What is DevOps? - A Christmas Story
Imagine two cheerful elves, Noel and Ivy, bustling around in Santa’s workshop. Their workstations are nestled close to each other, yet the festive frenzy keeps them too occupied for extended chats. Plus, their interest in toy crafting varies.
Noel’s speciality is assembling the enchanting toy trains. With noble fingers, he connects the tiny cars, ensuring the wheels spin smoothly, and adds the finishing touches. Ivy takes Noel’s completed trains and arranges them on the track, so that they follow the festive route precision.
Both elves excel in their tasks. Ivy isn’t concerned with the intricacies of train assembly, just as Noel isn’t bothered about the layout of the tracks. It’s a harmonious partnership, mainly because the festive workshop experiences minimal changes.
What if Noel and Ivy were building software?
Noel's duty is to craft the most enchanting toy trains. Each train he assembles is designed to outshine its predecessor, and Noel takes pride in adding magical touches that make the trains truly special. One day, he receives a festive directive to overhaul the wheelsets and the common axle of the trains. With his expert craftsmanship, Noel effortlessly implements these changes.
Meanwhile, Ivy is unaware of these discussions. Her responsibility is taking the exquisitely crafted trains and bringing them to life on the tracks. Understanding the intricacies of the modifications isn’t part of her job.
But should it be? Why is Ivy left in the dark until the moment the upgraded trains appear in her corner of the workshop? How does she make the new designs run seamlessly, spreading joy with every chug and whistle?
The very nature of software delivery is to make changes and improve. Those crafting the code and those running it need to collaborate, or the value chain is broken.
How can we enhance this collaboration at Santa's workshop? We’d like to think the answer is DevOps. But what is DevOps?
There are nearly as many definitions of DevOps as there are people working in the industry. The definitions I have seen range from “a new job title for ops guys”, to “a way of living” and beyond.
To us, DevOps is a methodology; a set of best practices and tools to increase communication, and deliver better - magical - software.
It’s about the ops team attending software architecture meetings from the get-go. It’s about having the development team participate in the out of hours rota. Thinking about how the application is deployed, maintained and monitored before a single line of code is written. DevOps is about QA preventing defects proactively, thinking of quality as a feature of the delivery process, instead of merely ”finding bugs”.
DevOps is about breaking down silos, sharing responsibility and building tools to collaborate effectively. It’s about continuous improvement - making sure we have feedback loops in place to know what we can do better.
We have a shared goal, after all. Whether we’re doing business or creating joy and wonder, we need to build and deliver solutions that bring smiles and delight to those eagerly awaiting. More often than not, this means delivering a set of features by a certain date - the essence of festive success.
Without Ivy knowing what Noel is doing - and vice versa - that is often an unattainable goal.
