DevOps is all about automation, enhancing the Application Lifecycle Management and culture change. In the last few years there have been tons of conferences and articles about the benefits of a cultural change on a project, but I have yet to read a paper about how to actually change culture.

How do you manage to get people to change the way they think and act towards each other and professionally? This is a huge challenge that most DevOps leads will have to overcome. Here are some of my ideas.

Create cohesion.

The first thing to keep in mind when trying to implement DevOps (or on any other kind of project for that matter) is that people who don’t have fun at work will not perform as good as they could. How to make people happy to go to work is up to you, but I find that simple activities such as team exercises and/or after-work beer work best.

Whenever a new member comes to a team, try to get everyone together to have fun and talk. Take them out to a game of laser tag, get some sumo suits and make people try wrestling amongst other sports. Try to identify a common interest for a sport and have everyone play together. Remember, this is not a competition, do not force people to participate if they don’t feel like it.  There are neither losers nor winners, so try to balance the teams as well as you can.

Another way to get people to know each other and ease potential tension is to take people out. Take your team out to discover a new restaurant or pub and discuss the place together, what they would have changed in the decoration, which Belgium beer is missing from the menu, why on earth do they serve foie gras on a scallop… The point once again is to try to discover others’ interests and behavior outside of work. This specific activity however needs some rules; try to limit the alcohol intake and by all means – do not talk about religions or politics. While those two topics can be fascinating with your friends, some people might get offended, even if they say they don’t mind.

Back on the project, the use of Scrum is highly recommended. Even though the benefits are debatable, I find that shy people tend to open up and contribute more during those sessions than they normally would. On top of that, Scrum meetings include everyone on the ladder, from bottom to top. Only one rule here: no matter what, remember to actually do your daily stand-up, if you can’t do it personally, get one of you team members to conduct it and check afterwards that is has been done. Delegating is not a sign of weakness; it just shows trust in your team.

Create incentive.

People make mistakes, always. There are, however, ways to get to get people to make fewer of them. Pointing fingers and blaming people is definitely not a solution. Making people pay for their mistakes is more efficient. Say each team member has to pay 50 cents (adapt to your own country and project) for every mistake (new bugs, fail in commit, forgot to write a comment in SVN/Git at commit…) they make, and things might start to change. The point here is not to rob your employees, so you will have to find a creative way to use that money. You could for example gather that money at the end of the month to buy candies for everyone. But then that’s just punishing people, which does not make it fun, so you have to come up with a way to compensate for that too. If the management doubles every penny in game, then everyone is involved and there starts to be some interest. But then again, you might get extra bugs because everyone loves candies, so you could triple the sum of gathered money when there are fewer problems than the previous month.

At that point of reading, you might think it’s actually costly and doesn’t benefit anyone except dentists. Well you’re wrong. In the worst case scenario we’re talking about tens of dollars a month, and given that you will actually get some accurate metrics about this, this is a no-brainer.

If candies are not popular in your project (is that possible?), you can also get the good old “employee of the month” award to whomever created the least problems and reward him/her with cinema/theater tickets, a dinner for two… Please note that on high stress periods, dinners for two, even though a lot more expensive than regular rewards, are a lot more appreciated as they might represent a good opportunity to ease work related tension in a couple.

Develop people.

Don’t see your colleagues, especially the young ones as just resources, rather think of them as potential wonders. Everyone aspires to shine and it’s all up to you to make it happen. Do not ever take someone else’s ideas and get the glory. That would be idiotic, mean and potentially a good way to get your colleagues to quit or resent you.  Instead, go on, try to encourage people to speak up, make them give technical presentations, make them speak and give them a positive feedback (even on failures, there are always good ways to explain how one can improve).

Once again, Scrum can help you with that. Identify the elements in your team who need some help and pair them with some others that are more comfortable for some small sessions of peer-programming, peer-presenting, peer-testing… once a week. It can cost some time in the beginning but the benefits are potentially huge in a long term perspective. There is nothing better than a team that has learned to work together and where the first reflex when someone ask for help is to actually help, not to ignore.

Demonstrate values.

One of the things that really is important to remember, is where you come from. No matter your position today, you didn’t start at the top and you’ve had to learn all the values that you try to get your team to demonstrate today. So show them every day, what it means to create DevOps; a potentially highly stressful job, especially in the beginning, where tension between people should not exist. Smile as much as you can, take time to help others even if you that means staying later at night, be proactive once again, try to identify potential bombs and defuse them before they are seen by others. All in all, be nice to others, treat them as you would like them to treat you.

But what if you are faced with a pigheaded team member? Someone who is convinced they are right, no matter how many people disagree? Well once again, do not ignore them; that will only create frustration. Instead, get some documentation or an expert and talk openly about the topic without being aggressive. In the end, the team member should be respectful of your efforts and have won some valuable knowledge in the process.

The biggest piece of advice I have is this: Do not ever be arrogant, do not ever be pompous. Help others, always, and do it nicely and in a humble way. The leaders we like are not the ones that talk too much but the ones that are the nicest to work with.

Changing a culture on a project is a tough thing, but it can be done with a few tricks and a lot of time spent helping others. Luckily, smiles and good atmosphere have a tendency to spread fast and the tight links between Dev and Ops can be strengthened quite fast with some goodwill.