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My mind went immediately to a Netflix presentation about "the role of central teams in devops" a couple of years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA1qPQg3WT

My mind went immediately to a Netflix presentation about "the role of central teams in devops" a couple of years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA1qPQg3WTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA1qPQg3WTc The big thing I remember about their approach that surprised everyone: there was no mandate to use the platform/central team's tools. It made me chuckle how many times the presenter was grilled by everyone about that. It was like some of the audience straight up thought he was lying about that. But basically, if you have a platform team, and a mandate to use that team's tools, well, the other teams aren't really "customers", in the sense you can leverage choice as a signal. So you have to make up for that. In my experience, you need very good management, and constant, multifaceted communication. Which... might work, might not. It's probably best to delay any kind of centralized/platform work until you have a _very_ clear pain that defines a very clear set of roles and requirements. Unless everyone says "Oh shit this is amazing" ... just say no.

closeparen 6y ago
Mandate makes more sense the lower in the stack you go. “This is the cluster scheduler you must use to run code in the datacenters” Ok. “Since part of your feature communicates with end users, it must be implemented in this visual programming language we created for workflows that interact with end users.” Not fine. This is how you end up with abominations of workarounds on workarounds. Let me use my regular tools and give me a damn API. Your decision to invent a shitty half baked programming environment is not my problem. When you try to make it my problem you are only creating more damage.
- user5994461 6y ago
  It doesn't make sense at the datacenter level either. How are ops/developers supposed to use ansible or salt or docker or kubernetes, when the only available solution to access/deploy to the servers is with the one centrally approved tool.

closeparen 6y ago

Mandate makes more sense the lower in the stack you go. “This is the cluster scheduler you must use to run code in the datacenters” Ok. “Since part of your feature communicates with end users, it must be implemented in this visual programming language we created for workflows that interact with end users.” Not fine. This is how you end up with abominations of workarounds on workarounds. Let me use my regular tools and give me a damn API. Your decision to invent a shitty half baked programming environment is not my problem. When you try to make it my problem you are only creating more damage.

user5994461 6y ago
It doesn't make sense at the datacenter level either. How are ops/developers supposed to use ansible or salt or docker or kubernetes, when the only available solution to access/deploy to the servers is with the one centrally approved tool.