The inaugural DevOpsDays DC is in the books. It took a lot of work from a lot of people and a lot of support from a lot of sponsors to make it happen, but it was so worth it. Here are some observations and conclusions from my perspective as an organizer, sponsor, and attendee.
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3 Tips When You’re Struggling With DevOps
You’ve started down the road of a DevOps transformation, but you’re struggling on the journey. You might not be improving the performance of your teams and organization like you had hoped. You’re probably wondering why and, more importantly, how to get back on track. DevOps transformations are hard. If they were easy, everybody would have already gone through them.
Here are a few tips you can use to get things moving more quickly in the right direction.
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5 Signs You Need DevOps
I’ve talked to a lot of people from a lot of organizations about DevOps. For those who aren’t familiar with DevOps and the benefits it can bring, they often ask, “How do I know if I need DevOps?” I’ve discovered a lot of signs that are good indicators of when an organization could really benefit from going through a DevOps transformation. Here are my top five.
3 Risks of Not Enough Time or Money for DevOps Transformations
The DevOps movement is taking off and many organizations are embarking on their own DevOps transformation. Just look at the talks from the DevOps Enterprise Summit and the latest State of DevOps Report for evidence of this. I’ve had people ask me, “What happens if I don’t devote enough time and money to our DevOps transformation?” Great question. We’re asked to justify budgets and priorities all the time so we need to have good answers. I’ll give you a few answers that might resonate with you.
Resources from DevOps Interview on Federal Tech Talk
I recently did a Federal Tech Talk interview with John Gilroy on Federal News Radio talking about DevOps, a topic I get more and more excited about every day. During the discussion with John, I mentioned a lot of resources that might be helpful for people to learn more about DevOps and how to get started with it.
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What is DevOps?
DevOps is building a ton of momentum in the industry and for good reason. It has a lot of power to make a huge impact on organizations and people and because of that, more and more organizations are going through DevOps transformations.
Despite all of this momentum, I’ve had a lot of people ask me, “What is DevOps?” Truth be told, I’ve asked that same question to a lot of people, too. DevOps is enigmatic in that this simple question has a surprisingly complicated answer. Continue reading
DevOps Enterprise Summit 2014: Debrief
Hot on the heels of attending User Focus 2014, I attended the DevOps Enterprise Summit last week to learn about how the “horses” were applying DevOps practices. The conference was the brainchild of Gene Kim and it brought together a fantastic community of practitioners at all levels in a variety of roles. The premise behind the conference was to showcase how organizations of all shapes, sizes, and types (i.e., the “horses”) are using DevOps practices and getting benefit from those practices. DevOps isn’t just the domain of Etsy, Netflix, Amazon, and Google (i.e., the “unicorns”). The conference more than achieved its purpose.
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What I Think When Your Website Is “Down for Maintenance”
We have two dogs at home, one of whom is “microchipped” in case she wanders off or we lose her. We pay $18 a year to a company to keep our dog’s information available to whomever finds her. This year’s renewal notice came in the mail and it indicated there was an online renewal option available. So I toddled over to the website, entered the microchip number, and… no record found. Hmmm. Maybe I fat fingered it. I entered it again and… no record found. So I called the customer service number and spoke to a rep. I told him I was trying to renew the account for my dog, but the website wasn’t bringing up her record. His response was, “Oh, yeah. Our website is down for maintenance. I use the same website so I can’t take payment from you right now, either. Could you try again tomorrow?” Hmmm, again. I was really surprised this company would schedule a website maintenance window in the middle of the day and it would be so significant they couldn’t even take payment from a customer. Who does that??? It left me thinking about the company and what else I could infer about them just based on this one experience, especially about their IT practices.
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Eliminating Fear with DevOps
I was at a DevOps workshop with Gene Kim last week. It was a great event (thanks for sponsoring, CollabNet) and I always learn so much from him every time I’m around him. No surprise that I’m a big fan of the DevOps movement because of all of the benefits I believe DevOps practices bring to an organization.
There was one point in Gene’s presentation where I had an “aha” moment. Continue reading
The DevOps Audit Defense Toolkit: Helping IT and Audit Work Better Together
Many organizations want to adopt DevOps practices to get the benefits associated with it: faster time to market, increased stability and quality, and more time to build stuff that’s valuable to the bottom line. But they often get tripped up by audits and compliance checks to make sure the organization is adequately addressing risk. DevOps practices don’t align well with traditional audit practices. So these organizations are often left asking themselves, “How do I position my organization for an audit when I’m using DevOps practices?” Until recently, there hasn’t been a really good answer.
But that’s changing.
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