This document summarizes a presentation about fostering a DevOps culture. It discusses how technology can provide trust through automation, but culture and people are difficult to change. It suggests using behavioral economics and creating diverse teams to encourage different perspectives. Other suggestions to accelerate organizations include using incentives, empowering change, and addressing issues like fear, anger and suffering that some may feel about changes. While equilibrium sounds good, technology organizations can get stuck in "bad equilibrium" and need to break out of inefficient, undesirable states to improve.

1. @normalfaults
99 Problems
but Technology ain’t one
Nirmal Mehta
Twitter/Github: @normalfaults
5/17/17
5/2/17 1

2. @normalfaults
Nirmal Mehta
• 9 years Government IT consulting
• Docker Captain
• #EverythingDevops
• I heart new technology
• I heart when people get excited
and passionate about new ideas,
technology and things
• Docker Raleigh !
5/2/17 2
Instagram: @starla.abbey

3. @normalfaults
Answers are hard.
This presentation will raise more questions
then answers
Let it be a start of a conversation
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4. @normalfaults
Technology is easy
Culture and People are hard
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Devops is technology and culture

5. @normalfaults
Are you saying Technology is not important?
Technology provides the safety blanket in DevOps style
organizations.
Technology provides trust through repeatability and
automation
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6. @normalfaults
Yoda on IT Culture: Fear
“I love controlling the IP address
allocation excel spreadsheet. I’m
not too sure about this DEV-
operations automation stuff“
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7. @normalfaults
Yoda on IT Culture: Anger
“Why do we have to change this
process?!? I don’t like it when I don’t
have control…. aarrrgghhh”
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8. @normalfaults
Yoda on IT Culture: Hate
“How are we supposed to keep
track of all our ip addresses
now!?!”
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9. @normalfaults
Yoda on IT Culture: Suffering
Why does it take 100 days
to get a VM?
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10. @normalfaults
How can we help foster DevOps Culture?
Use the Force!
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11. @normalfaults
How can we help foster DevOps Culture?
Behavioral Economics!
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12. @normalfaults
How can we help foster DevOps Culture?
Group Selection Bias
• Have people from various backgrounds and
perspectives on delivery teams
• The more perspectives and diversity the better
• Create teams that are cross cut of functions
versus “Network team” or “Security Team”
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13. @normalfaults
How can we help foster DevOps Culture?
Incentives
• If the change is captured as Infrastructure as
Code and there are good tests then it
automatically goes through Change Control
Board
• Otherwise it will be a 2 week review!
• Create positive incentive paths for the behavior
we want
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14. @normalfaults
How can we help foster DevOps Culture?
Empowering Change
• Give folks the ability and authority to change
the environment
• Otherwise amplifications of power differences
will create a negative cycle
• Innovation is constantly needed to break
negative process
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15. @normalfaults
How can we help foster DevOps Culture?
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Are there other cultural “hacks” we can do to
accelerate IT organizations?
How can we use technology to solve these
people problems?

16. “Breaking Bad” Equilibrium
John Willis
Twitter: botchagalupe
GitHub: botchagalupe

17. • One of the founding members of “Devopsdays”
• Co-author of the “Devops Handbook”.
• Author of the “Introduction to Devops” on Linux Foundation edX.
• Podcaster at devopscafe.org
• Devops Enterprise Summit - Cofounder
• Nine person in at Chef (VP of Customer Enablement)
• Formally Director of Devops at Dell
• Found of Socketplane (Acquired by Docker)
• 10 Startups over 25 years
About John Willis
https://github.com/botchagalupe/my-presentations

18. • Economics
• Wealth
• Markets
• Thermodynamics
Equilibrium

19. • Techical Debt
• Cooperation
• Risk
• Work Life Balance
• Burnout
Equilibrium

20. It’s a strategy that all the
players in the game can adopt
and converge on, but it won’t
produce a desirable outcome
for anyone.
Bad Equilibrium

21. False Equilibrium

22. False Analytics
http://www.slideshare.net/swardley/an-introduction-to-wardley-maps

23. Movie Fun

26. More Fun - Game Theory

27. Is a state of allocation of resources in
which it is impossible to make any one
individual better off without making at
least one individual worse off.
(KIND OF LIKE ZERO SUM)
Pareto Efficiency

28. A situation is inefficient if someone
can be made better off even after
compensating those made worse off.
Pareto Inefficiency

30. A concept of game theory where the
optimal outcome of a game is one
where no player has an incentive to
deviate from his chosen strategy after
considering an opponent's choice.
Nash Equilibrium

33. Sarah
Steven
Split Steal
Split
Steal
100%50%
50%
100% 0%
0% 0%
0%
Nash
Equilibrium

34. 34
A Nash equilibrium is what's strategically feasible.
A Pareto optimal solution is what's efficient.

39. Ibrahim
Nick
Split Steal
Split
Steal
100%50%
50%
100% 0%
0% 0%
0%

40. Nick
Ibrahim
Split Steal
Split
Steal
100%
0%
0%
0%

41. Why Michael Lewis?

43. Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and
Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original
studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-
making process. Their papers showed the ways in which
the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make
judgments in uncertain situations. Their work created the
field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data
studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new
approach to government regulation, and made much of
Michael Lewis’s own work possible. Kahneman and Tversky
are more responsible than anybody for the powerful trend
to mistrust human intuition and defer to algorithms.

44. • Human Irrationality
• Heuristics
• System 1 (fast)
• System 2 (slow)
• Availability Bias
• Regression to the Mean
• Overconfidence
• Illusion of Validity

45. That’s how it’s
always been done
around here!

46. • Undesirable Outcomes
• Pareto Inefficient
• Nash Equilibrium
• False Analytics
• Human Irrationality
• Cognitive Bias
• Overconfidence
Devops Bad Equilibrium
Good
Opportunities…
- Discontinuity
- Dislocation

47. Breaking Bad Equilibrium

48. • Make work visible
• Manage WIP
• Manage Flow
• Create high trust
• Embrace failure
• Empathy
Devops Advanced
Good Better

49. Really Hard Stuff
Better Excellent
• Psychological Safety
• Blamelessness
• Rethink SLA’s
• Increase Headcount
• Increase Buffers
• Learning Organization

50. You are either building a
learning organization…
or you will be losing to
someone who is…
Andrew Clay Shafer

51. 51
“I wish you way more than luck.”
― David Foster Wallace

52. @normalfaults
We are hiring!
boozallen.com/careers
mehta_nirmal@bah.com
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53. @normalfaults5/2/17 53