Realising your #pipedream — #DeveloperCentricity Onboarding Experience for your #DevOps2.0 environment

Images source: https://navsurf.com/web-development-for-beginners/

Many DevOps project has been laser-focused on automating the entire change management and release process. The first thing one will start to do is to:

1. Looking at the as-is process and beginning to look at scripting remove automated process
2. Looking at tools to run those scripts developed automatically
3. Generating enough logs to ensure that the process is tracked correctly and audited
4. Lastly, a workflow engine to stitch the process end to end

The process above seems to oversimplify the entire process, which is true. The setup and the thought process behind it are not supposed to be overly complicated. The complexity risk will cause the whole DevOps process to be defeated once the Program Scales up and Scales out with many applications and users get onboard.

Frequently these are some of the main areas that seem to be overlooked are:

1. How are developers getting access to their tools? They need to go to a website or wiki page to look for the instruction and access them.
2. Developers within an organization tend to move around between projects and products. Developers get rotated for upskilling and promotion where they may need to lead from time to time.
3. Organizations are constantly hiring new members who are not familiar with the tools and platforms used by the teams. We all know that not all groups need or have access to the entire platform.

What do you think is the problem above?

1. The developers cannot be productive, as they struggle to get onboarded and set up right before they can be effective.
2. The search and hunting will frustrate the developers and the project team. As mentioned, the onboarding process will not be a one-time affair. It will be an ongoing activity as groups grow, new members join, existing members leave for other projects within the organization.
3. The team supporting the DevOps tooling and platform will get dragged to support end-user problems instead of innovating. This lack of innovation will drive tools to develop their personalize own practice and process, which eventually cause the rise of shadow IT within the organization.

After understanding all the issues and barriers, what will be the consideration when building a more effective developer experience for their DevOps Environment:

1. Can I provide access to the newly onboarded developers to the tools and platform that the project team is working on?
2. Can I get support and information on the relevant tools through a single point of contact?
3. Can the DevOps team provide the project team with a consistent experience and improve SLA on my response to issues and support tickets?
4. Can I reduce my DevOps onboarding process from days to minutes?
5. Can I leverage templates when starting a new project that complies with the organization’s standards?
6. Do I know the proper access for using the tools and platforms?

Many practitioners may argue that some of the challenges listed above are due to the nature of the organization. They are generally heterogeneous platform’s challenges across the enterprise. Many ongoing projects are happening within the organization. Imagine a developer who has been supporting mainframe and CICS for 30 years from another company that are not familiar with the DevOps concept. A new and hippie developer who has joined from a startup, who has used many different tools and is excited to be effective and contribute right from #Day1.

You may consider the following for your upgrade #DevOps2.0:

1. Create a digital platform for the developer to get access to DevOps tools that will provision the right tools and access based on the team that I am joining
2. Setup a repository that maps to the tools that a project or product needs to have access to
3. Define a RACI role within each system and platform within the environment
4. Mapping a RACI with different functions that exist within other project teams
5. Setup wiki pages and forum pages for users of DevOps to collaborate, share and learn within the community

I like to hear from the practitioners in the community how we can help improve your developer’s experience using the DevOps environment.