This blog stems from my experience of being one of the earliest DevOps Foundation trainers of DOI and successfully completing 19 batches of DOI Foundation course in the last year.
In retrospect of the year starting when TaUB Solutions signed up as a registered education partner (REP) of DOI, my opinion is this has been the best service portfolio offering for our customers and partners.
There are few things that appeal best when it comes to DOI Foundation course and I can summarize them with the collective feedback I’ve received so far:
“Challenges the preconceived myths and practices around DevOps with practitioner stories.”
“Gives a holistic overview of philosophy behind DevOps. Philosophy should precede science and science should precede engineering.”
“This course maintains the discipline to be truly advisory in nature by illustrating tool chain without recommending vendor-specific tools.”
“The group exercises during the class and the facilitator practical insights helped us to put the aspects in to our organizational context of delivering products and services.”
“We have never seen a course such beautifully designed that could be the first basic building block to know ‘Do’s’ and ‘Don’t’s’ of DevOps across application developers, infrastructure operations, project managers, infosec professionals and business leaders.”
To enhance the overall learning curve of the audience, we put them in to the third day of experiential learning using the Phoenix Project Business simulation. The simulation was divided into four rounds and played with maximum of 12 people per batch. The Team was entrusted to achieve a target of $300,000 within four rounds and take the share value from $21 to $45.
While the target milestones were clearly laid down at the beginning of game it was difficult for the teams to get hold of the situation due to various unknown parameters. It took them quite sometime to understand the different moving parts of flow, dependencies, business impact of projects, issues and features that came up in every round and make  appropriate choices and decisions.
The teams experienced significant learning, sharing and collaboration over the four rounds and had loads of fun. One common feedback from the teams was for the game to be mandatory after every two-day DevOps Foundation course.
The consolidated feedback after playing the DevOps business simulation after the two-day course:
“It demonstrated that it is not easy to build collaboration, communication and integration. It takes time and there is a lot of patience and team work needed to make this a reality. The DevOps culture had to be nurtured through self-organizing teams with mutual respect, sense of pride and collective ownership to work toward a common goal.”
“It gave a working knowledge on how ITSM and DevOps are complementing each other [Ex. Change Management and Improved Flow].”
“The Principles of DevOps, namely the First Way (Improve Flow from left to Right), Second Way (Shorten Feedback Loops) and Third Way (Repetition through Mastery) was visibly evident over the course of four rounds.”
“The speed of execution improved over the rounds using short feedback loops, continual improvement and applying lessons learned from previous rounds.”
“It gave a good understanding of how different roles and responsibilities in the organization contribute to the overall success of the project.”
Finally, the teams made over and above the required target of revenue and stock price. The winning moment was enhanced by the significant learning opportunity and ability to bond with diversified cross functional teams.
The experience of playing the business simulation reinforced practical understanding of DevOps and also transferred skills that they could implement immediately at their workplace.
About the Author / Suresh GP
Suresh GP is the Managing Director of TaUB solutions and Regional leader of BRMI (APAC). He has more than 15 years of experience in IT Service Management, IT Governance, Program Management and Organizational Change Management. He is regular blogger and International speaker at itSMF UK, itSMF Australia, itSMF USA, itSMF Finland and itSMF Norway. He is a Certified DevOps, Agile Service Manager, Business Relationship Management Professional, PMP, CGEIT, ITIL V2 Service Manager, ITIL V3 Expert, ISO 20000 practitioner. He was awarded the ITSM contributor of the year by itSMF Singapore in 2013.
