also take this opportunity to say that, although I work for Google, a company which exemplifies many of the practices attributed to DevOps, the views in this article are my own.) I will, though, offer two ways in which I think about DevOps.