Beyond Buzzwords: Transforming DevOps Culture for Success

Uncover the secrets to building a successful DevOps culture that focuses on practical, result-driven strategies.

«Old cultures lost in time.»

The first time that I heard about DevOps Culture, it was in a DevOps SAFe training. In fact, it was explained at the beginning of the course under the word CALMR: «Culture of shared responsibility, Automation of continuous delivery pipeline, Lean Flow accelerates delivery, Measurement of flow, quality & value, Recovery reduces risk & preserves value». The potential was inspiring, I am quite a fan of Lean, but soon things began to sink. They explained Culture as «Customer-centricity, Collaboration, Risk Tolerance and Knowledge sharing», and after that, we had to put post-its on a board explaining what we thought that culture was. More wording than facts.

It’s a trap.

The challenge we face is just that, more words than facts. And for years, at almost every place that I went, and with almost everyone that I have talked to, all perception about culture was more words, feelings and pseudo-science than facts and effectivity.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. If we look around seeking for how culture is faced in DevOps we often find the following points:

• Collaboration: Breaking down silos, fostering open communication, enabling better communication and understanding between teams, …
• Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery: Promoting the use of CI/CD pipelines, for faster and frequent releases.
• Automation: Reducing manual and repetitive tasks that can lead to human error, including processes, testing, deployment, provisioning, and more.
• Measurement and monitoring: Taking metrics about software and infrastructure to make Lean more effective.
• Learning and sharing: Keeping up to date with continuous learning, while sharing best practices with other members.

Please, note that Collaboration from the point of view of breaking down silos, goes against the Continuous Delivery practices. For example, DDD, and many other methodologies, tries to create bubbles of knowledge (aka domains), so those teams can be more…