What to Look for in a DevOps Leader

Unlike agile where methodologies and frameworks dominate, DevOps efforts are generally guided only by a set of underlying principles.

Although there have been some efforts to turn DevOps into a framework that can be rolled out, for the most part such efforts have been resisted. I'm taking the stance that this is a good thing: agile frameworks so often lose sight of the underlying principles in the pursuit of a particular methodologies dogma.

This lack of a pre-packaged ready-to-go playbook does mean that companies adopting DevOps face a challenge that is far different from whats typical when adopting a framework such as ITIL, TOGAF or Scrum. 

DevOps leaders need to be smart, creative thinkers who can quickly design effective solutions

For engineers the way forward is relatively clear: automate your processes, adopt new tools where they provide value, and shift to design paradigms that facilitate your DevOps goals. For DevOps leaders, who are tasked with nebulous goals like changing culture, working out what needs to be done can be much more challenging.

The current approach seems to be inspired by Field of Dreams: build it and they will come. Seminars and meet-ups and talks from thought-leaders do help change the engineering culture, but they only touch the tip of the iceberg when it comes to changing an organisations culture. DevOps leaders need to tackle the big problems like:

•  changing the organisations appetite for risk and attitude towards failure
•  ensuring the business is part of the feedback loop
•  ensuring KPIs reflect DevOps principles
•  empowering staff to make changes and do work outside of a prescriptive PD

This list is by no means exhaustive, but the key takeaway is that most of this work is done outside of development and operations; its about challenging and changing the way the organisation operates to enable an environment where DevOps can flourish. If this doesn't happen early progress can easily be tossed aside when something goes wrong (and it will).

Like any change agent DevOps leaders need to be skilled negotiators, able to empathise with those they are influencing, whilst being resilient to the inevitable roadblocks put in their path.

But with no framework to fall back on DevOps leaders also need to be smart, creative thinkers who can quickly design effective solutions to new problems.