6 ms·

What is devops here again? Is it the The Phoenix Project one on one extreme or system admin for the cloud on the other extreme?

by a_c 4y ago

pjmlp 4y ago
For many organizations, a rebranding of systems engineer.
- a_c 4y ago
  Hence the call out. There is a "Dev" in DevOps which was meant to cross the organisation silo of developers and system admins, to "shift left", to understand the value chain and do whatever to deliver value. Which meant different things to different people, and it ended up meaning different things to different people.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    "Dev" in our Devops (we call it sysops usuall tho) is "we make the tools to glue stuff together instead of relying on dev teams for anything that's longer than few hundred lines of code long.
stevefenton 4y ago
DevOps part one was just "developers and operations working more closely together". It only really required the managers to update the goals of the two specilizations to remove the conflict (developers are rewarded for delivering more, operations are rewarded for stability). Once the research picked up, they started building out a broader picture of what a DevOps organization did and whether those things made them more successful (better at delivering software, more reliable, more profitable, etc). The Phoenix Project / The Unicorn Project explain the concept by telling a story - they kind of tell the same story, but from different perspectives. There's also Investments Unlimited which takes an even broader view by adding governance, risk, and compliance (but in a way that aligns to DevOps). In 2023, DevOps is best described by the DORA research (The State of DevOps Report) as it covers technical, cultural, and product concerns that all amplify each other.
- morelisp 4y ago
  Reading this made me ill.
- khochesh_kushat 4y ago
  There was a step in the middle there you missed where it was coopted by software vendors to not be about how you collaborate with others, but which tools you use, and has now become essentially meaningless.
  - stevefenton 4y ago
    Yes, there is that! ;)
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    The same happened with the concepts of Agile and UX. But of course the true concepts still live on. It's just that everyone wants to sound like they're using best practice techniques even when they're not.
    - Pokepokalypse 4y ago
      I have long ago lost my enthusiasm for this stuff, and now I just do it because I need a paycheck.
- indymike 4y ago
  Wow, I remember the first exposure I had to the term DevOps was not at all about working closely, it was about replacing admins with code. This made sense at the time because Puppet, Chef, SaltStack and other tools made it seem like you could pull this off...
galleywest200 4y ago
It really is nebulous. My title is DevOps. I do a lot of SysAdmin work, but I also work escalated tickets, write automation and integrations, read the flagship code bases when errors occur, I complain about the flagship code bases when bugs occur, and I file JIRA tickets about the flagship code bases when bugs occur -- but I do not write code for the flagship product. I think that is a key.
- toyg 4y ago
  > but I do not write code for the flagship product. I think that is a key. Basically you clean up after big-shot devs, got it.
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    I like to describe it as "we are the helper elves helping Santa deliver presents"
  - Leo_Germond 4y ago
    That view of the development process is a bit reductive, I'm not sure the dev working on fixing a regression on some crusty, old, ugly, but contractually maintained branch of the product considers itself to be a big shot. But that's where most of the money comes from, so that's where this function has to act. Maintenance caused by unprovoked changes is not the lot of any single person or job in the company, it is in fact probably the most common facet of any tech job.
- dijit 4y ago
  Sounds dreadfully similar to what sysadmins were doing 15 years ago.
Karellen 4y ago
As far as I can tell, being in DevOps is like being a SysAdmin, except you write code to automate as much of your job as possible. ...so, exactly like being a SysAdmin.
- dogleash 4y ago
  A quip I liked when devops was new was “devops means checking your scripts into version control”
  - Karellen 4y ago
    After some further consideration, the thought occurred to me that "devops means writing your scripts in any language other than perl"

What is devops here again? Is it the The Phoenix Project one on one extreme or system admin for the cloud on the other extreme?

by a_c 4y ago

What is devops here again? Is it the The Phoenix Project one on one extreme or system admin for the cloud on the other extreme?

pjmlp 4y ago

For many organizations, a rebranding of systems engineer.

a_c 4y ago
Hence the call out. There is a "Dev" in DevOps which was meant to cross the organisation silo of developers and system admins, to "shift left", to understand the value chain and do whatever to deliver value. Which meant different things to different people, and it ended up meaning different things to different people.
- ilyt 4y ago
  "Dev" in our Devops (we call it sysops usuall tho) is "we make the tools to glue stuff together instead of relying on dev teams for anything that's longer than few hundred lines of code long.

stevefenton 4y ago

DevOps part one was just "developers and operations working more closely together". It only really required the managers to update the goals of the two specilizations to remove the conflict (developers are rewarded for delivering more, operations are rewarded for stability). Once the research picked up, they started building out a broader picture of what a DevOps organization did and whether those things made them more successful (better at delivering software, more reliable, more profitable, etc). The Phoenix Project / The Unicorn Project explain the concept by telling a story - they kind of tell the same story, but from different perspectives. There's also Investments Unlimited which takes an even broader view by adding governance, risk, and compliance (but in a way that aligns to DevOps). In 2023, DevOps is best described by the DORA research (The State of DevOps Report) as it covers technical, cultural, and product concerns that all amplify each other.

morelisp 4y ago
Reading this made me ill.
khochesh_kushat 4y ago
There was a step in the middle there you missed where it was coopted by software vendors to not be about how you collaborate with others, but which tools you use, and has now become essentially meaningless.
- stevefenton 4y ago
  Yes, there is that! ;)
- nicoburns 4y ago
  The same happened with the concepts of Agile and UX. But of course the true concepts still live on. It's just that everyone wants to sound like they're using best practice techniques even when they're not.
  - Pokepokalypse 4y ago
    I have long ago lost my enthusiasm for this stuff, and now I just do it because I need a paycheck.
indymike 4y ago
Wow, I remember the first exposure I had to the term DevOps was not at all about working closely, it was about replacing admins with code. This made sense at the time because Puppet, Chef, SaltStack and other tools made it seem like you could pull this off...

galleywest200 4y ago

It really is nebulous. My title is DevOps. I do a lot of SysAdmin work, but I also work escalated tickets, write automation and integrations, read the flagship code bases when errors occur, I complain about the flagship code bases when bugs occur, and I file JIRA tickets about the flagship code bases when bugs occur -- but I do not write code for the flagship product. I think that is a key.

toyg 4y ago
> but I do not write code for the flagship product. I think that is a key. Basically you clean up after big-shot devs, got it.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  I like to describe it as "we are the helper elves helping Santa deliver presents"
- Leo_Germond 4y ago
  That view of the development process is a bit reductive, I'm not sure the dev working on fixing a regression on some crusty, old, ugly, but contractually maintained branch of the product considers itself to be a big shot. But that's where most of the money comes from, so that's where this function has to act. Maintenance caused by unprovoked changes is not the lot of any single person or job in the company, it is in fact probably the most common facet of any tech job.
dijit 4y ago
Sounds dreadfully similar to what sysadmins were doing 15 years ago.

Karellen 4y ago

As far as I can tell, being in DevOps is like being a SysAdmin, except you write code to automate as much of your job as possible. ...so, exactly like being a SysAdmin.

dogleash 4y ago
A quip I liked when devops was new was “devops means checking your scripts into version control”
- Karellen 4y ago
  After some further consideration, the thought occurred to me that "devops means writing your scripts in any language other than perl"