To win at Business in a world dominated by Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud, means the business needs to go faster. Be able to explain to your executives the economic basics of why DevOps is critical to drive the speed necessary to use technology to win in your industry.
I’m going to start this talk with a word of caution, or at least a precursor to what we’ll be talking about. This is an old quote from Jesse Robbins, who was one of the early creators of Amazon Web Services, then went on to be a founder at Chef and now does other things.
Session Abstract: To win at Business in a world dominated by Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud, means business needs to go faster. Be able to explain to your executives the economic basics of why DevOps is critical to drive the speed necessary to use technology to win in your industry.
So let’s start with a definition of DevOps. It’s not a technology. It’s not a tool. It doesn’t come in a box.
It’s a cultural and operation model. It’s about collaborating across areas of technology and business to achieve high-performance IT, and ultimately achieve business goals faster and at higher levels.
But we’re talking about DevOps because of this reality – “Software is eating the world”. Marc Andreessen, Venture Capitalist.
If you don’t realize that your competition is getting much better at using software as a competitive advantage, or an all-software start-up is lurking in your market, then
there is a distinct possibility that your company may not be relevant in the next decade (or less)
This is a list of companies that were in the S&P 500 from 2002-2012. Not anymore.
NOTE: Some were acquired, others no longer exist.
And these are all new entrants since 2012.
And ultimately we’re going to talk about this shift in how technology is used as a competitive weapon. But first, they always say tat everything you need to know you learn in 1st grade. So let me give you some perspective from when I was in 1st grade.
I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, which is the home of the assembly line – created (or popularized) by Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company.
Henry Ford was not popular around blacksmiths and buggy makers.
It was new technology that enabled mass production of affordable automobiles. It allowed the concept of suburbs (neighborhoods outside the main cities) to be possible. It necessitate the need for interstate roads and highways. It created the need for hotels, fast-food restaurants and lots of other parts of our daily lives.
Many other companies eventually copied the use and operation of the assembly line.
And over time, these same processes continued to be used. Auto companies (specifically in the US) fell in love with their ability to “add value” to the process. They owned much of the market (that they knew of), and were only pushed by their local competition – that employed similar operational models.
And by the 1980s, they had created silos – unique infrastructure (and costs) for each specific brand – Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac. And eventually each of these lines believed that they added unique value and knowledge about their “market segment”, but yet they built these very similar looking cars. Each with their own unique cost structure, with very little shared operational knowledge.
And by the 1980s, they had created silos – unique infrastructure (and costs) for each specific brand – Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac. And eventually each of these lines believed that they added unique value and knowledge about their “market segment”, but yet they built these very similar looking cars. Each with their own unique cost structure, with very little shared operational knowledge.
And as we all know, this lack of focus on bring “new value” or “innovation” to market, left their customers wandering and wondering what car to buy next.
Meanwhile, their Japanese competitors (Toyota, Honda) looked at the game differently. They focused on different aspects, with model that didn’t look like the American assembly line.
It focused on speed and quality. It focused on constant improvement. It focused on constant measurement. It broke down problems into smaller units, then optimized around each of them. They brough greater levels of automation into the equation. They changed their supply-chain model (just-in-time, etc.). And since then, the game has been changed forever.
I could have shown this example with phones, going from MaBell to things like Nokia to the iPhone/Android.
Fundamentally, what changed between those models to building automobiles?
Ultimately, they relentlessly focused on two things:
1 – Throughout of goods – get them through the overall process as quickly as possible – remove the barriers to slow things down
2 – Quality of goods – eliminate mistakes, eliminate rework, measure all areas to improve
As you can see, these are business-centric focus areas. They are not specifically focused on cost-reduction, but rather cost-reduction is a by-product of both of these.
We can see here that there are sub-functions that get focused on, under Throughput and Quality
Throughput:
Scale – thinking about how this process will need to look as things grow (quantity of work, quantity of locations, # of projects, etc.)
Process – are we creating repeatable processes? Are we creating sharable processes, or ways to consistently interact across processes?
Agility – how will the process react to changes at various point. What agility do we want to build into the system (now) for changes in the future?
Automation – how do we automate repeatable tasks? How do we use automation to eventually increase velocity and remove cost?
Quality:
Measurement – if we can’t measure it, we can’t improve it. How are we building measurement into all aspects of the processes?
Feedback Loops – How does the system take feedback and make it available back into the system to drive improvement? This could be human or machine feedback?
Continuous Improvement – a culture must be in place that is constantly looking to improve all aspects of the system, and the system must be able to accept frequent updates/changes.
Communication – what is the communication structure of both the process and the organization. It is only vertical or also horizontal? How is information shared?
But enough about automobiles, we all work in the technology and information business. Let’s put this in that context.
When the printing press came into existence, it put a lot of monks out of business. But it allowed knowledge to be shared much more broadly – wherever physical media could be shared.
When the WWW came into existence, we all began to have access to all the information in the world. And new business models were created. As long as we had access to a full-blown computer.
And recently, these devices have made all that information mobile. And new business models are being created….REALLY FAST!!
And these changes in collecting and sharing information are impacting EVERY SINGLE INDUSTRY. Here’s a couple examples (automotive, finance, insurance, retail, news, hotels, transportation, and healthcare), but I could also extend this to Farming/Agriculture, Trucking/Shipping, Industrial Goods, Aerospace, Government, etc.
So let’s get back to that book I mentioned at the beginning. Add “The New Kingmakers” to your reading list. It’s less than 100 pages. It does an excellent job of using data and real-life examples to show how developers have risen to level of prominence in driving business change and opening new markets.
We also highlight the genius developers. But there’s more to the big picture….
Now this where it gets interesting.
No company has an advantage by owning or renting a specific piece of commercial technology. Everyone has access to the same equipment. It may give you a short-term cost savings or Moore’s law performance improvement, but the real changes and advantages come from how well you operate – if you become a High Performance IT organization.
Do you keep all code and artifacts in a centralized code repository? This drives the ability to be consistent in deployments and failures.
Are you able to do continuous integration (code check-in, code testing, code integration) and continuous deployments?
Here’s a few stats from the 2014 DevOps Survey (https://puppetlabs.com/sites/default/files/2014-state-of-devops-report.pdf)
30x Faster Deployments
2x as likely to achieve business level goals
50% less deployment failures
Drive greater levels of Job Satisfaction. The #1 characteristic of a High-Performance IT organization.
Bi-Modal IT (Gartner) – https://www.gartner.com/doc/2798217/bimodal-it-digitally-agile-making
- (definition) http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/bimodal
Tri-Modal IT (Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners – Simon Wardley) http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-town-planners-and.html
Many people wonder if this DevOps stuff is right for them. It’s important to understand what type of organization you are, because it will impact your ability to create and adopt change.
Let’s look at it in terms that both business and technical people should understand.
Everything starts with a business opportunity.
Take those opportunities and break them down into a few sets of challenges, that can then be broken down into smaller pieces.
These pieces must be able to connect into both a creation (development/integration) platform and a deployment platform.
The teams working on these should be small, and should be integrated across functions (the Dev+Ops concept), but this could also include Finance, Marketing, UX/UI, etc.
The team work together, so there isn’t a distinct hand-off and run.
The integration and deployment platforms are integrated, like the teams.
Be focused on throughout and quality, simultaneously.
When we take the names off boxes, we can see those ideas again:
Let’s look at it in terms that both business and technical people should understand.
Everything starts with a business opportunity.
Take those opportunities and break them down into a few sets of challenges, that can then be broken down into smaller pieces.
These pieces must be able to connect into both a creation (development/integration) platform and a deployment platform.
The teams working on these should be small, and should be integrated across functions (the Dev+Ops concept), but this could also include Finance, Marketing, UX/UI, etc.
The team work together, so there isn’t a distinct hand-off and run.
The integration and deployment platforms are integrated, like the teams.
Be focused on throughout and quality, simultaneously.