Lean DevOps - Lessons Learned from Innovation-driven Companies

Lean DevOpsLessons Learned from

Innovation-driven Companies

Xavier Amatriain (@xamat)

DevOps Unleashed Seminar, Mountain View, 04/21/2015

A bit about me...

2007-2011 2011-2014 2015

~275000 empl. ~2500 empl. ~110 empl.

$73B (market cap) $34B (market cap) $880M (valuation)

Outline

1. Being Lean

2. Experimentation, innovation

& breaking things

3. The CASSSH Model

4. Lessons Learned

5. Conclusions

Being Lean

The lean “company”

Optimize learning velocity

“If you want to increase your success

rate, double your failure rate”Thomas J. Watson, IBM CEO (1914-56)

The lean DevOps

From Bernie Coyne, DevOps Evangelist, IBM Cloud - Austin Devops Unleashed 2015

Experimentation, innovation

& breaking things

● Offline Experimentation

○ Data Analysis

○ Modeling

○ Prototyping

● Online Experimentation

○ A/B Testing

Consumer Data Science

Enabling Experimentation

define_experiment( experiment_name = 'homepage_image', description = 'Sample description', funnel = funnel.types.homepage_signup, traffic_type = traffic.types.browser, default_value = None, layer = layer.types.logged_out_homepage, layer_buckets = [ (range(0, 250), 'earth_image'), (range(250, 500), 'book_image'), (range(500, 750), 'person_image') ])

The probability of

breaking things

increases with

innovation velocity

Innovation vs. stability

The Innovation

Velocity curve can

shift with better

processes

Innovation vs. stability

CASSSH(Cost, Availability, Scalability, Speed,

Security, devops Happiness)

Short-term vs. long-term

In-house vs. outsourced

Machines vs. DevOps

Cost

How many nines?

What’s the cost of an extra 9?

The Christmas Eve Paradigm

Availability

Are you ready to be big?

What is the probability of that happening and its cost?

Scalability

How much does speed matter?

Speed

Better safe than sorry

Security

What does that depend on?

● Developing velocity

● Impact

● Inversely correlated with probability of

being paged in the middle of the night

DevOps Happiness

The CASSSH Dilemma

Lessons Learned: CASSSH in a

Lean Innovation Environment

Cost? What cost?

Lesson 1

Quality pays off

Lesson 2

Lesson 2

Average Velocity

Average Velocity

Quality pays off

Lesson 2

Quality pays off

Average Velocity

Average Velocity

Lesson 2

Quality pays off -

Technical Debt

Everything (including CASSSH

dimensions) can be tested

Lesson 3

When things break:

Alerts are not notifications

Lesson 4

When things break:

Different shades of alerts

Lesson 4

Metrics, Metrics, Metrics

Lesson 5

Teams optimizing competing dimensions

= recipe for disaster

Lesson 6

Speed!!!Cost!!!

Teams optimizing competing dimensions

= recipe for disaster

Lesson 6

Innovation!!!Cost!!!

Everything is Production

(a.k.a. Prod is the new Dev)

Lesson 7

But...

Sometimes it helps to isolate things

Lesson 7

Conclusions

Conclusions

● Both companies and devops teams benefit from

being lean

● Being lean adds instability and risk

● Devops need to measure and optimize across the different

dimensions of CASSSH

● Lean Devops can implement processes that optimize

CASSSH and encourage innovation