I had a thought-provoking article by Rachel Shannon-Solomon forwarded to me. Essentially the article states that while DevOps is great for startups the enterprise isn’t ready for it yet. I’ve read/heard people disagreeing with this but I think the article raises some great points. At DevOpsDays Austin I presented a session on why it isn’t realistic to expect enterprises to become just like startups when adopting DevOps. There’s a lot of technological and cultural complexity present in legacy enterprises that just aren’t an issue in startups. DevOps practitioners from startups don’t seem to have an answer either, quit your job and move to a startup might be a solution for an individual but it certainly doesn’t help with DevOps adoption in the enterprise. Setting aside the cultural difficulties of doing DevOps in the enterprise there’s the not so small issue that a lot of the tools available are suitable for startups but unproven and dare I say often unsuitable for the enterprise. Some vendors have been extremely skilled at attaching themselves to DevOps and trying to morph DevOps into something that helps them sell products. Unfortunately this doesn’t change the fact that software isn’t going to solve your DevOps adoption problem, in fact I would say some of the solutions I have seen presented can make matters worse. I’ve heard multiple times that being a Director of DevOps or a having similar title isn’t ideal because it implies that the person is responsible for the success or failure of DevOps in an organization. I agree with that in any type of organization. The problems DevOps is trying to address span multiple organizational units and it takes much more than one person with a fancy job title and a mandate to “do DevOps” to make changes in the enterprise. Those of us who believe that the DevOps movement can make a difference in the enterprise have a responsibility to recognize challenges faced. Let’s stop pointing out how awesome DevOps works in startups and get together to bring DevOps to the enterprise. Perhaps it is the DevOps movement that isn’t quite ready for the enterprise. The good news is that there are people who passionately believe in helping bring DevOps to the enterprise. I believe their work will help transform the DevOps movement into something more enterprise friendly while still keeping the spirit of DevOps.
