how to make cultural improvements in it
TRANSCRIPT
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How to Make Cultural Improvements in IT
Helen Beal@helenranger4
Daniel Breston@danielbreston
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“The most exciting breakthroughs of the twenty-first century will not occur because of
technology, but because of an expanding concept of what it
means to be human.”
John Naisbitt
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What is culture?
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Results of First Poll
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POLL 2
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Post-mortems
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War Rooms
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BLAME
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Release Weekends
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War-roomsFAILURE
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War-roomsFAILURE
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Waste
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Results of Second Poll
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COMMUNICATIONRaising awareness
Being aware
COLLABORATIONGiving support
Gaining support
COOPERATIONPartnering alliance
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Typology of Organisational Culture (Westrum, 1994) PathologicalPower-oriented
BureaucraticRule-oriented
GenerativePerformance-oriented
Low cooperation Modest cooperation High cooperationMessengers shot Messengers neglected Messengers trainedResponsibility shirked Narrow responsibilities Risks are sharedBridging discouraged Bridging tolerated Bridging encouragedFailure leads to scapegoating
Failure leads to justice Failure leads to inquiry
Novelty crushed Novelty leads to problems
Novelty implemented
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Organisational EvolutionStage Typified by Current
ExamplesKey
BreakthroughsGuiding
Metaphor
REDConstant exercise of power by chief to keep troops in line. Fear is the glue of the organisation. Highly reactive, short-term focus. Thrives in chaotic environments.
• Mafia• Street Gangs• Tribal militia
• Division of labour• Command
authority
Wolf pack
AMBERHighly formal roles within a hierarchical pyramid. Top-down command and control (what and how). Stability valued above all through rigorous processes. Future is repetition of past.
• Catholic church• Military• Most government
agencies• Public school
systems
• Formal roles (stable and scalable hierachies)
• Processes (long-term perspectives)
Army
ORANGEGoal is to beat competition, achieve profit and growth. Innovation is key to staying ahead. Management by objectives (command and control on what; freedom on the how).
• Multinational companies
• Charter schools
• Innovation• Accountability• Meritocracy
Machine
GREENWithin the classic pyramid structure, focus on culture and empowerment to achieve extraordinary employee motivation.
• Culture driven organisations (e.g. Southwest Airlines, Ben & Jerry’s…)
• Empowerment• Values-driven
culture• Stakeholder
models
Family
TEALSelf-organising and self-managed teams with coaches when needed. Coaches do not have P&L responsibility or managerial authority.
• Spotify, FAVI, Morning Star, Waterstones
• Trusting those doing the job
• Autonomy, mastery and purpose
SystemFrom ‘Reinventing Organisations’ by Frederic Laloux
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How do we change culture?
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2
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How to Create a Generative CultureCharacteristics of a
Generative CultureDevOps Practices
High cooperation Cross-functional Teams. Many organisations create cross-functional teams that include representatives from each functional area of the software delivery process. This allows everyone to share the responsibility for building, deploying and maintaining a product.
Messengers trained Blameless Postmortems. By removing blame, you remove fear, you enable teams to more effectively surface problems and solve them. Mistakes happen. Holding blameless postmortems is a valuable way to learn from mistakes.
Risks are shared Shared responsibility. Quality, availability, reliability and security are everyone’s job. One way to improve the quality of your services is to ensure that devs share responsibility for maintaining their code in production. The improvement in collaboration that comes from sharing responsibility inherently reduces risk. With more eyes on the software delivery process, it’s a given that some errors in process or planning will be avoided. Automation reduces risk and, with the right tool choice, can enable collaboration.
Bridging encouraged Breaking Down Silos. In addition to creating cross-functional teams, techniques for breaking down silos can include co-locating ops with the dev team, including ops in planning throughout the software delivery lifecycle, and implementing ChatOps*.
Failure leads to inquiry Blameless Postmortems. Our response to failure shapes the culture of an organisation. The more you focus on the conditions in which failures happen, as opposed to blaming individuals for failures, the closer you’ll get to creating a generative culture.
Novelty implemented Experimentation Time. Giving employees freedom to explore new ideas can lead to great outcomes. Some companies give engineers time each week for experimentation. Others host internal hack days or mini-conferences to share ideas and collaborate. This is how many new features and products have originated, and it shows how much value employees can generate for an organisation when they are released from habitual pathways and repetitive tasks.
Jesse Newland, “ChatOps at GitHub” March 26 2013
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What isYour Why?
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POLL 3
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What does DevOps Culture Look Like?
Frictionless
Transparent
Innovative
Collaborative
SuccessfulSurviving
Thriving
Casual
ComfortableLike
home, family
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Ideation
Integration
Validation
Operation
Realisation
DevO
ps
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Results ofThird Poll
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Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose
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What Are the Steps for Making Cultural Change?
1. Baseline2. Gain a deep understanding– Of your organisation’s why– Of your value streams
3. Articulate your desired future state4. Identify the things you need to change5. Document a plan6. Change7. Make it normal
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