Walking Through The Minefield: The DevOps Antitypes
DevOps brings many undeniable benefits to organizations; achieving them requires navigating a complex landscape full of “antitypes,” which are approaches that mimic the surface of DevOps but lack the essential ingredients for success. These antitypes translate into a challenging path full of complex processes that can derail progress and hold back innovation.
Like navigating a minefield, recognizing these antitypes is crucial to guarantee a smooth and effective adoption of a DevOps culture. You can view this guide as a roadmap to navigate the DevOps minefield safely. Let’s review the most common antitypes.
Antitype 1: Internal Silos Between Departments
In many organizations, development and operations departments may work in isolation, known as silos. These silos go against the culture of collaboration and effective communication that DevOps proposes, creating invisible barriers that make teamwork difficult. Within this category, we find 2 types of silos: Dev and Ops silos and DevOps team silos.
In the first type (Dev and Ops teams silos), developers do not have enough context about the tasks that the operations staff perform during the deployment to production. The operations staff does not involve the developers in solving problems before the software goes to production, creating a lack of communication. A culture of blaming or pointing fingers is created, and separate responsibilities are maintained.
The second (DevOps team silo) starts with a ”DevOps team” that quickly separates itself from operations and developers, assuming only the responsibility of administration. They do not get involved with either developers or the operations staff and sometimes only take the side of operations, defending their toolchain and internal processes, causing multiple additional dependencies.
When things go wrong, this silo can create a culture of blame instead of solutions.
Antitype 2: Devs Don’t Need Ops
This antitype is overly common and occurs in development teams when starting new projects. They assume that the cloud is autonomous or simple enough, underestimating the complexity and importance of the operations team’s skills and activities. They believe that developers can do without them or simply cover them from other positions by automating processes without a strategic approach that can be counterproductive. This can result in infrequent deployments as well as security and traceability problems that are nightmares (like opening a can of worms) when it comes to integrating solutions during the software development cycle.
They believe that developers can do without them or simply cover them from other positions by automating processes without a strategic approach that can be counterproductive. This can result in infrequent deployments as well as security and traceability problems that are nightmares (like opening a can of worms) when it comes to integrating solutions during the software development cycle.
There is a DevOps team responsible only for implementing the tools necessary to create the environment, deployment pipelines, security, and project management. The development team continues to work independently and delivers the completed applications to the operations team for deployment, creating a lack of early involvement in operations. When operations are not involved early on, problems with deployment, configuration, security, or performance might not be identified until late in the development cycle.
This lack of collaboration can stifle innovation and prevent teams from learning and sharing best practices. This also creates a fragmented and inefficient development environment that hinders collaboration, slows down delivery, and increases the risk of failure.
Antitype 4: The Rebranded SysAdmin Change Without Substance
This antitype occurs when an organization, in its attempt to adopt DevOps, simply renames its system administrators (SysAdmins) to DevOps engineers without considering a change in role and responsibilities, including the company’s operating model. This superficial change can be counterproductive.
Development and operations teams still operate independently, with developers throwing code “over the wall” to the rebranded SysAdmins for deployment and operational support. Developers are not involved in the operational aspects of their applications, leading to a lack of understanding of the challenges and constraints operations face.
Without evolving the roles and responsibilities of SysAdmins to align with DevOps principles, the transformation is incomplete.
Antitype 5: Ops Embedded in Dev Team
This antitype appears when development teams assume Ops responsibilities, taking care of infrastructure, environment management, monitoring, deployments, etc. This represents a risk where the development team focuses too much on specific projects or products, losing sight of the larger operational picture and consistency across the organization.
Development teams could also have a huge dependency on the integrated members of the operations team, which could create bottlenecks and hinder the team’s ability to operate independently.
Embedding operation duties into the development teams doesn’t guarantee the adoption of a true DevOps culture.
Antitype 6: Dev and DBA Silos
This antitype represents the traditional division between development and DBA teams, which introduces greater complexity to approve and implement each change introduced by developers and can significantly slow down the development process.
Development and DBA teams will have a lack of communication and a lack of shared understanding, leading to errors, inconsistencies, and inefficiencies due to a communication gap.
When Dev and DBA teams operate in silos, innovation can be diminished. Developers may not be aware of the latest database technologies or best practices, and database administrators may not be exposed to the changing needs of the development team.
These teams operate independently, and it can be difficult to adapt to changing business requirements quickly and effectively.
Anti-Type 7: Over-Compartmentalizing Work
This is a common pattern, also called subdivided work. It represents strict role definitions within project teams; members are confined to limited roles (e.g., “I only write code” or “I only manage deployments”), and it is not recommended to let someone contribute. Outside these boundaries, meaning that requests often get stuck or wait to be resolved by a specific team or person with the necessary expertise, slowing down the process as well as workflows and delivery.
For team members, there are few incentives and opportunities to learn skills outside their immediate area, resulting in knowledge silos or lack of cross-skilling.
In this antitype, team members most likely do not understand or appreciate the challenges and needs of other roles, leading to conflict and misaligned priorities.
Antitype 8: Problems with Manual Deployment Processes
This antipattern contradicts the basic principles of automation, efficiency, and reliability. When team members have to execute manual processes, they are susceptible to human error; errors in implementation can lead to major issues such as downtime, application crashes, and security vulnerabilities.
Manual processes are not scalable. As the complexity and volume of deployments increase, manual effort becomes impractical and unsustainable. Manual deployments often lack comprehensive records and documentation, making it difficult to track what was done, by whom, and when. This complicates troubleshooting and auditing.
Conclusions
DevOps is not merely a trendy term. It is a mindset that aims to eliminate the conventional boundaries between development and operations. It emphasizes the importance of these two teams collaborating closely and becoming so interconnected that they function as one. DevOps is a puzzle, so there are no shortcuts; it allows us to build software faster and more efficiently, allows us to identify and resolve problems faster, and allows us to release new features more frequently rather than faster.
It’s about quality, reliability, and user experience, and creating software that is attractive, easy to use, and runs smoothly. By avoiding these antitypes, we can create a strong DevOps culture that will drive speed, quality, and innovation, which is DevOps's true promise.
Silos can lead to duplicated efforts, wasted resources, and increased IT infrastructure costs.
