#mainframe chat question 1:

Greg Bledsoe
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

How do you see DevOps fitting into a Digital Transformation initiative?

I believe DevOps has to be front and center in any IT modernization or Digital Transformation effort.

If fact, I don’t think any other approach makes sense. This is hard to understand if you share the common misconception that DevOps is a set of tools and practices, when in fact, coming to grips with what DevOps actually means will make it obvious that DevOps is a ongoing, codified, open-source style set of principles and methodologies for which and from which tools are constantly evolving. What DevOps has become is a toolkit for organizational craftsmanship.

When you realize DevOps has matured to embrace every element of the value delivery pipeline, from business analysis to security and monitoring (as I predicted years ago, DevSecOps and DevQaOps have merged into mainstream DevOps), you start to understand the realignment of incentives and what that really entails. This is not a trivial undertaking and this is not tinkering around the edges.

This is the difference between deciding you want to paint and going to buy all the latest greatest most expensive equipment, brushes, canvases, paints, and tools you can buy, but neglecting to study, practice, or even to decide what it is you actually want to achieve by painting. Someone less talented than you who starts with an evaluation of their goals and what they want to achieve, then applies consistent practice and focused efforts will make better progress as an artist and surpass you by many orders of magnitude with the cheapest tools and paints available, painting on a wall.

The most fundamental lessons of DevOps have nothing to do with your technology, but are at their root about re-aligning your technology towards value. This is much, much harder than buying and implementing some tools, and in the process of doing this you want to think deeply about who your customer or consumer is, what they want, what they value, and how you can deliver that as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Until this fundamental change in direction and orientation happens, DevOps provides limited value, though even done badly, just the automation piece alone does provide value. Once you embrace the principles behind DevOps, the DevOps technical side of things happens almost as a side effect and you are unleashing digital business in a way you can’t otherwise.

All answers here: https://medium.com/@geek_king/answers-from-idgtechtalk-mainframe-chat-on-devops-d853cf3d786e

Greg Bledsoe

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With @accenture, #Linux #devops #cybersecurity writer, speaker. Disruptor-In-Chief. Gentleman Barbarian, Peaceful Nerd Warrior. Views=mine rts != endorsements

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