Jesse Robbins (Cofounder of Opscode) explains how to be a force for Awesome. He will explain how to evangelize & overcome cultural resistance to change (& share his own painfully funny lessons on how not to do it ;-).

1. Jesse Robbins
Cofounder, Opscode
@jesserobbins
jesse@opscode.com

2. this should sound familiar...

5. “your slow site
makes me sad &
you lose money.”

6. and

7. ♥ Dev+Ops
Culture
Slide Courtesy of John Allspaw - http://www.slideshare.net/jallspaw/10-deploys-per-day-dev-and-ops-cooperation-at-flickr

8. Learned all 28 of Steve’s Rules
(+ the 4 secret ones he is sworn never to reveal)

10. Metrics &Google, Yahoo Check.
Amazon, Dashboards?
built their own tools to scale...

11. Continuously Deploying code
before you even write it.

12. “Press button, Receive Candy”

13. The right culture is a
requirement for survival &
success at web scale.

14. meanwhile... back at the office

15. Dear
Jesse,
I
work
for
a
big
company.
I
tried
to
(talk
to
people
about|implement)
this
awesome
stuff
and
they
told
me
it
would
never
work
here.
What
do
I
do
now?
Sincerely,
Most
of
us

16. Changing culture takes time
(sorry about that)

17. You cannot change everyone or
everything at once.

18. Choose your battles, or better
yet, don’t battle at all...

19. Jesse’s Rule:
Don’t Fight Stupid,
Make More Awesome!

20. Changing Culture:
1. Start small, build trust & safety
2. Create Champions
3. Use metrics to build confidence
4. Celebrate successes
5. Exploit Compelling Events
20

21. Example:
GameDay
Slide Courtesy of John Allspaw - http://www.slideshare.net/jallspaw/10-deploys-per-day-dev-and-ops-cooperation-at-flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnorman/2678090600

22. define:
GameDay
An exercise designed to increase Resilience through large-
scale fault injection across critical systems.
Part of a larger discipline called Resilience
Engineering.
Not new, just new to us ;-)

23. start small...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oakleyoriginals/5674150237

24. build on trust & safety...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/skevbo/4864249944

25. Create Champions...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/maunzy/5099921731

26. Use metrics to build confidence...
http://tacomafiredepartment.blogspot.com/2010/05/west-slope-training-burn.html

27. use metrics to build confidence

28. Celebrate successes

29. Exploit Compelling Events
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peregrinari/3801964067

30. Changing Culture:
1. Start small, build trust & safety
2. Create Champions
3. Use metrics to build confidence
4. Celebrate successes
5. Exploit Compelling Events
30

31. Hacks:Starting Small
1. Small isn’t a threat & is easy to
ignore
2. Just call it an experiment
31

32. Hacks:Creating Champions
1. Get executive sponsors, starting
with your boss.
2. Give everyone else the credit.
3. Give “Special Status”
4. Have people with “Special Status”
talk about the new awesome.
32

33. Hacks: Metrics
1. Find KPI that supports change
2. Track and use it ruthlessly - first
to show value, later cost of not
making the change by laggards
3. Tell your story with data
33

34. Hacks: Celebrating successes
1. Tell a powerful story
2. Always positive about people and how
they overcame a problem.
3. Never about people who created the
problem.
4. Leave room for people to come to
your side. (don’t fight stupid ;-)
34

35. Hacks:Compelling Events
1. Just wait, it will come
2. Can be created by things like
compliance, scaling, cloud
migrations
3. Not “I told you so” - but “what do
we do now”
35

36. http://thisisindexed.com/2008/12/might-as-well-own-this-meltdown/

37. Hacking Permission

39. FEMA: “Who is in charge here”
Anarchists: “NOBODY!”
FEMA: “Okay, you have to shut
down so we can feed people”
Anarchists: “We’re feeding 5000
people a day.”

40. Solution: Make all volunteers
“site directors”

41. FEMA: “Who is in charge here?”
Anarchist: “I’m a site director...”
FEMA: “Please sign for your supplies”

43. Jesse’s Rule:
Don’t Fight Stupid,
Make More Awesome!

44. Jesse Robbins
Cofounder, Opscode
@jesserobbins
jesse@opscode.com