Tools over Processes over People

… or Not?

Martijn van der Kleijn

  • Martijn
  • DevOps engineer & Open Source developer
  • Multiple teams in various levels of agile

I will take you back a couple of years, when I was part of a small.. well-oiled.. highly performant.. AGILE devops team.. Or so we thought.

!! We had it ALL !!

  • a backlog!
  • product owner!
  • sprints!
  • and SPEED to react to customer desires

Things couldn't GET more agile.. RIGHT?

uh oh...

Everything was fine.. UNTIL it all came crashing down.. HARD..

One of our team members left.. our product owner burned out.. pressure from other parts of the organisation grew.. I burned out.

SUFFICE to say, tensions ran High.. very high. The backlog grew! We were struggling to keep the lights on, let alone churn out new features...

The entire team was balancing on a knife's edge.. performance and motivation.. were gone..

So what happened?

  • We had a good start
  • Bad practices and no right sizing
  • Stress and tensions
  • Increased importance & pressure
  • Dependent on other, non-agile, teams
  • We had a good start
  • but didn't embed good practices
  • nor apply right sizing
  • causing stress and tensions when people left
  • compounded by increased importance, pressure and
  • more dependencies on other, non-agile, teams

We lost our focus.. goals.. and motivation

Did our team survive?

YES

  • We set aside differences & tensions
  • Redefined our core values & goals
  • Re-explored the meaning of Agile & DevOps
  • Discussed & adapted our methods over months

It was tough but it worked

Agile Manifesto

  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation.
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
  • Responding to change over following a plan.

Not just about a manifesto.

It's not just about.... for ME at least, it is more than a manifesto...

AGILE is also about how you keep your teams and organization AMPed up!

There are MANY things related to agile but a big one is Motivation.

Intrinsic Motivation

The desire to do things because they matter, because we like it,
they're interesting, or part of something important.
Dan Pink - The Puzzle of Motivation @TED

Autonomy

the urge to direct our own lives

Mastery

the desire to get better and better at something that matters

Purpose

the yearning to do what we do
in the service of something larger than ourselves

Recognize this?

  • Did not start Agile (or DevOps)
  • Agile in name only
  • A "DevOps" department
  • The lone Agile team
  • Literally following "the rules"

Before I go into some of the things you can do to help your agile adventures...

Let's see the kind of agile situations that we find in organisations.

In General

  • Restructure the organisation
  • Get strong scrum masters / agile coaches
  • Apply and explain agile practices across the organisation

Team building

  • Fund service & product teams, not projects
  • Just Right Sizing / Two pizza rule (5-8 people)
  • As a team, define your values and goals
  • Build trust & communication (takes 3+ months)
    Try to keep teams together for at least a year
  • Enable team members to be generalists

Autonomy

  • Do not micro manage
  • Trust your engineers
  • Hand over responsibility and take it
  • Build trust with customers & product owner
  • Take it!

Mastery

  • Don't punish mistakes
  • Be open & transparent about mistakes (Post mortem)
  • Make room for skill improvement
  • Continues improvement (Kaizen)
  • Don't be afraid to change the roadmap

Making mistakes is natural and useful

ROADMAP - Kevlin metioned roadmaps in keynote this morning / change them be / aware of customer promises

Purpose

  • Define a vision on every level
  • Define team goals
  • Define a team API
  • Identify customers with your product owner
  • Guide your team in a development direction

Agile is a mindset and its hard

Its about working together with respect and dignity.
Working in a structured manner.
Learning and adapting constantly.

Did you notice I didn't mention tools?

https://slides.hcs-company.com


martijn@hcs-company.com
chaosmonkey@hcs-company.com