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Much has been written about the 7 wastes found in manufacturing and office environments. These wastes were originally identified in the Toyota Production System over 50 years ago. However, there is a common lack of understanding when it comes to the best use of these definitions and their application in the world of software development, deployment and subsequent service. First let’s define the original 7 wastes (aka Seven Deadly Sins): 1. Overproduction – Creating more code, features and … [Read more...]

I had the pleasure of meeting Nick Galbreath (@ngalbreath) at the SxSW Interactive conference this year. He’s especially memorable to me in much the same way Josh Corman and James Wickett are.  What they all have in common is that they believe that DevOps may be the best thing that’s happened to information security in a very long time. Nick is an information security practitioner who not only sees the value of DevOps-style practices to information security, but also lives and breathes it. … [Read more...]

Over the past few years I have interviewed hundreds of DevOps practitioners  and I have also attended around 30 or more DevOps meetups around the globe.  This included with my own experience has enabled me to come up with a good list of what I will call patterns of DevOps Kaizen habits.  The following is a list of patterns of Kaizen habits.  Communication  Sounds like it should be the easiest of all patterns.  Of course, it isn’t.  There have been many great books on this subject by people … [Read more...]

After the first US based Devopsdays in Mountainview 2010 Damon Edwards (@damonedwards) and I coined the acronym CAMS, which stands for Culture, Automation, Measurement and Sharing. Jez Humble (@jezhumble) later added an L, standing for Lean, to form CALMS. In this post I wanted to start with an introduction and overview of what culture might look like in the DevOps movement and identify some patterns. Patrick Debois, (@patrickdebois) godfather of the DevOps movement, always says DevOps is a … [Read more...]

Michael Cote (@cote) and I recently met up at DevOpsDays Austin, and, naturally, a video interview ensued.  We jokingly talked about getting the band back together and maybe starting up our old IT Management podcast series. For those of you who remember, we stopped recording after Michael left RedMonk and went to Dell.  As you’ll see, it didn't take long for us to get back into a great rhythm.  In this video we talked about some of the conclusions made in Michael's DevOpsDays Austin … [Read more...]

I'd like to describe how DevOps is the culmination of three amazing and significant movements. This is what we're putting into the DevOps Cookbook [later retitled The DevOps Handbook]. So the saying goes “If I could have a nickel for every time I have heard the expression "Cloud? We've been doing that for 20 years!” I would be a ...” So goes DevOps.  The funny thing is that most people are right in saying "we've been doing DevOps for years."  That's mainly because there is not good … [Read more...]

Last Thursday night in Sunnyvale, CA, the recently founded Cloud Center hosted a DevOps Kanban Meetup.  It started off as a casual discussion, but it soon became clear that some of the best minds in the community were present and contributing. When someone asks “So, what is DevOps?” it’s relatively problematic.  Most of the leaders in the DevOps movement would agree that at this moment, there is no clear widely accepted definition of “DevOps.”  When forced to come up with an answer, many will … [Read more...]