47. DevOps Exchange/Rotation
• Helps spread knowledge
• Prevents myopic view of business
• Should include business roles
• Should include outside opportunities as well
48. Summary
• Plant the seeds to allow your goats to graze
• Give access to the water goats need
• Improve their housing to make happier goats
• Rotate your goats to keep them fresh
And now here I am talking about silos. Everyone is talking about Silos these days. And the foundation of this talk came from attending DevOps Days amsterdam. Some one mention the fact that every deck seemed to have a Silo in it, so many silos that they “thought they were at a farmers conference”
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Ralls_Texas_Grain_Silos_2010.jpg
An org chart
So lets talk about goats. DevOps Engineers are all the rage on job boards and recruiters spam these days. But I don’t think you need to hire DevOps Engineers to instill a culture of DevOps, and generally speaking many others in the DevOps space would agree. What you need to instill DevOps are goats. So why goats?
Goats are extremely intelligent. They will poke and prod and investigate their surroundings, They are curious and seek to learn. Just like those you want bringing about organizational change, you want the curious ones that will go out and find new ways of doing things.
They can tow your children
Or your rooster
http://farm1.staticflickr.com/177/470452689_3f3b2d3f20.jpg
They can be used for stew
Or even milked
They make fashionable clothing
And they can be used to clear areas of brush because they will eat just about anything. Generlists are your number one asset as you look to instill devops in your org.
So lets talk about silos again.
Now when we solve the actual mathematical problem, we get a graphic like this. Now when you have Goats in your org, you need to let them out of their silos from time to time to let them graze amongst others in your org. This helps with the communication and collaboration problems that often plaque orgs.
http://math.ucsd.edu/~jeggers/math20e/goat.pdf
Get the goats more rope, and they can graze even more.
Have multiple silos, with multiple goats and now we have goats running amongst other goats, collaborating and communicating more effectively
Have multiple silos, with multiple goats and now we have goats running amongst other goats, collaborating and communicating more effectively
But what you have to avoid is creating yet another silo of goats. This is what many orgs do when they create a DevOps team.