The Physicality of DevOps: A Culture of Sharing
You enter a room. Couches are positioned here and there. In fact, for seating choice, your options are plenty. As you wander through the landscape of over-sized pillows, individual chairs set up in varying clusters, sleek communal tables, you may be under the impression that you have stumbled upon the next hip coffee joint. This is gratified by the fully-stocked kitchen and incredible number of zip-ups on the backs of the millennial-looking people milling around the space. Do you know where you are, yet?
Work. You are at work. Do not get distracted by the (free!) beer on tap, or the arcade games (Buck Hunter, anyone?). This is a place where productivity is measured and bottom lines are met — hopefully. This, folks, is the modern workplace. Every inch is designed to permeate a certain ideal; guided by collaboration, innovation, and creativity.
For some this could be thrilling, a place where work-life balance is not only promoted but seemingly pumped through the air-ducts. Yes, you are at work, but that does not mean you won’t get to have fun, or, that you will even be expected stay at one desk for the day.
For others, and I’m talking to you here programmers, this shared work space looms only as possibility for distraction and broken concentration. The key? Establishing balance, along with recognizing and behaving according to the functions of different work spaces. In modern office setups, an employee may pass from an individual desk, to a space dedicated to a specific team or project, and then onto a more communal and collaborative space, all in one day’s work. Let’s take a look at what this translates to for the IT professional.
Organizational Structure and the nature of “The Desk”
It is undeniable that the sharing economy that has established itself into our working environments has some immense benefits. Particularly for teams that thrive on collaboration and idea transfer (DevOps).
Even large enterprise IT shops are evolving to utilize more succinct teams able to work and produce independently due to the elimination of dependency on other teams, which has historically led to a longer process and high number of hand-offs. Breaking down silos and layers to an organization creates a more streamlined process, and puts the customer satisfaction into the hands of even the more back end developer. This consolidation is seen in the set up of DevOps teams, where the various roles (still guided by distinct responsibilities) are under the same umbrella. In this way, boundaries, which could previously be defined as points within an organization where the responsibility is passed from one team to another (say development to operations), are dissipated. Decision-making, implementation, and improvement are all housed under the same name.
Pair this with the current trendy lay out of an office, and you can see how these intentions are mimicked. An office structure is all about how information is passed throughout the organization. Physical layouts can impeded or promote information sharing. If several teams are dependent on one another to reach one collective outcome, collaboration should be a streamlined process. Modern work spaces like WeWork serve as physical representations of mentalities constantly associated with best DevOps practices.
Information Sharing Made Easy
Open work spaces that foster collaboration — essential for DevOps, whether functioning in a fully integrated manner or as two separate, but tight-knit groups - help to promote situational awareness for each employee. The ability to physically stay where the action is happening in itself lessens the time that information spends being passed-off from one team to another. The information stays in one place, where all team members have the access and ability to contribute.
Modern layouts are now more dedicated to providing areas designed according to the needs of projects themselves, rather than setting up house where the people stay in distinct locations, with information passing through physical spaces. In eliminating the bottle-necks that form in feedback loops, the entire DevOps team is aware and in control with aligned collective efforts. Continuous improvements are implemented faster (to the tune of developers) and more easily integrated into current operations.
Consider how your team reacts to a problem. What do you do physically? If you adopt the Stop, Swarm, Fix technique, where does the “swarming” take place? In an office setting with specs like those offered by Workbar or WeWork, the options are a-plenty, with closed rooms for dedicated team work, spaces ideal for individual work and concentration, or communal work spaces.
As estimated by Intuit, more than 40% of the U.S. workforce will be contingent worker by 2020. It is rare that an employee will remain in one company or role for their career. The theme is movement, growth. For companies to thrive the employees have to feel that what they are doing has an impact on the outcome. All around, rigid formats that have been ingrained in organizational structures are evolving into more dynamic and organic flows of responsibility. Within IT - seen distinctly in the DevOps culture - the emergence of flat organization structures (that eliminate pesky time-wasting layers) and flexible workplaces breeds efficiency and innovation to processes.
How do you you work best?
Does the idea of communal work space excite you? Or cause mild anxiety?
Tweet us your thoughts! Let’s get talking, @longford_and_co.
Stay tuned for more blog posts on tech, career, and DevOps. Longford & Company
