DevOps Days Chicago 2014

Priorities affect us all…differently!

Andy Domeier

Hi!• Andy Domeier– Director, Tech Ops @SPSCommerce– @ajdomie– Optimistic by Nature• The disk is half empty!

• Likes: – Slides with pictures and lack of formatting– DevOps Days Organizers!

• Dislikes: – Having to follow Bridget

Let’s level set…..

Who sets your priorities?

or……..

Wait…Who Owns Service Delivery?

What are we doing to solve manage this problem?

Priority Transparency

Priorities conflict everyday• Product Features – – Ops: Deploy feature build v. Heartbleed– Product/Dev: Build feature v. Fix bug

• Shared IT– SAN firmware patching v. Add disk for busy season

• Provisioning– Hack together a node v. Automate provisioning

Any “agile-ers” here?

Shouldn’t we clean all the roads before painting them?

Are your priorities transparent?

Are other’s priorities transparent?

Enter Empathy… Stage Right

Jeff’s blog post on devops and empathy… read it:http://blog.ingineering.it/post/72964480807/empathy-the-essence-of-devops

Stop the truck!

Empathy is a competitive advantage

Human Nature

– What incentive is stronger to an NFL Football player?• Win a Super Bowl• Land a big Contract

http://blog.linkedin.com/2013/09/10/your-job-is-not-your-job-linkedin-speaker-series-with-fred-kofman/

Delivering on your objectives:

Defense• Prevent Goals

• Win– 5 – 4

• Lose– 0 - 1

Offense• Score Goals

• Win– 1 – 0

• Lose– 4 - 5

Incentive

• Noun– Something that incites or tends to incite to action

or greater effort, as a reward offered for increased productivity

• Adjective– Inciting, as to action; stimulating; provocative

Be mindful of human nature

Organizational alignment…it matters

Start ups & small business

Team focus

Large and mid-sized business

Specified Roles (silos?)

My team owns that

Keep ownership clearregardless of team

size

Summary of the ideas• Priority Transparency

– Be aware of the priority of others– Let other see your priorities

• Empathy– Do you understand what your coworkers and customer want and

need?• Human Nature

– Just be aware of it!• Org Awareness

– Are you aware of how your structure needs to function in order to win?

– Do you understand your role in winning?

Take into consideration

• Aligning and incentivizing an organization is not a perfect science, it’s constantly changing.– This is not a problem you solve for, it’s a problem

you manage.

Helpful Resources:

• Adaptive IT blog (Jeff Sussna)– http://

blog.ingineering.it/post/72964480807/empathy-the-essence-of-devops• Thanks @jeffsussna for writing this

• Fred Kofman – Your job is not your Job– http://blog.linkedin.com/2013/09/10/your-job-is-

not-your-job-linkedin-speaker-series-with-fred-kofman/• Thanks @hammerkj for the recommendation