Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale

155 Pages·2015·6.78 MB·English

by  Jennifer Davis

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Effective DevOps
Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and
Tooling at Scale
Jennifer Davis & Katherine Daniels
Boston
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Effective DevOps
by Jennifer Davis and Katherine Daniels
Copyright © 2015 Jennifer Davis and Katherine Daniels. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. What is Devops?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
The History of Devops 10
Developer as Operator 10
The Advent of Software Engineering 10
The Age of the Operating System 12
The Beginnings of a Global Community 13
The Age of Applications and the Web 14
Agile Infrastructure 16
The Beginning of DevopsDays 17
Foundational Devops Terminology and Concepts 17
Waterfall 18
Extreme Programming 19
Lean 19
ITIL 20
Agile 20
Community of Practice and Community of Interest 21
Blame Culture 22
Silos 23
Blamelessness 24
Retrospective 25
Organizational Learning 26
Post-Mortem 26
Devops: Adding it All Up 27
Common Devops Misconceptions 28
Devops only involves developers and system administrators. 28
Devops is a team. 28
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Devops is a job title. 29
Devops is only relevant to web startups. 30
Devops is about the tools. 30
You need a devops certification. 30
Devops means doing all the work with half the people. 31
There is one “right way” (or “wrong way”) to do devops. 31
It will take X weeks/months to implement devops. 32
Devops is about automation. 32
Devops is a fad. 33
The Current State of Devops 34
The Devops Compact 34
What’s Next in this Book 36
3. Collaboration: Individuals Working Together. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Introduction 37
Individual Differences and Backgrounds 37
Goals 38
Backgrounds 38
Working Styles 41
Individual Growth 45
The Right Mindset 45
Organizational Pressure 50
Superstars and Superflocks 52
Negotiation Styles 53
From Competition to Collaboration 55
Communication 55
Why Communicate 55
What we Communicate 58
How we Communicate 58
Trust and Empathy 61
Developing Empathy 62
Developing Trust 64
4. Hiring: Choosing Individuals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Introduction and Audience 67
Determining your Hiring Needs 67
Position and Skills 67
Timeframe 68
Budget and Resources 69
Sourcing 70
Diversity 71
Interviewing 76
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Before the Interview 76
During the Interview 77
After the Interview 78
Onboarding 79
Retention 81
Compensation 82
Growth Opportunities 84
Workload 85
Culture and Atmosphere 87
Case Studies 91
Measuring Success 98
Troubleshooting 102
We aren’t getting enough candidates. 102
We aren’t getting diverse candidates. 104
Interviews are a waste of time for the team. 104
People aren’t accepting our offers. 105
Conclusion 105
5. Tools: Selection and Implementation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Introduction and Audience 107
Why Tools Matter 109
Why Tools Don’t Matter 112
Tool Ecosystem Overview 115
Configuration Management 115
Version Control 115
Infrastructure Automation 116
System Provisioning 116
Hardware Lifecycle Management 117
Continuous Integration 118
Test and Build Automation 118
Continuous Delivery 120
Application Deployment 120
Continuous Deployment 120
Metrics 120
Logging 121
Monitoring 121
Alerting 122
Events 123
Auditing your Tool Ecosystem 125
Communication 126
Moving Beyond the Basics 136
Optimization: Selection and Elimination of Tools 141
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Version Control 142
Infrastructure Automation 146
Artifact Management 149
Work Visualization 149
Metrics 152
Improvements: Planning and Measuring Change 153
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction
<section data-type="sect1"> <aside data-type="sidebar"> <h5>Early Release Edi‐
tion</h5>
<p>This book is a work in progress – new chapters will be added as they are written.
We welcome feedback – if you spot any errors or would like to suggest improve‐
ments, please let us know.</p> </aside>
<h1>Who This Book Is For</h1>
<p>This book is aimed primarily at managers and individual contributors in leader‐
ship roles who see friction within their organizations and are looking for concrete,
actionable steps they can take towards implementing or improving a devops culture
in their work environment. However, individual contributors of all levels who want
practical suggestions for easing some of the pain points they face will find actionable
takeaways.</p>
<p>The audience is made up of a mix of professional roles, as devops is a professio‐
nal and cultural movement that stresses the iterative efforts to break down informa‐
tion silos, monitor relationships and repair when misunderstandings arise between
teams in an organization. Many may be leaders within their organizations who have
worked closely with developers or operations engineers.</p>
<p>The book covers a wide range of devops skills and theory, including an introduc‐
tion to the basic ideas and concepts. It is assumed that you will have heard of the term
devops and perhaps have a rudimentary understanding of devops, tools and pro‐
cesses used in the field.</p>
<p>By the end of Effective Devops, our hope is that you will have a solid understand‐
ing of what having a devops culture means practically for your organization, how to
encourage effective collaboration to help indivdiual contributors from different back‐
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grounds and teams deal with different goals and working styles to work together pro‐
ductively, how to help teams collaborate to maximize value between them while
increasing employee satisfaction and balancing conflicting organizational goals, and
how to choose tools and workflows for your organization that complement your
organization.</p> </section>
<section data-type="sect1"> <h1>How this Book Is Organized</h1>
<p>This book is broken down into several parts, starting with an introductory chap‐
ter and then covering each of the pillars of devops.</p>
<ul> <li>Chapter I, What is Devops</li> <li>Chapter II, Collaboration: Individuals
Working Together</li> <li>Chapter III, Hiring: Choosing Individuals</li> <li>Chap‐
ter IV, Affinity: From Individuals to Teams</li> <li>Chapter V, Tools: Choosing and
Using Them</li> <li>Chapter VI, Scale: Scaling Everything UP</li> </ul> </section>
<section data-type="sect1"> <h1>Conventions Used in This Book</h1> </section>
<section data-type="sect1"> <h1>Using Code Examples</h1> </section>
<section data-type="sect1"> <h1>How to Contact Us</h1>
<p>We have a web page for this book, where we list errata, examples, and any addi‐
tional information. You can access this page at http://effectivedevops.net.</p>
<p>To comment or ask technical questions about this book, send email to bookques‐
[email protected].</p> </section>
<section data-type="sect1"> <h1>Acknowledgements</h1>
<p>Effective Devops would not have been possible without the help and guidance of
many friends, colleagues, and family members.</p> </section> </section>
8 | Chapter 1: Introduction
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CHAPTER 2
What is Devops?
What is devops? Some might define it as a software development method, while oth‐
ers might think that it is a set of tools and technologies such as configuration man‐
agement and continuous delivery. We would argue instead that devops is a cultural
movement that seeks to improve both software development and the professional
lives of the people involved in the field. In order to fully understand what we mean
when we’re talking about devops, it is necessary to understand not only what the con‐
cept means and how it is used today, but also the history of how it came to be.
No cultural movement exists in a vacuum. Technology is part of culture. We are born,
accept what is and introduce new cultural aspects as we live. The way that our overall
culture influences technology, and technology influences culture shapes the fabric of
how we live our lives.
Pre-1880, walking was the primary mode of transportation. Cities were compact with
residences and workplaces intermingled. Streets were narrow and inconsistently
paved. As automobiles were introduced, cities made decisions about the organization
and infrastructure either in favor of automobiles or existing pedestrians. These days,
some cities forgo infrastructure planning that factors in pedestrians at all creating
busy roadways with no safe way to travel by foot. Walking shaped the city and how
we worked, and the arrival of new technology changed the landscape accordingly.
Devops is part of the cultural weave that shapes how we work and why. While devops
does involve certain tools and technologies, an equally important part of our culture
is our values, norms, and knowledge. Examining how people work, the technologies
that we use, how technology influeces how we work, and how people influence tech‐
nology can help us make intentional decisions about the landscape of our industry.
This chapter will delve into the evolution of software engineering as it pertains to the
history of devops, define the terms and ideas closest to the movement, and address
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