DevOps, what's in a name?

The Cloudcast

DevOps is defined as, “Everything you do to overcome the friction created by silos … All the rest is plain engineering” Why is it so difficult to implement, but so easy to make up so many job titles surrounding it?

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SHOW NOTES:

• Shades of DevOps Roles (Patrick Dubois)

IF EVERYTHING IS DEVOPS, THEN WHAT IS DEVOPS?

Patrick Dubois, one of the original creators of the DevOps concept, recently published a framework to think about all the job titles that have emerged out of the original DevOps concept. Is this a good progression, or is it just hiding the cultural and organizational complexities that DevOps is trying to address?

THE CHALLENGES OF TRYING TO ELIMINATE SILOED TECHNOLOGY FUNCTIONS

1. It seems like it all began when AWS’ CTO Werner Vogels said, “You build it, you run it.” That was such a foreign concept in the IT world, and ever since, we’ve been trying to invent ways to apply existing organization paradigms to the byproduct of that concept.
2. Previous applications were rarely changed. Now applications (microservices, etc.) are designed from Day 1 to frequently change. Once again, the existing organization paradigms have to change.
3. And the public cloud introduces a level of financial transparency and complexity (e.g. here’s a bill every month) that is creating new roles (or newer concepts) that are trying to optimize that information.
4. Lots of companies say that they can’t support multiple operational models (hence why they try to retrofit old models into new names), but the reality is that they are always supporting multiple process or platform models.
5. Resume-driven-development has become a real thing, so it’s not unusual to see title-washing happen at various companies. It can also be valuable for recruiting as well, at least in the short-term.
6. I wish there was some better measurement model for progress along these DevOps paths, instead of just the tiering of the State of DevOps report. It’s too easy to get frustrated, when many companies are just striving to get to a mid-level of DevOps efficiency.

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