In my journey as a DevOps consultant, I often find myself facing a set of challenges that, while unique to each organisation, share a common thread. Much like my experiences in agile consulting, the primary issue I encounter is the struggle to deliver working products quickly. It’s a frustrating reality when teams are unable to see their ideas come to life in a timely manner, and it’s a problem that can stifle innovation and growth.
The Challenge of Speed
One of the most pressing concerns I hear from clients is the lengthy process it takes to move from concept to delivery. Whether it’s the time taken to get a finished product in front of customers or the delays in closing feedback loops, these hurdles can feel insurmountable. Here’s what I’ve learned about addressing these challenges:
Automate Where Possible: Many people equate DevOps with automation, and while that’s a significant aspect, it’s not the whole story. Automation can streamline processes, but it’s essential to also foster a mindset that embraces lean and agile principles. This dual focus can lead to more effective decision-making and a deeper understanding of the delivery pipeline.
Feedback Loops Matter: Closing feedback loops is crucial. DevOps is fundamentally about enhancing the delivery process, ensuring that teams can quickly validate their work and iterate based on real user feedback. I often find that teams struggle with lengthy validation periods—sometimes up to 48 hours—due to inadequate testing infrastructure. This is an area ripe for improvement.
The Mindset Shift
A significant part of my role involves shifting mindsets. I frequently encounter the belief that certain industries or regulations prevent rapid delivery. For instance, I’ve heard clients say, “In our industry, we can’t do that.” This mindset can be a major roadblock.
Challenge Assumptions: It’s vital to question these assumptions. Often, when I engage with compliance teams or auditors, I discover that their understanding of software development is limited. By bringing them into the conversation and asking the right questions, we can often find that there are more flexible paths to compliance than initially thought.
Engage with Auditors: I’ve had numerous experiences where simply asking an auditor if a proposed method meets compliance standards leads to surprising results. More often than not, they’re open to alternative approaches that still meet their requirements. This dialogue can open doors to faster delivery without compromising on compliance.
The Bigger Picture
Ultimately, whether I’m conducting a “State of Agile” report or a “State of DevOps” report, the narrative remains the same: it’s all about shortening feedback loops and getting products into the hands of customers more quickly.
Look at the Entire Process: Consider all the feedback loops in your organisation. How long does it take for developers to validate their code? What barriers exist that slow down this process? Identifying these pain points is the first step towards improvement.
Embrace Change: The most significant challenge I see is the resistance to change. It’s easy to fall back on the notion that “we can’t do that here.” However, embracing a culture of experimentation and learning can lead to remarkable transformations.
In conclusion, the challenges I face in DevOps consulting are not insurmountable. By focusing on automation, fostering open communication with compliance teams, and challenging the status quo, we can create a more agile and responsive delivery environment. If you’re grappling with similar issues or want to explore how to enhance your DevOps practices, I invite you to connect with me. Let’s have a chat over coffee and explore the possibilities together.
so the question is what are the most common challenges you are contracted to solve in a devops Consulting geek ah man it’s pretty much the same as an agile Consulting geek right it’s it’s people aren’t seeing working products quickly enough right they aren’t they aren’t able to use the things that the teams are creating perhaps it takes too long to get from from an idea to delivery of working product or even just just too long from we’ve finished the product to we can actually get it in front of our customers and how do we close those those feedback loops because that that fundamentally devops is coming at the story the agile tells from the perspective of people who are delivering the product right the the the actual delivery teams who are getting the product through trying to get the product through the production line of of delivery and the most common challenges or how do you make that faster how do you automate that process which which means people often think about devops as purely about the automation but there’s a lot of uh a mindset and understanding lean agile practitioner behind the story of devops that enables you to make different choices and have different understandings it’s it’s the same reason that that synovsky had to drag the windows team Kicking and Screaming was his comment to shipping a new version of Windows after Windows 8 right Windows 8.1 was a year later but they didn’t want to do it they’re like you can’t release a new version of Windows within a year can can you imagine working on a product and believing wholeheartedly that you can’t ship a new version within a year you can’t make one code change and ship it to production within a year that’s that’s an incredible length of time for that to be true and devops is really about closing those feedback Clips getting that that oh depends how you think about devops right again I always come back to that that story are you an agile practitioner looking at devops are you our devops practitioner looking at agile right because a devops practitioner will say that agile is part of the devops story and an agile practitioner will say that devops is part of the agile story right that’s that’s different lenses they’re different perspectives but it’s all the same thing so I don’t really count it as a any different between it I do this report for for organizations where I analyze what they’re doing and I call it the the state of agile report if they asked for an agile report in the state of devops report if they asked for a devops report and it’s the same report right it’s the same story that I’m telling it’s all about shortening feedback loops it’s about uh getting product in the hands of your customers more quickly it’s about think of all the different feedback loops how long does it take your developers to to to to validate that the code they’ve just written actually works right I know teams where where that’s 48 hours because of the tests they have to run because their testing infrastructure Is Not Great perhaps that should be Rewritten um for me the most most common challenges are are anytime the customer says or anybody at the customer says but in our industry World company we can’t do thing because of some other reason right those those are the big challenges it actually doesn’t matter what you fill those gaps with they’re they’re the big challenges most most commonly um is is we can’t um have developers shipping product into production because of our um you know we’re a regulated industry and we need to blah blah whatever bollocks blah blah blah blah blah right because because it’s just fundamentally not true if you go look on the azure devops website uh at least the last time I looked there were a bunch of articles on um socks audits um and a bunch of articles on other uh and I think there’s the the federal drug the US drug stuff like you have to comply with a bunch of stuff right there’s there’s no mandate that a different person has to test it from the person that codied it not in any of those actual things there’s actually socks on it is the big one right because it’s the financial world and it it’s crazy to think that an auditor right who’s a financial auditor would understand anything about software and put some restriction on and they don’t and the same is true for everything it get the auditor in the room and ask them the question if we do it like this instead of like this is that still okay and 90 of the times are like yeah it is right yeah that sounds that sounds like it gets me the same stuff I need in fact that sounds like more than I need that’s pretty good right and that almost almost 100 of the time that’s that’s my experience working with compliance in companies external Auditors is that they don’t have the Outlook that you think they do because you make we make a sound pins and we don’t ask them so the biggest biggest common challenges are we can’t do that here that’s the biggest challenge and it doesn’t matter what it is it’s always the same challenge right thanks for watching the video If you enjoyed it please like follow And subscribe I always reply to comments and if you want to have a chat about this or anything else agile scrum or devops then please book a coffee with me through naked agility
