Two years after the first DevOpsDays conference in Belgium, DevOps was starting to gain traction. Historically, the pressure came from two directions: agile development pushing faster delivery, and large-scale web operations demanding new approaches to massive infrastructure. The tools – continuous delivery, infrastructure as code – were the connectors that got people from multiple disciplines working together. But DevOps itself was nothing more than creating positive feedback loops between people.
The critics were already vocal: “DevOps is a scam,” “it is nothing new,” “it is too dev-centric,” “it is too broad,” “it will not work.” Fair points, all of them. It is nothing new – just extending existing ideas across silos. The name is imperfect – it should really be dev-star, meaning dev-test-QA-sec-ops-whatever. It is not just for startups, though it is easier there. Security actually benefits from repeatability, preventing failure, and the multiple eyes principle. And no, it will not make ops obsolete – cloud and automation just change the boundaries, they do not eliminate the work.
The practical advice is straightforward: find allies, seek management support, pick a small project where there is real pain, and build on success. Give credit to people. Measure what you improve. Do retrospectives that are not just about technical improvement but also about how you communicate and collaborate. A DevOps team can be useful as a temporary change task force, but if it becomes permanent, it will drain energy. The aim is to dissolve it into the organization.
The question I get most is about measuring collaboration. You cannot directly measure it – counting interactions is like saying a party is good because you talked to 20,000 people. Instead, look at what surrounds it: deployment frequency, bug counts, cycle time, quality improvements. And the strongest argument for specialists collaborating (rather than only generalists): depth of knowledge gives you a more powerful model than mediocrity from people who just do not know enough.
Watch on YouTube – available on the jedi4ever channel
This summary was generated using AI based on the auto-generated transcript.