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What is a devops meme and where did it come from
A devops meme is a joke or humorous picture/video about the term “DevOps” and its common usage. A devops meme can be anything from funny images to videos, written text, or audio recordings. The term “devops” came from being the merger of development and operations teams, but it has since taken on a life of its own with endless variations on what it means (or should mean). I personally chose to define it as an “expansive community collaboration of engineers, analysts, and other professionals from all backgrounds”. The devops meme is both a community joke, as well as a reminder to myself and others that this is the way we want to move forward. DevOps has found itself in a few famous memes, including “The Circle Of Life” (as seen below) and the ever-popular “Whose Job is it Anyway”.
Humor has always been a large part of the software development industry. In order to defuse tense situations, developers have turned to humor for centuries. By sending someone a funny picture or drawing, we are able to say what we really mean without hurting anyone’s feelings. This also helps to break up the monotony of a 9-5 job, which many people find themselves stuck in. Other memes have included “DevOps vs SRE”, “The Leaning Tower of Piza”, and the ever-popular “DevOps Unicorn”.
The history of the devops movement and how it’s evolved over time
In 2011, we [Red Hat] famously coined the term DevOps to describe a holistic approach to the use of automation, development and operations. This was an effort at uniting teams that traditionally worked in silos, while delivering faster time-to-market and better overall outcomes. Today, we take pride in being the industry leader in adopting DevOps principles across a wide range of technology areas within our organization. We continue to use DevOps methods to ensure that our engineers are delivering quality software and systems with the highest possible reliability.
I’d like to take a step back in time and share with you how we arrived at this point…
In the beginning, there was minimal integration between development, quality assurance, and systems operations and no one really knew what their job was or how they were supposed to interact. Agile software development gave rise to the Scrum methodology. This introduced a cross-functional team structure that had developers working side-by-side with QA testers who would be integral champions of product quality. These teams then needed to collaborate closely with operations in order to manage delivery and ongoing service.
The benefits of using devops in your organization
Many companies have made huge strides in reducing cycle time and increasing overall quality by applying DevOps principles. Some of the benefits organizations have seen include: [mention how DevOps has helped your company, for example: faster delivery, higher quality, more resilient systems, etc.]
This is a pretty heavy-handed, sales VP-level article. You’re the CEO of your own company. You’ve been doing this a while; let your guard down subtly at this point, but you still need to be buttoned up enough to show you can walk the walk and talk the talk:
“DevOps has been key…” : “…in helping us achieve our goals.”
A Note on Tone: This is how I would write it. I know that’s not what they’re asking for, but it’s how I would write it and I hope they see it as me being responsive to their needs. It’s not a matter of right or wrong; the whole point is to respond to what the client asks for in a way that makes them feel good about having hired you.
How to get started with devops if you’re not sure where to begin
It is important to note that there are many DevOps resources out there, so you may not be able to mention all of them. Try to pick a few that are readily available in your company.
Some of the first steps to consider are:
-Auditing the current situation with regards to code management, deployment and release, build systems, etc.
-Identifying which areas will benefit from DevOps and how they can be improved through automation.
-Setting in place a number of tools that can help with automated tasks such as monitoring systems and applications.
-Identify who will initiate new changes that need to be made for DevOps (a change leader or coordinator).
There can be many barriers to creating a DevOps team within an organization. These include:
-Hierarchy between developers and technical staff
-Costs involved in implementing new processes
-Lack of infrastructure required to support new (more complex) tools and applications. (More specifically, the costs in terms of network bandwidth, system capacity, storage space and the human resource spent on supporting those systems and tools.)
Examples of successful devops implementations in organizations both large and small
Red Hat has applied DevOps principles in many cases. We have been able to increase our visibility into the systems we build, giving us a better picture of what is going on. We have also seen more robust tests and more time spent on quality and testing, both for the software we create and for other applications where we integrate our products. We have also seen better test coverage, so we can quickly identify errors and fix them. In addition, we’ve been able to work on tools that provide a high degree of visibility into what is going on with the applications in our environments, so we can identify issues earlier and take corrective action accordingly.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a great example of this. When we first started developing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we were able to do some of the work in the open, including posting our plans on a public website. This provided us with additional insight and feedback on our plans and allowed us to get more people interested in what we were doing. It also let us transparently identify and fix issues that needed to be addressed before we released our initial product.
Red Hat has also implemented practices from the Agile Manifesto at this scale, such as continuous integration and a release management process. So we are able to keep our products and services up-to-date and available to users with the least amount of impact on our operations. And in doing so, we are able to empower our customers with a higher level of visibility into the products they use.
