DevOps Roller Coaster

Rob Cummings – @opsrob

Infrastructure Engineering, Nordstrom

https://flic.kr/p/mnbf5

Agenda

• Why CD/DevOps?

• Enterprise scale

change is hard

• One way Nordstrom

is driving change

• Lessons learned

• Rob Cummings - @opsrob

• Worked for Bose, EMC, Accenture, and

Nordstrom in operations roles over the past

16 years.

• Today – Group Manager, Infrastructure Engineering, Nordstrom

About Me

Why take the roller coaster ride?

DevOps and CD in the enterprise.

Changing an enterprise is hard.

And that is ok, it is supposed to be.

(an exercise in empathy)

Accountable for

repeatable and

predictable

performance

Optimized for

incremental

change

www.flickr.com/photos/26782864@N00/3296379139/

https://flic.kr/p/8P394p

Your org is a

performance

engine.

The performance engine has

likely tried to change.

Probably didn’t work out so well.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/braintoad/2504094983/

1964

http://www.flickr.com/photos/monojussi/7598292754/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55593929@N00/575999466/1968

1974

“Innovation may very well signify the

future, but the performance engine is

the proven foundation, and if it

crumbles, there is no future.”

–pg 13, “The Other Side of Innovation”

So, how do we change?

Science!

Innovators2.5%

Early Adopters13.5%

Early Majority34%

Late Majority34%

Laggards16%

TheChasm

Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle

Innovators2.5%

Early Adopters13.5%

Early Majority34%

Late Majority34%

Laggards16%

TheChasm

Adopters

Time

Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle

…57 years later

http://www.forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2014/03/25/culture-of-courage/

“With the latest Gallup figures categorizing over half of

the workforce as disengaged, and nearly one in five

workers as “actively disengaged,” organizations need

leaders who not only engage employees, but moves

them to think more daringly, to take smarter risks, and to

challenge the very assumptions that may have

underpinned their success to date.” – Forbes, 3/25/2014

Innovators2.5%

Early Adopters13.5%

Early Majority34%

Late Majority34%

Laggards16%

TheChasm

Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve

Disengaged30%

Actively Disengaged

20%

One way Nordstrom is

approaching this

Full stack team of early adopters

Cherry picked a team:

Developers (vocal)

QA Tester (mentoring)

SysAdmin (empowering)

Scrum Master (new)

Product Owner (new)

Focus on minimizing outside dependencies.

Challenge: Empowerment

Goats and Fences

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noii/3093367803/

Goats look for opportunity

Goats wander

Big fence != empowerment

Start small, then grow

Challenge: The Stink

From excited to not.

Excite

me

nt

Time

The Stink

There will be hard times.

Challenge: Bias

Fundamental Attribution Error

People's tendency to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation,

rather than considering external factors.

Especially prevalent in silo’d orgs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

Fundamental Attribution Error

Homework

• Large organizations have been trained to resist large, rapid change.

• Focus on early adopters at the beginning, even if this is not the

highest business value.

• Build full stack teams for rapid change.

• Empowering teams will take significant leadership work.

• There will be rough times in your awesome project, brace for it

ahead of time.

• Watch for bias, especially the Fundamental Attribution Error when

times are rough in silo’d orgs.

Summary

Questions?

@opsrob

robert.cummings@nordstrom.com

Thanks!

@opsrob

robert.cummings@nordstrom.com