In this post, we take an introductory look at how communication influences DevOps.
Put quite simply, communication in DevOps is fundamental. That along with collaboration are the two biggest things your company can look to improve to make DevOps a success.
Imagine if developers and operations we able to communicate better with each other. From an infrastructure perspective they could collaborate with operations to work on templates which match their requirements and operations could explain the controls in place for the security of the business.
That mutual understanding then becomes working practice and the developers get what they want for infrastructure builds and operations keep control.
This isn’t just the only place where better communication helps you build culture though. Communication can be made more efficient in a number of different ways.
- Operations participation in sprint planning
- Developers performing releases
- Operations working in development sprints
- Developers working in operations
These examples may seem pretty trivial, but they can have a real impact on the overall experience of those involved and can make them think about their interactions. Over time, this helps improve communication.
One of the classic pieces of feedback you will hear from operations teams is that developers rarely develop for the environment, and that operational challenges, concerns and requests are not taken into account.
When operations participate in planning, they have a chance before work on the sprint starts to voice any concerns about things the developers may not have considered, which is in their field of expertise.
Starting this process early, can have real benefits. To begin with, it will be tricky, and it may feel unnatural for people who have not worked this way before but persevere with it and the results will be clear.
For many organizations, it is the developers who take the compiled applications and release them to the production environment. Try having your developers work with operations to specifically perform releases.
Don’t warn the developers before! Spring this on them so they cannot prepare anything they normally wouldn’t. Make sure the experience is how it usually is for operations.
The benefit of doing this is that your developers should start to understand and have an appreciation of the work that needs to be done with every release of the application.
Up next
In post 14, we look at the Breaking Down Silos.
Martyn Coupland 