JAXenter: Who is leading the DevOps show? Develops or operators?
Thorsten: From our experience, we’d say developers have taken the driver’s seat position in Devops. Might be a natural consequence due to the fact the operators often are that busy with keeping things alive, or with firefighting whereas a developer’s mindset might be more open for the new things.
JAXenter: The focus is slowly shifting from “What is DevOps?” Where do we start?”. How do we answer the second question?
Thorsten: First thing to start: Mindset. Changing the mindset and understanding both on the developers and the operators side to make all of them understand the benefits and “what’s in it for me”. Then organization. And in the end maybe tools.
JAXenter: How important is it to incorporate security into DevOps (DevSecOps)? What are the benefits? Should it be a priority or an afterthought?
Thorsten: Devops is nothing without Security and therefore it should be high prio. So Devops should be a synonym for DevSecOps.
Devops is more mindset, organization or processes than tools
JAXenter: How important is automation in a DevOps context and what are the areas where automation is really needed?
Thorsten: Continuously Delivery, high speed of change by high quality and stability is for many of our clients a core motivation for going the devops way. CI/CD as an outcome of devops requires automation.
JAXenter: Should testing become an essential component of the CI/CD pipeline? Are we underestimating its importance?
Thorsten: Speed of change by a high quality of delivery can only be achieved by a CI/CD pipeline where testing is essential à CI/CT/CD pipeline (Contentiously Integration, Continuously Testing, Continuously Delivery). Positively, the community seems to agree, and CT is central for many.
JAXenter: Some companies are still struggling with DevOps metrics. What are the key metrics that matter and how can they enhance DevOps success?
Thorsten: There are several key Devops metrics or KPIs such as availability, response time, error rates, number of succeed deployments, deployment frequency, etc. But most of the typical used KPIs are technical ones. We see our clients asking for more business related Devops metrics such as “Time to Value” where several of the “technical metrics” are aggregated to a business KPI focusing on the value generation.
JAXenter: How important is it to not skip steps in the DevOps transformation cycle? What are the steps that companies and/or teams usually ignore or underestimate?
Thorsten: Not quite sure whether there is a “the Devops transformation cycle”. We meet regularly clients have some kind of or some parts of devops in their organization without knowing it or calling it devops. We meet regularly clients telling us they have devops and the only things they did is placing them in the same office.
JAXenter: Do you think the abundance of DevOps tools has helped or slowed down DevOps adoption?
Thorsten: No. Devops is more mindset, organization or processes than tools.
JAXenter: There’s a huge demand for DevOps professionals. What skills do you need to have in order to tap into the perks that accompany the job description?
Thorsten: We are seeing a rising demand for devops professionals with cloud integration skills. Kubernetes, Docker, Mesos or in generic cloud native technologies are hand in hand with devops.
Thank you very much!
