Do Your Engineers Need a Degree? If So, You’re Missing Out on Great Hires
For more than a decade, tech team leads have lamented the fact that software engineers are among the toughest jobs to fill. But in some ways, their frustration is self-inflicted. It is almost a given that a lack of higher education represents a deal-breaker for hiring decision-makers. The same goes for job seekers—it can feel […]
Empower Agile Teams with a ‘Bell Curve’ Approach
There’s no feeling better than ending a project on a high—until you notice the mountain of work looming ahead for your next project. At those times, it may seem hard to start grinding all over again. The struggles of adjusting to new teammates or a new client can be daunting. When a new project kicks […]
When DevOps and ITSM Collide: Mistakes to Avoid
In many ways the DevOps movement evolved as a reaction against the worst elements of IT service management (ITSM). IT leaders wanted to get from under the yoke of overly complex processes, bureaucracy and red tape to speed up software delivery, and to just get stuff done. Now that DevOps has kicked into full gear […]
The Struggles DevOps Administrators are Up Against
DevOps has quickly gone from being a niche concept to a widespread practice that is gaining traction rapidly in both large and small organizations. As it becomes a key part of many development teams, administrators must work to integrate DevOps techniques, tools and practices into a wide range of teams, from operations to development, support […]
Manual Processes and Silos Complicating DevOps Deployments
The DevOps concept largely originated in 2009, as software and IT organizations were beginning to adopt Agile methodologies. It came on the heels of a movement to integrate lean manufacturing concepts and infrastructure as a service into IT organizations. Rapid development was the goal, but application and infrastructure teams were still working independently, creating barriers […]
DevOps Abandonment: Reasons Not to Give Up
The Never-Ending Story When a new process or methodology comes along—particularly when one gets a lot of attention like DevOps has—there always will be failures. I’m not talking about those always-present group of people who say they’ve seen this cycle before and, thus, it is just a fad; I’m talking about actual implementers who, in […]
Revisiting My Bet on DevOps
On Dec. 29, 2015, I bought some stock. It was a bet on DevOps that my wife kindly tolerated. Since then, the S&P 500 has risen 31 percent and my DevOps portfolio is up 113 percent. This blog is a retrospective on a bet that worked out. I was inspired by Nicole Forsgren’s talks and […]
From Thought to Leadership
Thought leadership is a term that those of us in the industry hear a lot. A thought leader is a person who has ideas/thoughts that push the edge and brings great ideas to the rest of us. Most vendors want to be seen as thought leaders—and some do, through the agency of rocking individual employees. […]
The Importance of Soft Skills in Engineering
In college, professors regularly told us that in the real world, we need to be able to work in groups. As a young skeptical undergraduate, I naturally rolled my eyes every time I heard this. Most of us hated group projects. More often than not, people would go missing or not do their part with […]
Reinventing Talent Acquisition, DevOps Style: 7 Ways to Become a ‘Destination Company’
Just as brilliant drummers have their pick of bands, top cloud-native developers and project managers can be choosy about their employers. They’re the rock stars of the business and they know it. If you’re not a “destination company” like Amazon, Facebook or Google, how do you entice top talent to work for you? And if […]
Ops: The Other DevOps
Much of the conversation around DevOps, including right here on DevOps.com, is about helping developers get easier access to production systems, increasing agility by shortening release cycles. Most of the time, this focus on developers leads to a concentration on so-called “Day One” tasks, the Dev side of the equation, to the exclusion of “Day […]
Does the DevOps Engineer Exist? How Beliefs Can Influence Hiring
Does a DevOps engineer actually exist? That’s a risky subject to broach for a person who specializes in DevOps hiring. To the untrained eye, the easy answer is, Yes. However, to all the so-called DevOps engineers out there, the answer isn’t so cut and dry. While valid stances around this vary, here are some things […]
Living in a DevOps World, Part 2
Part one of this article focused on some of the more behind-the-scenes benefits of an Agile DevOps approach. In part two the focus turns to some of the other traditional problems that a well-executed DevOps approach can address, and how doing so can benefit an organization in more ways than just a technical perspective. By […]
DevOps Adoption: The Driving Force of the Industry
DevOps has transformed from a mere idea on paper to the way processes function in the face of an immediate requirement. Development and Operations together make for one of the most successful collaborations today. As per a research report, people have now begun to understand what DevOps is. When asked how familiar they were with […]
Are You a Product Team in Name Only?
A simple litmus test can help determine whether a product team is the real thing or wearing a different name. Marketers have been trying to dress up spam, ever since the odd can-shaped meat was invented. It has been called “special processed American meat,” “shoulders of pork and ham” and even “spiced ham.” But, no […]
Get Serious About Building Out Your Ecosystem of Developers
Scratch a hypergrowth software company and you’ll likely find an organization focused on building an ecosystem of developers that will help it achieve platform status. Getting there requires understanding that when it comes to developers, your API is your product. APIs aren’t just about integrating tools and apps; increasingly, they are the new way of […]
Agile Service Management in Practice
It turns out agile and service management go together quite nicely. But how, and how do you translate the agile philosophy to actual changes in your work? There is much to learn on the topic. Agile Service Management: A Checklist Here are several practical examples on how to make your service management more agile: Make […]
How to Cultivate a Loyal Developer Community
With the number of developer focused companies and products growing, building communities among engineers has become a key strategy to stay competitive. Augmenting and often surpassing traditional marketing techniques, this approach—although challenging—can be an incredibly effective way to engage users and get engineers excited about a product. Since our inception over six years ago, DigitalOcean […]
DevOps Chat: Post-DOES Workshop w/ Gary Gruver & Helen Beal
Gene Kim’s DevOps Enterprise Summit UK is just a few weeks away, June 25-26. While DOES UK this year is shaping up to be a must-see event, there are also some great events taking place around DOES. One is sponsored by Electric Cloud (also a founding sponsor of DOES). It is a post-DOES workshop, featuring […]
Puppet Report Sees Long DevOps Journey Ahead
A recent report published by Puppet suggests the level of DevOps maturity within most organizations is still relatively slight. In fact, most of the respondents reported high levels of manual work still occurring across configuration management, deployment, testing and change approval processes. Alanna Brown, director of product marketing for Puppet, said the “State of DevOps: […]
6 Steps to Take DevOps to the Next Level
Enterprises should be winning at DevOps and reaping the rewards of their digital transformation initiatives. After all, DevOps is not new. Its practices, technologies and processes have been widely accepted for years. Agile techniques, which underpin DevOps, are not new, either. Similarly, digital transformation may have started as a “tech solution” but it is now […]
Continuous Testing and Business Assurance
As development moves ever faster, continuous testing can help further reduce the risk of introducing errors In IT circles, “risk management” implies information security. But in the business as a whole, risk management is a function that spans the organization. The risk that an application will negatively impact corporate image, sales or employee morale is […]
Has DevOps Caused the Re-emergence of Shadow IT?
Shadow IT is back, and this time, it’s in the DevOps toolstack “One of our clients conducted an audit and found more than 10,000 Jenkins instances across their IT landscape!” This remark from a tooling vendor that helps enterprises centralize their continuous integration infrastructure really took me by surprise. For starters, I was impressed how […]