May 9, 2023 โข 27 mins
Join Eveline Oehrlich and Romano Roth, Chief of DevOps, to discuss whether DevOps Dead. Romano shares his experiences with what the Chief of DevOps does, DevOps at scale and addresses the critiques of DevOps.
Roman is a leader, senior ๐๐ผ๐ป๐๐๐น๐๐ฎ๐ป๐, ๐๐ฟ๐ฐ๐ต๐ถ๐๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ ๐ฆ๐ผ๐ณ๐๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ฒ๐๐ฒ๐น๐ผ๐ฝ๐บ๐ฒ๐ป๐ ๐๐ ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ with over 20+ years of professional experience in different domains, including the financial, insurance, cyber security, electricity, medical, and aviation
Enjoy the Humans of DevOps Podcast? Weโre incredibly grateful to be voted one of the Best 25 DevOps Podcasts by Feedspot.
Want access to more DevOps-focused content and learning? When you join SKILup IT Learning you gain the tools, resources and knowledge to help your organization adapt and respond to the challenges of today.
Have questions, feedback or just want to chat about the podcast? Send us an email at podcast@devopsinstitute.com
Roman is a leader, senior ๐๐ผ๐ป๐๐๐น๐๐ฎ๐ป๐, ๐๐ฟ๐ฐ๐ต๐ถ๐๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ ๐ฆ๐ผ๐ณ๐๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ฒ๐๐ฒ๐น๐ผ๐ฝ๐บ๐ฒ๐ป๐ ๐๐ ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ with over 20+ years of professional experience in different domains, including the financial, insurance, cyber security, electricity, medical, and aviation
Enjoy the Humans of DevOps Podcast? Weโre incredibly grateful to be voted one of the Best 25 DevOps Podcasts by Feedspot.
Want access to more DevOps-focused content and learning? When you join SKILup IT Learning you gain the tools, resources and knowledge to help your organization adapt and respond to the challenges of today.
Have questions, feedback or just want to chat about the podcast? Send us an email at podcast@devopsinstitute.com
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Episode Transcript
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Narrator (00:02):
You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing thehumans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning,or the skil framework.
Romano Roth (00:16):
We have not yet progressed really into the
direction of DevOps, but manycompanies are doing is they say
we have that DevOps silointroduced or we have the DevOps
engineer, but that's not reallydoing DevOps.
Eveline Oehrlich (00:33):
Welcome to humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm
Evelyn early Chief ResearchOfficer at DevOps Institute. Our
podcast today titled today is areally, huh, I'm not saying it.
Let's wait. DevOps is dead.Question mark, exclamation mark.
(00:54):
You'll know why when we arefinished. Today, we have with
us, Romano Ross, who is chief ofDevOps at a service provider
software service provider.Hello, Romano. Hi, Evelyn. How
are you doing? I'm very well.All good. All good already to
(01:17):
roll up the sleeves and tell usmore about a variety of things.
But before we go there, I wantto just quickly introduce him
and Romano. If you have anythingto add, please do so. So Romana
is a leader, Senior Consultant,architect and software
development expert. He has over20 years of professional
experience in many differentdomains, including the financial
(01:40):
insurance, cybersecurity,medical aviation. What did I
leave out? Is there anythingelse you want to add or motto?
Romano Roth (01:49):
No, I think that's it more or less. The only thing
I could add is, I'm alsoorganizing the DevOps meetup
Zurich, which is monthly meetupwe're doing it's free to join.
And I'm also the president ofthe DevOps days, Eric, which is
a two day conference, we areorganizing, and there are all
(02:10):
over the place all over theworld in all the big cities.
Therefore, these conferences,
Eveline Oehrlich (02:16):
Excellent, great addition, I actually went
to the tourist one, and, ofcourse, many of the other ones.
So that's great. I did notforget that, that. That was a
great experience. All right.Welcome, again to our podcast
today. So my first question ischief of DevOps. I love that
(02:37):
title. Chief of DevOps isfantastic title tell us what
does the chief of DevOps to?
Romano Roth (02:44):
Yeah, it's an awesome title. So the chief of
DevOps is a thought leader. So,as a thought leader, you are
speaking, you do conference,speaking, you are doing videos
and doing a blog post. But whenit comes to Chief of DevOps in a
(03:04):
company, you are the solidleader about DevOps in that
company, you define thestrategy, and also the offering
that this company has, and whatskills and capabilities are
needed to, to be on the marketand to do all of these
(03:24):
offerings. And of course, youalso define the education
program, and you also educatethe people in terms of DevOps.
But the most important thing,what you need to do is you need
to work in projects. And only byworking the real projects and
making your hands dirty, you canreally be a thought leader and
(03:48):
the chief of DevOps.
Eveline Oehrlich (03:51):
I agree with that. Of course, that's
fantastic. Now I was listeningand watching a video you did,
which really is I'm referring tothat video, in our title of the
podcast, DevOps is dead. And inthat or DevOps is dead, kind of
like a surprise. You talkedabout business, the developers
(04:13):
wall of confusion. And what I amcurious about, of course, you do
your work in dark, but I thinkyou travel, as you said, across
Europe and globally. What I'msorry, what I thought I would
ask you Well, I am going to askyou is have we not been through
this conversation of DevOpsversus developer? You know, Dev
(04:37):
versus ops versus business inthis wall of confusion and we
really progressed yet to amodern way of developing and
delivering custom products tocustomers and service and
clients or are our wish I wasstill asking, what is DevOps?
DevOps is dead. I mean, all ofthat. Give us your perspective
on all of that.
Romano Roth (04:58):
So I would also say, yeah, there are also
people, which is say it,everything about DevOps has
already been set it, everythingis clear, it's everything is
there, you just need to do it.But when I go into companies, I
(05:20):
nowadays still see the samepicture of the business,
together with the customers,they have bright ideas. And
still, they write it down intoWord documents and into into
JIRA tickets, and then they arethrown over the wall of
confusion to the developmentteam. And the development team
then develops these brightideas. And they just do it and
(05:45):
then they throw it over the wallof confusion to a QA team, which
is still there. And then theytest something and then they
throw it over the wall ofconfusion to the operation team.
And still the operation team hasdifficulties to to operate this
software. So these were all ofconfusions, they are still
(06:07):
there. And what we can clearlysee is they are still there,
because we still have siloorganization, many companies
have not yet organizedthemselves across the value
stream. So that they really haveproduct teams, still, the
companies are working inprojects, they still have
(06:27):
project and the project alwayshas a start and it has an end
and has a budget. And it allboils down to yearly budget
goals to KPIs that we that westill have, we have not yet
progressed really into thedirection of DevOps, what many
companies are doing is they say,Yeah, we are doing DevOps, or we
(06:49):
have that DevOps silointroduced, or we have the
DevOps engineer, but that's notreally doing DevOps.
Eveline Oehrlich (06:59):
So really, what I hear you say, is that,
even if we say DevOps, withoutstarting at the higher level, in
the organization, where there isthat common thinking in terms of
product, or as you said, valuestream, it is going to be a
challenge to truly live DevOpsor whatever ops, whatever dev x
(07:24):
Ops is, right? We'll get tothat. Without having that
perspective. Is that what you'resaying?
Romano Roth (07:31):
Yes, absolutely. Because also, when you look at
DevOps at the definition ofDevOps, and of course, there are
1000s of definition. But as Ialways say, DevOps is a mindset
and the culture and the set oftechnical practices. I think,
when it comes to technicalpractices, we are more or less
(07:52):
okay with with that you knowthem, but then changing the
culture or the mindset is adifficult thing. And it can
always only come from the topmanagement. And this is
something that all of thecompanies nowadays are lacking
that cultural change, and thatmindset change, which my opinion
(08:15):
needs to come from top down.
Eveline Oehrlich (08:18):
Yeah, so from a pessimistic perspective, which
I usually don't take, but Iwanted to just point it out.
Some of those DevOps teams arefighting against windmills,
because if there is not the topdown support on changing the
culture, and as a product team,it makes it a challenge.
However, we know that they are,as you said, on the technology
(08:38):
side on the processes within theDevOps that have been ordered
within DevOps to have been a lotof advancements. And those
organizations are bubbling upthe outcomes and the results of
their great work. And hopefully,more and more of that will go up
to those executive leaders tosee that it's an overall
(08:59):
cultural change. Now, I want tostay on that theme, quickly
relative to one DevOps versusmultiple DevOps, right? Kind of,
so if I have multiple, if I haveone DevOps team, small company,
blah, blah, blah, might pass bepossible, but most of our
listeners, excuse me, are inenterprise organizations. So
what is a model going forward?Well, what's the model when
(09:23):
there are multiple DevOps teamsin an organization?
Romano Roth (09:28):
So this is exactly one of the topics I'm talking
quite a lot nowadays. And as youpointed out, when you are a
small company, or just buildingone product, then it's quite
easy to do DevOps more or less,but scaling that up is is
difficult. And when we look atthat, then what usually happens
(09:50):
is that companies tend to do alittle bit of DevOps. They build
the DevOps silo between Dev andOps, which is just again a silo
until you don't really get theefficiency that you wanted to
see, then when you look at howDevOps really should be is that
Dev and Ops are moving together,all of the people are coming
(10:13):
together across the valuestream, and they are building a
cross functional team, then youreally are doing DevOps. And now
when you think about that, andyou have multiple of these value
streams, or product teams, thenyou can clearly see that, out of
that, you will have a lot ofinefficiencies, because many of
(10:34):
these teams are reinventing thewheel, they are doing their own
stuff, which is of course good,but they are not really reusing
things. So the this this aspectis, is quite critical. Because
it you also have a quite a lotof cognitive load in these
(10:57):
teams, they need to really careabout building the product,
operating the product andmaintaining the product. This
also means that they need toknow quite a lot of tools. And
this is difficult. And the newkid around the corner, or the
new kid in the block is thisplatform engineering that that
(11:20):
we are seeing coming up, whereyou have a platform team, which
builds the platform, and alsothe API's and everything so that
the product teams can build,maintain and operate the product
and do DevOps.
Eveline Oehrlich (11:37):
So we have seen that platform engineering
team, what is a skill I need, ifI want to become a platform
engineer? What would you say?
Romano Roth (11:55):
You need to be a software engineer. A platform is
nothing else than also aproduct. So when it comes to
skills, in my opinion, it'sreally that software engineering
skill, because also buildingthat platform requires you to to
build a product, the platform,which has a user interface, a
(12:20):
self service portal, amarketplace so that you can
enable the other teams. So youneed to know how to program a
user interface, you need to knowhow to program API's, you need
to know how to programdatabases. And but you also need
(12:41):
to have is the, of course DevOpsmindset, DevOps skills. And you
need to know a lot about howsoftware is built. So what kind
of tools are good to use, sothat you can build up this
platform so that the teams canmost efficient work with these
(13:03):
technologies, which meansnowadays, you need to know a lot
about the cloud technologies,cloud native technologies.
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Eveline Oehrlich (13:49):
Okay, great. I would certainly not qualify for
a DevOps engineer, as a platformengineer, but I probably would
be going down the SRE path SiteReliability Engineering, because
I have an infrastructure andoperations background. But I
have another question. There wasalways this, you know, when we
(14:10):
do research on DevOps and readin whatever magazines or
whatever events we go to thereis or whatever vendor I talk to,
because I do speak to quite afew vendors, as I'm also having
an industry analyst position.There are these different terms
def sec, ops, Biz Ops, dev x opsDevOps, there's more and more
(14:32):
coming out of the closet. So I,and then of course, there's
value stream management, right?VSM. And all of them are related
SRE and keep going, all of themare related, but it seems to me
and I know you you had thisargument with yourself as well.
I was listening to your video,it seems to me when we sometimes
(14:53):
when we use the word DevOpspeople or individuals or whoever
thinks that this is just asmovement lol level somewhere in
the development and operationsteam, but it is bigger. So is
DevOps, the term itself notreally serving our purpose?
Should we call it DevOps? OrShould this be called something
(15:13):
else? What's your thought onthat?
Romano Roth (15:15):
Yeah. So let's, let's be, quite frankly, when we
look at the term DevOps, thenthis term, DevOps is not very
good. The term DevOps saysdevelopment and operation. And
back in that time, it was okayish. I think it was around 2008.
(15:37):
When this term came up, it wasoccasioned as he pointed out,
more and more of these terms arecoming up like dev SEC ops,
which is development, securityand operation or biz dev ops,
business, development andoperation. And but as I pointed
out, DevOps is about bringingall the people together, where
(15:58):
you would need sort of a termlike def beats our QA, ops, and
I'm pretty sure I have forgottensomeone. You can also call it
ethics ops, or Deathstar ops.For me, DevOps is really about
bringing all the people all thetechnology and all the process
(16:19):
together to continuously delivervalue. It's really about how we
can continuously deliver aproduct or service to our
customers. That's the importantthing. Now, of course, we can
now argue what could be a betterterm. In my opinion, this is
(16:40):
secondary. As long as we have agood understanding of what
DevOps is, and what what it whatit is all about, then this term
is okay. I also don't believebelief that we really can find a
very good term to describe that.
Eveline Oehrlich (17:00):
So what you're saying is stop talking about
what it is just go on, do followthe paths, try to adopt the
practices and change the cultureon the way, expanding it from a
pilot, expanding it intosomething more good executive
(17:22):
buy in, and so on. And so, as wehave different maturity levels,
I don't know if that is even theright term, I'm questioning
myself when I say maturity,because as we know, we're never
done with it, right? We, we moveinto the next technology, we are
adopting whatever Mehta or AR VRrpa, different server lists,
(17:46):
blah, blah, blah, all of thatwonderful stuff, wonderful
stuff, our environment keepsgetting more complex, our
demands for services andproducts are tied to customer
experience, etc, etc. So we willnever be done. But it's it's a
two part question. The first oneis, when I am somewhere in a
(18:09):
kind of good DevOps, journey,high performing, and I am
somewhere a DevOps Chief Chiefof DevOps. What can I in this
case, you know, you are thechief of DevOps, what would you
recommend to those folks toactually scale it further among
(18:31):
that maybe high performing team?What are some of the things they
should be doing to expand theirtheir journey in their culture
in towards the bigger foot printof DevOps? And I don't mean it
from a sorry to clarify, I don'tmean it from a technology
perspective, I mean, or frommaybe not a process perspective,
(18:52):
but really from a people from aculture perspective.
Romano Roth (18:57):
So, what, what do you need to do is you need to
organize across the valuestream, I think this is really
the magic you need to do youneed to identify the value
streams in your in your company,how you generate value, what
kind of steps are needed andwhat people are in there, and
(19:21):
then organize these people inthese value streams. You can
also call it product teams. Ofcourse, a value stream can also
have multiple products, but itis very important to organize
around that value stream. Andsecondly, what is also important
important is to empower thepeople and so empower this value
(19:46):
stream give this value streambudget. So that's the value
stream itself can decide what isnecessary to do to make a great
product or multiple greatproducts for For the customers,
and now you can also see we areshifting away from from projects
(20:06):
from, we need to have these 10features to a point where the
customer is in the center, andwe want to have happy customers,
but also of course happyemployees. So that we really are
focusing on the on the customerand building absolutely great
(20:26):
products with building andquality. So that will be my
recommendation to organizeacross the value stream, bring
the customer into the centerhalf KPIs, according to to the
customer. And also employees assatisfaction and giving really
(20:47):
empower the people in this valuestream give it giving them the
budget and the power to decide.
Eveline Oehrlich (20:54):
Excellent. I wanted to do a quick shout out
to a project I'm involved inwith Helen Beal I believe, you
know, Helen, right? Maybe youdon't know you don't you have to
meet her. She is basicallybesides her being a colleague of
mine at the DevOps Institute.She's also the chair of the
value stream Consortium, whichis a, I think the first time
(21:18):
ever since I've been in thisspace, a variety of vendors are
getting together, and areresearching and are applying
common thinking and thoughtleadership together on value
stream management, and one ofthe projects we're doing is the
second notice the third yearwe're doing research in the
state of value streammanagement. And just recently,
(21:39):
Helen did a fantastic it'scalled a pier scape with IDC.
And if you just type in anybodylistening, if you type in pure
scape, IDC value streammanagement, you should be able
to see the video and theconversation around a value
stream management a fantasticability to learn how to start
(22:01):
that journey. And one of thecustomers there actually was
Netflix, a product manager ofNetflix, who has talked about
how they are doing value streammanagement in their company.
Excellent. All right, looking atthe clock, why do fun
conversations always go by sofast? So pull out your crystal
(22:23):
ball. Besides the conversationon value stream management,
let's hope there is more andmore interest and adoption of
that product thinking in thevalue stream management
thinking. But if we, if we godown the road, if we even can,
right? If we look maybe twoyears from now, what do you
think? What is the future ofDevOps, then? Two years? What is
(22:45):
that that is 2025? When you andI will be sitting somewhere in
soulish to have a cup of coffeeor cappuccino or an adult
beverage doesn't matter? Whatwould we then see in DevOps.
Romano Roth (23:00):
But we can clearly see at the moment is Alta Vista
was platform engineering, andthey were all of the toolings
there is a lot ofstandardization coming in, you
can not clearly see that it'smore under the hood. But we are
going to into an area wheresoftware development gets
standardized. And in my opinion,it gets industrialized, we are
(23:25):
going away, let's say from justalways reinventing the wheel it
into a direction of where youare using different things
together. And they fit togetherbecause they are standardized.
In my opinion, what we will seeis the build up of digital
(23:46):
factories, you can already seethat together with the platform
engineering companies arebuilding their own digital
factories, where in this digitalfactory, the teams are organized
across the value stream wherethey are producing digital
products or cyber physicalproducts. And the platform
(24:09):
engineering team provides theconvenient belt for these
digital factories in thecompanies. So my prediction is
we will see a lot of digitalfactories coming up.
Eveline Oehrlich (24:23):
I would I would bet you but I am agreeing
with you. So I will buy thedrink because I ordered a coffee
or a cup of tea. No, I agreewith you. This is a great, great
conversation digital factories.That's something I'd love to
explore further. But not today.But really, really great
insight. I love that crystalball vision you have there in
(24:46):
the future. For my No this wasgreat. Now I have one more
question. It's a closingquestion. It has nothing to do
with digital factories, DevOps,or any of those terms. What do
you do for fun?
Romano Roth (24:57):
Oh, I love to travel around the world. I love
to see new countries and inthese countries, I do a lot of
photography. I also have myInstagram channel and I have a
second YouTube channel where Ipost also some videos at the
moment. I do a lot of 360 degreevideos, which I love. And of
(25:22):
course, I love playing computergames and I also read a lot.
Eveline Oehrlich (25:27):
Fantastic. Well, if you ever make it to my
region of as I'm only really anhour and a half north of you,
stop by give me a buzz. We'll goand travel my hometown together,
you can take 360 degree videos,I will check out the videos you
have done. Thank you so much. Wehave been talking to Romana
(25:47):
Ross, Chief of DevOps atSilkAir, which is a service
provider software consultingorganization. He does a lot of
work and talk leading so checkhim out. Again, Amanda, thank
you so much for joining me todayon humans of DevOps podcast.
Thank you for having me. Humansof DevOps podcast is produced by
(26:11):
DevOps Institute. Our audioproduction team includes Julia
pape, Daniel Newman, Schultz andBrendan Leigh. Shout out to my
wonderful colleagues. I'm humansof DevOps podcast, Executive
Producer, Evelyn early. If youwould like to join us on a
podcast, please contact us atthis very long email humans of
(26:33):
DevOps podcast at DevOpsinstitute.com. I'm Evelyn early.
I'll talk to you soon.
Narrator (26:42):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps podcast. Don't forget tojoin our global community to get
access to even more greatresources like this. Until next
time, remember, you are part ofsomething bigger than yourself.
You belong
You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing thehumans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning,or the skil framework.
Romano Roth (00:16):
We have not yet progressed really into the
direction of DevOps, but manycompanies are doing is they say
we have that DevOps silointroduced or we have the DevOps
engineer, but that's not reallydoing DevOps.
Eveline Oehrlich (00:33):
Welcome to humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm
Evelyn early Chief ResearchOfficer at DevOps Institute. Our
podcast today titled today is areally, huh, I'm not saying it.
Let's wait. DevOps is dead.Question mark, exclamation mark.
(00:54):
You'll know why when we arefinished. Today, we have with
us, Romano Ross, who is chief ofDevOps at a service provider
software service provider.Hello, Romano. Hi, Evelyn. How
are you doing? I'm very well.All good. All good already to
(01:17):
roll up the sleeves and tell usmore about a variety of things.
But before we go there, I wantto just quickly introduce him
and Romano. If you have anythingto add, please do so. So Romana
is a leader, Senior Consultant,architect and software
development expert. He has over20 years of professional
experience in many differentdomains, including the financial
(01:40):
insurance, cybersecurity,medical aviation. What did I
leave out? Is there anythingelse you want to add or motto?
Romano Roth (01:49):
No, I think that's it more or less. The only thing
I could add is, I'm alsoorganizing the DevOps meetup
Zurich, which is monthly meetupwe're doing it's free to join.
And I'm also the president ofthe DevOps days, Eric, which is
a two day conference, we areorganizing, and there are all
(02:10):
over the place all over theworld in all the big cities.
Therefore, these conferences,
Eveline Oehrlich (02:16):
Excellent, great addition, I actually went
to the tourist one, and, ofcourse, many of the other ones.
So that's great. I did notforget that, that. That was a
great experience. All right.Welcome, again to our podcast
today. So my first question ischief of DevOps. I love that
(02:37):
title. Chief of DevOps isfantastic title tell us what
does the chief of DevOps to?
Romano Roth (02:44):
Yeah, it's an awesome title. So the chief of
DevOps is a thought leader. So,as a thought leader, you are
speaking, you do conference,speaking, you are doing videos
and doing a blog post. But whenit comes to Chief of DevOps in a
(03:04):
company, you are the solidleader about DevOps in that
company, you define thestrategy, and also the offering
that this company has, and whatskills and capabilities are
needed to, to be on the marketand to do all of these
(03:24):
offerings. And of course, youalso define the education
program, and you also educatethe people in terms of DevOps.
But the most important thing,what you need to do is you need
to work in projects. And only byworking the real projects and
making your hands dirty, you canreally be a thought leader and
(03:48):
the chief of DevOps.
Eveline Oehrlich (03:51):
I agree with that. Of course, that's
fantastic. Now I was listeningand watching a video you did,
which really is I'm referring tothat video, in our title of the
podcast, DevOps is dead. And inthat or DevOps is dead, kind of
like a surprise. You talkedabout business, the developers
(04:13):
wall of confusion. And what I amcurious about, of course, you do
your work in dark, but I thinkyou travel, as you said, across
Europe and globally. What I'msorry, what I thought I would
ask you Well, I am going to askyou is have we not been through
this conversation of DevOpsversus developer? You know, Dev
(04:37):
versus ops versus business inthis wall of confusion and we
really progressed yet to amodern way of developing and
delivering custom products tocustomers and service and
clients or are our wish I wasstill asking, what is DevOps?
DevOps is dead. I mean, all ofthat. Give us your perspective
on all of that.
Romano Roth (04:58):
So I would also say, yeah, there are also
people, which is say it,everything about DevOps has
already been set it, everythingis clear, it's everything is
there, you just need to do it.But when I go into companies, I
(05:20):
nowadays still see the samepicture of the business,
together with the customers,they have bright ideas. And
still, they write it down intoWord documents and into into
JIRA tickets, and then they arethrown over the wall of
confusion to the developmentteam. And the development team
then develops these brightideas. And they just do it and
(05:45):
then they throw it over the wallof confusion to a QA team, which
is still there. And then theytest something and then they
throw it over the wall ofconfusion to the operation team.
And still the operation team hasdifficulties to to operate this
software. So these were all ofconfusions, they are still
(06:07):
there. And what we can clearlysee is they are still there,
because we still have siloorganization, many companies
have not yet organizedthemselves across the value
stream. So that they really haveproduct teams, still, the
companies are working inprojects, they still have
(06:27):
project and the project alwayshas a start and it has an end
and has a budget. And it allboils down to yearly budget
goals to KPIs that we that westill have, we have not yet
progressed really into thedirection of DevOps, what many
companies are doing is they say,Yeah, we are doing DevOps, or we
(06:49):
have that DevOps silointroduced, or we have the
DevOps engineer, but that's notreally doing DevOps.
Eveline Oehrlich (06:59):
So really, what I hear you say, is that,
even if we say DevOps, withoutstarting at the higher level, in
the organization, where there isthat common thinking in terms of
product, or as you said, valuestream, it is going to be a
challenge to truly live DevOpsor whatever ops, whatever dev x
(07:24):
Ops is, right? We'll get tothat. Without having that
perspective. Is that what you'resaying?
Romano Roth (07:31):
Yes, absolutely. Because also, when you look at
DevOps at the definition ofDevOps, and of course, there are
1000s of definition. But as Ialways say, DevOps is a mindset
and the culture and the set oftechnical practices. I think,
when it comes to technicalpractices, we are more or less
(07:52):
okay with with that you knowthem, but then changing the
culture or the mindset is adifficult thing. And it can
always only come from the topmanagement. And this is
something that all of thecompanies nowadays are lacking
that cultural change, and thatmindset change, which my opinion
(08:15):
needs to come from top down.
Eveline Oehrlich (08:18):
Yeah, so from a pessimistic perspective, which
I usually don't take, but Iwanted to just point it out.
Some of those DevOps teams arefighting against windmills,
because if there is not the topdown support on changing the
culture, and as a product team,it makes it a challenge.
However, we know that they are,as you said, on the technology
(08:38):
side on the processes within theDevOps that have been ordered
within DevOps to have been a lotof advancements. And those
organizations are bubbling upthe outcomes and the results of
their great work. And hopefully,more and more of that will go up
to those executive leaders tosee that it's an overall
(08:59):
cultural change. Now, I want tostay on that theme, quickly
relative to one DevOps versusmultiple DevOps, right? Kind of,
so if I have multiple, if I haveone DevOps team, small company,
blah, blah, blah, might pass bepossible, but most of our
listeners, excuse me, are inenterprise organizations. So
what is a model going forward?Well, what's the model when
(09:23):
there are multiple DevOps teamsin an organization?
Romano Roth (09:28):
So this is exactly one of the topics I'm talking
quite a lot nowadays. And as youpointed out, when you are a
small company, or just buildingone product, then it's quite
easy to do DevOps more or less,but scaling that up is is
difficult. And when we look atthat, then what usually happens
(09:50):
is that companies tend to do alittle bit of DevOps. They build
the DevOps silo between Dev andOps, which is just again a silo
until you don't really get theefficiency that you wanted to
see, then when you look at howDevOps really should be is that
Dev and Ops are moving together,all of the people are coming
(10:13):
together across the valuestream, and they are building a
cross functional team, then youreally are doing DevOps. And now
when you think about that, andyou have multiple of these value
streams, or product teams, thenyou can clearly see that, out of
that, you will have a lot ofinefficiencies, because many of
(10:34):
these teams are reinventing thewheel, they are doing their own
stuff, which is of course good,but they are not really reusing
things. So the this this aspectis, is quite critical. Because
it you also have a quite a lotof cognitive load in these
(10:57):
teams, they need to really careabout building the product,
operating the product andmaintaining the product. This
also means that they need toknow quite a lot of tools. And
this is difficult. And the newkid around the corner, or the
new kid in the block is thisplatform engineering that that
(11:20):
we are seeing coming up, whereyou have a platform team, which
builds the platform, and alsothe API's and everything so that
the product teams can build,maintain and operate the product
and do DevOps.
Eveline Oehrlich (11:37):
So we have seen that platform engineering
team, what is a skill I need, ifI want to become a platform
engineer? What would you say?
Romano Roth (11:55):
You need to be a software engineer. A platform is
nothing else than also aproduct. So when it comes to
skills, in my opinion, it'sreally that software engineering
skill, because also buildingthat platform requires you to to
build a product, the platform,which has a user interface, a
(12:20):
self service portal, amarketplace so that you can
enable the other teams. So youneed to know how to program a
user interface, you need to knowhow to program API's, you need
to know how to programdatabases. And but you also need
(12:41):
to have is the, of course DevOpsmindset, DevOps skills. And you
need to know a lot about howsoftware is built. So what kind
of tools are good to use, sothat you can build up this
platform so that the teams canmost efficient work with these
(13:03):
technologies, which meansnowadays, you need to know a lot
about the cloud technologies,cloud native technologies.
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Eveline Oehrlich (13:49):
Okay, great. I would certainly not qualify for
a DevOps engineer, as a platformengineer, but I probably would
be going down the SRE path SiteReliability Engineering, because
I have an infrastructure andoperations background. But I
have another question. There wasalways this, you know, when we
(14:10):
do research on DevOps and readin whatever magazines or
whatever events we go to thereis or whatever vendor I talk to,
because I do speak to quite afew vendors, as I'm also having
an industry analyst position.There are these different terms
def sec, ops, Biz Ops, dev x opsDevOps, there's more and more
(14:32):
coming out of the closet. So I,and then of course, there's
value stream management, right?VSM. And all of them are related
SRE and keep going, all of themare related, but it seems to me
and I know you you had thisargument with yourself as well.
I was listening to your video,it seems to me when we sometimes
(14:53):
when we use the word DevOpspeople or individuals or whoever
thinks that this is just asmovement lol level somewhere in
the development and operationsteam, but it is bigger. So is
DevOps, the term itself notreally serving our purpose?
Should we call it DevOps? OrShould this be called something
(15:13):
else? What's your thought onthat?
Romano Roth (15:15):
Yeah. So let's, let's be, quite frankly, when we
look at the term DevOps, thenthis term, DevOps is not very
good. The term DevOps saysdevelopment and operation. And
back in that time, it was okayish. I think it was around 2008.
(15:37):
When this term came up, it wasoccasioned as he pointed out,
more and more of these terms arecoming up like dev SEC ops,
which is development, securityand operation or biz dev ops,
business, development andoperation. And but as I pointed
out, DevOps is about bringingall the people together, where
(15:58):
you would need sort of a termlike def beats our QA, ops, and
I'm pretty sure I have forgottensomeone. You can also call it
ethics ops, or Deathstar ops.For me, DevOps is really about
bringing all the people all thetechnology and all the process
(16:19):
together to continuously delivervalue. It's really about how we
can continuously deliver aproduct or service to our
customers. That's the importantthing. Now, of course, we can
now argue what could be a betterterm. In my opinion, this is
(16:40):
secondary. As long as we have agood understanding of what
DevOps is, and what what it whatit is all about, then this term
is okay. I also don't believebelief that we really can find a
very good term to describe that.
Eveline Oehrlich (17:00):
So what you're saying is stop talking about
what it is just go on, do followthe paths, try to adopt the
practices and change the cultureon the way, expanding it from a
pilot, expanding it intosomething more good executive
(17:22):
buy in, and so on. And so, as wehave different maturity levels,
I don't know if that is even theright term, I'm questioning
myself when I say maturity,because as we know, we're never
done with it, right? We, we moveinto the next technology, we are
adopting whatever Mehta or AR VRrpa, different server lists,
(17:46):
blah, blah, blah, all of thatwonderful stuff, wonderful
stuff, our environment keepsgetting more complex, our
demands for services andproducts are tied to customer
experience, etc, etc. So we willnever be done. But it's it's a
two part question. The first oneis, when I am somewhere in a
(18:09):
kind of good DevOps, journey,high performing, and I am
somewhere a DevOps Chief Chiefof DevOps. What can I in this
case, you know, you are thechief of DevOps, what would you
recommend to those folks toactually scale it further among
(18:31):
that maybe high performing team?What are some of the things they
should be doing to expand theirtheir journey in their culture
in towards the bigger foot printof DevOps? And I don't mean it
from a sorry to clarify, I don'tmean it from a technology
perspective, I mean, or frommaybe not a process perspective,
(18:52):
but really from a people from aculture perspective.
Romano Roth (18:57):
So, what, what do you need to do is you need to
organize across the valuestream, I think this is really
the magic you need to do youneed to identify the value
streams in your in your company,how you generate value, what
kind of steps are needed andwhat people are in there, and
(19:21):
then organize these people inthese value streams. You can
also call it product teams. Ofcourse, a value stream can also
have multiple products, but itis very important to organize
around that value stream. Andsecondly, what is also important
important is to empower thepeople and so empower this value
(19:46):
stream give this value streambudget. So that's the value
stream itself can decide what isnecessary to do to make a great
product or multiple greatproducts for For the customers,
and now you can also see we areshifting away from from projects
(20:06):
from, we need to have these 10features to a point where the
customer is in the center, andwe want to have happy customers,
but also of course happyemployees. So that we really are
focusing on the on the customerand building absolutely great
(20:26):
products with building andquality. So that will be my
recommendation to organizeacross the value stream, bring
the customer into the centerhalf KPIs, according to to the
customer. And also employees assatisfaction and giving really
(20:47):
empower the people in this valuestream give it giving them the
budget and the power to decide.
Eveline Oehrlich (20:54):
Excellent. I wanted to do a quick shout out
to a project I'm involved inwith Helen Beal I believe, you
know, Helen, right? Maybe youdon't know you don't you have to
meet her. She is basicallybesides her being a colleague of
mine at the DevOps Institute.She's also the chair of the
value stream Consortium, whichis a, I think the first time
(21:18):
ever since I've been in thisspace, a variety of vendors are
getting together, and areresearching and are applying
common thinking and thoughtleadership together on value
stream management, and one ofthe projects we're doing is the
second notice the third yearwe're doing research in the
state of value streammanagement. And just recently,
(21:39):
Helen did a fantastic it'scalled a pier scape with IDC.
And if you just type in anybodylistening, if you type in pure
scape, IDC value streammanagement, you should be able
to see the video and theconversation around a value
stream management a fantasticability to learn how to start
(22:01):
that journey. And one of thecustomers there actually was
Netflix, a product manager ofNetflix, who has talked about
how they are doing value streammanagement in their company.
Excellent. All right, looking atthe clock, why do fun
conversations always go by sofast? So pull out your crystal
(22:23):
ball. Besides the conversationon value stream management,
let's hope there is more andmore interest and adoption of
that product thinking in thevalue stream management
thinking. But if we, if we godown the road, if we even can,
right? If we look maybe twoyears from now, what do you
think? What is the future ofDevOps, then? Two years? What is
(22:45):
that that is 2025? When you andI will be sitting somewhere in
soulish to have a cup of coffeeor cappuccino or an adult
beverage doesn't matter? Whatwould we then see in DevOps.
Romano Roth (23:00):
But we can clearly see at the moment is Alta Vista
was platform engineering, andthey were all of the toolings
there is a lot ofstandardization coming in, you
can not clearly see that it'smore under the hood. But we are
going to into an area wheresoftware development gets
standardized. And in my opinion,it gets industrialized, we are
(23:25):
going away, let's say from justalways reinventing the wheel it
into a direction of where youare using different things
together. And they fit togetherbecause they are standardized.
In my opinion, what we will seeis the build up of digital
(23:46):
factories, you can already seethat together with the platform
engineering companies arebuilding their own digital
factories, where in this digitalfactory, the teams are organized
across the value stream wherethey are producing digital
products or cyber physicalproducts. And the platform
(24:09):
engineering team provides theconvenient belt for these
digital factories in thecompanies. So my prediction is
we will see a lot of digitalfactories coming up.
Eveline Oehrlich (24:23):
I would I would bet you but I am agreeing
with you. So I will buy thedrink because I ordered a coffee
or a cup of tea. No, I agreewith you. This is a great, great
conversation digital factories.That's something I'd love to
explore further. But not today.But really, really great
insight. I love that crystalball vision you have there in
(24:46):
the future. For my No this wasgreat. Now I have one more
question. It's a closingquestion. It has nothing to do
with digital factories, DevOps,or any of those terms. What do
you do for fun?
Romano Roth (24:57):
Oh, I love to travel around the world. I love
to see new countries and inthese countries, I do a lot of
photography. I also have myInstagram channel and I have a
second YouTube channel where Ipost also some videos at the
moment. I do a lot of 360 degreevideos, which I love. And of
(25:22):
course, I love playing computergames and I also read a lot.
Eveline Oehrlich (25:27):
Fantastic. Well, if you ever make it to my
region of as I'm only really anhour and a half north of you,
stop by give me a buzz. We'll goand travel my hometown together,
you can take 360 degree videos,I will check out the videos you
have done. Thank you so much. Wehave been talking to Romana
(25:47):
Ross, Chief of DevOps atSilkAir, which is a service
provider software consultingorganization. He does a lot of
work and talk leading so checkhim out. Again, Amanda, thank
you so much for joining me todayon humans of DevOps podcast.
Thank you for having me. Humansof DevOps podcast is produced by
(26:11):
DevOps Institute. Our audioproduction team includes Julia
pape, Daniel Newman, Schultz andBrendan Leigh. Shout out to my
wonderful colleagues. I'm humansof DevOps podcast, Executive
Producer, Evelyn early. If youwould like to join us on a
podcast, please contact us atthis very long email humans of
(26:33):
DevOps podcast at DevOpsinstitute.com. I'm Evelyn early.
I'll talk to you soon.
Narrator (26:42):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps podcast. Don't forget tojoin our global community to get
access to even more greatresources like this. Until next
time, remember, you are part ofsomething bigger than yourself.
You belong
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