DevOps.com

  • Latest
    • Articles
    • Features
    • Most Read
    • News
    • News Releases
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Testing
    • Cloud
    • Culture
    • DevSecOps
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • Leadership Suite
    • DevOps Practice
    • ROELBOB
    • DevOps Toolbox
    • IT as Code
  • Videos/Podcasts
    • DevOps Chats
    • DevOps Unbound
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming
    • On-Demand Webinars
  • Library
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • On-Demand Events
  • Sponsored Communities
    • AWS Community Hub
    • CloudBees
    • IT as Code
    • Rocket on DevOps.com
    • Traceable on DevOps.com
    • Quali on DevOps.com
  • Related Sites
    • Techstrong Group
    • Container Journal
    • Security Boulevard
    • Techstrong Research
    • DevOps Chat
    • DevOps Dozen
    • DevOps TV
    • Digital Anarchist
  • Media Kit
  • About
  • AI
  • Cloud
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Continuous Testing
  • DevSecOps
  • Leadership Suite
  • Practices
  • ROELBOB
  • Low-Code/No-Code
  • IT as Code
  • More Topics
    • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
    • Culture
    • Enterprise DevOps

Home » Blogs » Enterprise DevOps » It’s About Communication, not Silos

It’s About Communication, not Silos

By: Don Macvittie on May 5, 2017 Leave a Comment

Too often, when enterprise folks talk with DevOps aficionados, we get a loud chorus of “Culture Change” and “Take down the silos,” and frankly that scares any sane enterprise IT person. Not because they fear change, but because they fear that those of us who are fans of end-to-end DevOps have no clue what we’re talking about.

Recent Posts By Don Macvittie
  • Is Your Future in SaaS? Yes, Except …
  • Update Those Ops Tools, Too
  • Why We Still Need Specialists
More from Don Macvittie
Related Posts
  • It’s About Communication, not Silos
  • SRE Vs. DevOps: The Wrong Question?
  • ‘Yehbut’: Communication in the Age of DevOps
    Related Categories
  • Blogs
  • Enterprise DevOps
    Related Topics
  • communication
  • Culture Change
  • silos
Show more
Show less
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
Baby vs. Bath Water – By Richfife (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
And to some extent, that impression is not misguided. There will still be a development team. There still needs to be a selection of operational specialists. Eliminating these are not changes anyone is proposing for enterprise use. Indeed, if an organization has an investment in Cisco UCS, they still need a UCS specialist. The system is complex, and the more knowledge you have of it, the better it can be managed. Sure, automating as much as possible is a worthy goal for all such specializations, but even automated, the UCS person still needs to be able to expand/modify/maintain the automation. Another good example is NetOps (or whatever we’re calling it today): The person with in-depth knowledge of your ADC will still need to have in-depth knowledge of your ADC.

DevOps/Cloud-Native Live! Boston

So, then, what we’re really talking about is increased communication. We’re talking about a small, cross-functional team to smooth the areas that DevOps is very good at, but specialized knowledge is still needed. Increasing communication is key to every DevOps implementation, regardless of tool set; the ability to predict future work based on updates is almost essential in any faster-moving environment. Indeed, Lori and I were discussing this morning, wondering how many of those enterprise Slack channels are being used to provide a running commentary across the team of what is happening upstream. But that’s another blog, I think.

It is not that DevOps people are clueless, nor is it that they want to eliminate specializations (well, some claim to want to, but they have a marketing reason to do so), but rather, it seems that many of us DevOps folks have gotten so wrapped up in change (it is a big change to streamline both Dev and Ops) that the baby is being thrown out with the linguistic bathwater.

If you’re talking DevOps, talk about increasing communication, not destroying silos. Secure DevOps is evolving now, and shows the model more clearly because of it—developers and ops are given more of a role in security and auditing, but they are taught and overseen by the security team. This does not eliminate security, but does increase the security of what is being produced.

While we’re at it, switch from bulk “Culture Change,” too. While there is a fair amount of culture change—moving to proactive and more frequent, with roadblocks minimized or removed and non-essential changes treated as, well, non-essential. But “streamlined dev/operations” might just be a better way to talk about it. After all, the brazen voices still seem to sing of wrecking balls from on high crashing down, and that’s not an effective way to get buy-in for change.

In the end, the point is more repeatable, more stable, more manageable processes and systems. Let’s talk more about that, and less about Destructor, shall we? Sell the concept; don’t force-feed it. There’s a lot of good to be had, and using terminology that is both confusing (Define “Culture Change” in a generic, applicable sense) and often frightening is not helping people understand (or want to understand) how it can help.

— Don Macvittie

Filed Under: Blogs, Enterprise DevOps Tagged With: communication, Culture Change, silos

Sponsored Content
Featured eBook
The 101 of Continuous Software Delivery

The 101 of Continuous Software Delivery

Now, more than ever, companies who rapidly react to changing market conditions and customer behavior will have a competitive edge.  Innovation-driven response is successful not only when a company has new ideas, but also when the software needed to implement them is delivered quickly. Companies who have weathered recent events ... Read More
« How a Network Admin Makes a Pun
DevOps Chat: Taking Care of Your People with Rob England, IT Skeptic, DOES Speaker »

TechStrong TV – Live

Click full-screen to enable volume control
Watch latest episodes and shows

Upcoming Webinars

Get Infrastructure Transparency and Improve Your Developers’ Experience in the Process
Thursday, May 19, 2022 - 3:00 pm EDT
Accelerating Continuous Security With Value Stream Management
Monday, May 23, 2022 - 11:00 am EDT
The Complete Guide to Open Source Licenses 2022
Monday, May 23, 2022 - 3:00 pm EDT

Latest from DevOps.com

DevOps Institute Releases Upskilling IT 2022 Report 
May 18, 2022 | Natan Solomon
Creating Automated GitHub Bots in Go
May 18, 2022 | Sebastian Spaink
Is Your Future in SaaS? Yes, Except …
May 18, 2022 | Don Macvittie
Apple Allows 50% Fee Rise | @ElonMusk Fans: 70% Fake | Microsoft Salaries up by 100%?
May 17, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Making DevOps Smoother
May 17, 2022 | Gaurav Belani

Get The Top Stories of the Week

  • View DevOps.com Privacy Policy
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Download Free eBook

DevOps: Mastering the Human Element
DevOps: Mastering the Human Element

Most Read on DevOps.com

How Waterfall Methodologies Stifle Enterprise Agility
May 12, 2022 | Jordy Dekker
Top 3 Requirements for Next-Gen ML Tools
May 13, 2022 | Jervis Hui
Progress Expands Scope of Compliance-as-Code Capabilities
May 12, 2022 | Mike Vizard
15 Ways Software Becomes a Cyberthreat
May 13, 2022 | Anas Baig
Why Over-Permissive CI/CD Pipelines are an Unnecessary Evil
May 16, 2022 | Vladi Sandler

On-Demand Webinars

DevOps.com Webinar ReplaysDevOps.com Webinar Replays
  • Home
  • About DevOps.com
  • Meet our Authors
  • Write for DevOps.com
  • Media Kit
  • Sponsor Info
  • Copyright
  • TOS
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Techstrong Group, Inc.

© 2022 ·Techstrong Group, Inc.All rights reserved.