Ready for more DevOpsDays?

DevOpsDays DC will return June 8-9, 2016.

Tricking Non-Tech Management into DevOps

Facilitator: Charles Bushong

Scribe: Jeff Gallimore

• Just do it and then show it to people
• Start moving really fast - people blocking it become really apparent
• Engage the people who care about moving faster - those who want business value
• Don't let a good crisis go to waste - take advantage of the pain and provide a solution
• You may need to go around a blocker - but better to go to blocker first and help advocate for them
• Figure out what the resistance is - have a conversation and use empathy
• Make concerns specific and then provide alternatives to address it
• EMPATHY! Be careful of people hearing, "You're not doing your job, your job is easy, or your job is unimportant."
• Drain the lake until you see rocks and then remove those rocks
• don't drain the whole lake - you'll see A LOT of rocks
• Connect actions to things that could have been avoided
• Lower the perceived risk to the decision-maker
• less risky alternatives
• education
• Connect the action to the business value and cost of not doing it
• Understand where the motivation to change (or not) is coming from
• Non-tech or tech = management who is not convinced
• Sad fact is you sometimes can't convince someone until there's a smoking crater
• Look for the "win" to build momentum - and those are sometimes small, but notable *ex: catching a bug before the customer
• Prioritize stuff that demos well
• Change culture to value work that increases stability (versus new feature functionality)
• Watch out for bad surprises for management...
• Show them better delivery wasn't a fluke - do it again quickly