Role of Community in Technical SuccessExpanding Knowledge and Building DevOps in Enterprise Organizations

Mandi WallsTechnical Community Manager for EMEAChef Software

Hello

• Mandi Walls• Working at Chef for 5 years in Professional Services and Evangelism• Now Technical Community Manager for EMEA• @lnxchk• mandi@chef.io

Who is Chef?

• Founded in 2008; based in Seattle, Washington, USA• EMEA office here in Moorgate, London• Configuration Management, Continuous Delivery, etc• Facebook, Alaska Airlines, GE, Disney, Standard Bank, Schuberg Philis, …

Technical Products with Cultural Implications

• A lot of “DevOps” transformations• Recognize the challenges of changing culture to succeed with new tools and

methods• New workflows often create controversy, angst, potentially fear among teams

Why We Need Communities

• Learning • Commiserating• Moderate duplication of effort• Networking and support

Culture

• Recognizing the cultural component of IT modernization• Key component of DevOps• Large portion of change efforts• Usually the most difficult part

Power in Shared Experiences

Why Do We Spend Time on Communities?

• Eases the burden on individuals• Broader skills base• More resources

• More projects• More successes

Where Do Communities Come From

• Smaller organizations look to external communities• Around the programming language or platform• Geographic locations• Age of the business – lots of “Startup” communities • By industry

Organizing

• Informal, no “official” membership• Meetups

• Reflect many of the community identifications mentioned previously• “Fintech Storm - Alternative Payments / Disruptive finance”• “London Indie Game Developers”• “Developers & Entrepreneurs”• “London Java Community”

Professional Organizations

• ACM• IEEE• BCS• More formal, implies specific credentials

Why Do People Join External Communities?

• “We do X, is that right?”• “I’m trying to learn to do Y. How are you doing it?”• “Have you heard about Z? What do you think about it?”• Looking for knowledge, new ideas, reassurance

Why Not Apply These Principles Internally?

• Company A has 20,000 developers• Company B has people in 12 different offices• Company C has a mandate to move all applications to a single platform• All of these provide impetus for creating an internal community for sharing

experiences and ideas

Benefits of Internal Communities

• Stop reinventing the wheel• Share good practices and save time with re-learning old lessons

• Create a place for people to communicate• Build a learning environment, be a learning organization

Example Internal Communities

Target – DevOps Dojo

• Huge investment in time and resources• Teams work in the Dojo for 30 days to learn new processes and techniques• Coaches help teams improve their workflow and adapt to new methods• Builds collaboration and sharing• “Target Rebuilds its Engineering Culture, Moves to DevOps”

http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/10/19/target-rebuilds-its-engineering-culture-moves-to-devops/

Cerner

• Have their own internal conference, DevCon• 2500+ attendees, internal and external speakers• http://engineering.cerner.com/

Cerner

Disney

• Internal forums• DevOps Summit• Leadership Summit• Workshops for people from different teams / BUs to work together and learn the

Disney way to do it

Not A Chef Case, but… IBM

• “How Jeff Smith built an Agile culture at IBM”• http://www.cio.com.au/article/602463/how-jeff-smith-built-an-agile-culture-ibm/

Why Do You Want An Internal Community?

• Incentivize people working together for your organization’s goals• Create a voice for shared advocacy of new ideas• Define your collective practices for your tools and processes• Share your institutional knowledge about “How we do it here” mixed with “How

other organizations do it”• Bring practices from the external community in • Create a team that fosters relationships with your vendors

Caution

• Deploying new tools and workflows doesn’t get the whole picture• People will default to what is easier and what is better rewarded

http://thinkfuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/path.jpg

What Can Anyone Do

• Open pathways for communication• Mailing lists• Chat channels• Forums/boards

• Create a venue for sharing• Lunch and Learn• Demo Days• Record talks and post them internally

• Leaders should support information sharing and collaboration (I know, I know)• Meet people and network

More About Chef and Our Customers

• https://www.chef.io/customers/• Learn Chef! https://learn.chef.io/• Join our community! https://chef-community.slack.com/