Formula for Change and DevOps

By: Mitesh Soni

DevOps is about culture. That is what we hear almost every time we hear a definition of DevOps. Existing culture needs a big change to adopt a new culture.

One of the biggest questions or worries is how to inspire change? Is there any formula that can help in Culture Transformation? Yes!

The formula for change provides a space to assess the relative strengths affecting the success possibilities of change initiatives concerning cultural transformation:

D * V * F > R

The formula for change was created by David Gleicher and refined by Kathie Dannemiller later. Let’s try to understand this formula for DevOps context:

D = Dissatisfaction with how things are and how cumbersome they are!

V = Vision of what is possible and opportunity available to improve continuously with speed

F = First concrete steps to achieve the vision

If the product of these three factors is greater than “Resistance”, then change is possible. If any one factor is absent while D, V, and F are multiplied, then the multiplication will be zero, and therefore, it may not overcome the resistance.

Let’s see if we can map Formula of Change with the DevOps Culture transformation.

D = Dissatisfaction with how things are and how cumbersome they are!

As a DevOps CoE lead or as a DevOps Engineer, if you discuss with different teams/team leads/managers/ scrum masters then you might come across following pain points that are faced by them and they are fed up with it:
- Poor Quality
- Complicated Administrative Procedure
- Manual Processes
- Repetitive work
- Rigidness of processes
- No flexibility
- Huge CapEx
- No Visibility
- Lack of Sense of Responsibility
- Lack of Sense of Ownership
- Slow Environment Provisioning
- Collaboration issues
- Divided Team
- Communication Issues

V = Vision of what is possible and what is the opportunity available with disruptive innovation

System thinking is an important factor. Leadership and COE team must have a long-term vision for culture transformation activities.
- High Quality
- Faster Time to Market
- Agility
- Automation
- Standardized environments
- Scalability
- Adoption of new tools, methodologies, and processes
- Productivity Gains
- As a Service Model Usage
- Continuous Improvements
- Continuous Innovations
- Better Communication and Collaboration

F = First concrete steps to achieve the vision

Assessment or Value Stream Mapping exercise can give potential first steps and it is important to give priority to tasks based on feasibility, requirements and available skill set of resources.
- Prioritize Culture
- Allocate budget
- Form Agile COE
- Form a DevOps CoE Team
* Allocate Interested Resources
* Full-time work
- Training
* Self-Paced Learnings
* Practical Labs
- DevOps Readiness Assessment / Value Stream Mapping Exercise
- Create a Maturity Model
- Create DevOps Implementation Roadmap for phase-wise implementation
- Proof of Concept
* Documentation: Lesson learnt, Best practices
- Identification of Application / Project for DevOps Practices (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery) implementation
- Code Awareness
- Continuous Code Inspection
- Continuous Integration (CI)
- CI in Database
- Cloud Provisioning
- Configuration Management
- Continuous Delivery
- Continuous Testing
- Continuous Deployment
- Orchestration
- Continuous Monitoring
- Continuous Feedback
- Defined Quality Gates
- Notifications
- Support Group
- Code Review
- Infrastructure as a Code
- Pipeline as a Code
- Code Analysis for All Projects
- System Teams
- Containerization
- Automation Test Framework
- Pair Programming
- Test-Driven Development
- Behavioural Driven Development
- SCA for All Projects
- Unit Testso
* Code Coverage
- Branch Policies
- Build Verification

Resistance

Resistance for a change is a human reaction to the change and it can be normalized with proper training and discussion for continuous improvements.

DevOps is an important initiative and desired by the customer for high quality and speed. A top-down approach with better vision and roadmap is likely to be more successful than the bottom-up approach where tools are used for automation by singular efforts. Culture change is not an individual effort. It is a “team” game that requires effective collaboration and communication.

DevOps Institute is dedicated to advancing the human elements of DevOps success through the SKIL Framework: Skills, Knowledge, Ideas, and Learning. Learn more.

Originally published at https://devopsinstitute.com on August 6, 2020.