Cultural Change Is the Key to Successfully Implementing DevOps

Culture, automation, lean measurement, and sharing are all key components of conducting technology transformation in a DevOps way. Some say that culture is everything when it comes to DevOps -- and that the DevOps culture may be more challenging to teach individuals than teaching them technology skills.

“Tech is easy. People are hard. When we are fundamentally changing how we work, it can mean we’re changing how we work and manage our services. That cultural shift is just plain hard,” says Matt Stratton, Staff Developer Advocate at Pulumi, founder and co-host of the popular Arrested DevOps podcast. 

“Automation and tools are easy, but how we work together and communicate and how that connects through the larger organization, now that’s a challenge,” he says. 

“The cultural aspect is how people work together to communicate and collaborate. Operating a small, lean service is very different from running a larger monolithic application. It is very transformative in the internal way of working,” adds Sharone Revah Zitzman, Chief Manual Reader at RTFM Please Ltd.

Together Matt and Sharone are organizing the Cultural Transformation Track as part of the AllDayDevOps conference, the world’s largest DevOps gathering taking place over 24-hours globally starting October 28, 2021.

Why is the DevOps movement so transformational?

DevOps is a completely different way of working. It’s described as a movement because technology development and operations teams have spent so much time, over the decades, operating a certain way. And while the DevOps movement has been percolating for more than ten years, it has taken time for our management teams and the culture of some organizations to catch up. As Matt Stratton explains, it is vital that teams feel protected, and that’s the reason why cultural transformation is essential. It is a top-down and bottom-up approach that requires trust, protection, commitment, and buy-in.

“People inherently want to be collaborative. However, there’s a difference between compliance (doing what you’re told) and doing something because you bought into it. When you’re committed, you understand why. And you might be willing to push harder and get better at something because you understand why. Information is power - there is a need to know. When you explain why you’re inviting discussion, then your team will be more committed and feel more protective.” 

Who should tune-into the Cultural Transformation track at AllDayDevOps?

If you’re aspiring to make the transformation, are in a leadership and management position, or simply trying to grasp the cultural aspect, you should tune into speakers in ADDO’s Cultural Transformation track. Those that are moving towards more agile, distributed, and higher scale systems should also watch. This includes everyone from the CTO level to management to those practitioners who make things happen at the functional level. 

“If I understand how the cultural changes work, I can help leadership understand,” said Sharone.  

So what are some can’t be missed speakers in the Cultural Transformation track?

• Steve Pereira of Visible will discuss a winning approach to making progress with any key initiative framed within the context of DevOps adoption and improvement. He will also dig into lean operations, value stream management, and how to think about moving things through the process. 
• Hope Lynch of Cloudbees will provide a team retrospective on how teams can use value stream management, which is important at the leadership, departmental and functional levels within organizations. She will reframe the concept of a value stream in a more approachable way and provide some insight on how you may be able to take action to improve yours if you find yourself in similar circumstances.
• Ell Marquez of Intezer will dig into the "Shift Left" movement of thinking, which is believed to ensure that security concerns are considered throughout the entire development process, not just before deployment. She’ll also raise the downsides and benefits of the “Shift Left” movement.

• Brynna Nery of RBC will discuss how to invite security to the table...without feeling like you called the cops to break up the party. In an industry that is saturated with tools, as security professionals. She will address how you address all the needs to secure an almost entirely new tech stack and then choose the best fit? 

Join Matt and Sharone and all their Cultural Transformation speakers, who are, as they put it, the “crème de la crème” in the field at this global event.  AllDayDevOps pre-dates the pandemic with its innovative approach of virtually bringing together an international community to solve similar problems in different and exciting ways. Register to attend this 24-hour event featuring speakers and attendees from all over the world.