DevOps Challenges and Overcoming Blockers

Fear of change and being slow to adopt new technology is the biggest roadblock in my experience. At my organization, we have processes and procedures that have been in place for decades, and engineers/management that have been here almost as long. Change can be hard, especially in an IT environment where emphasis is placed on uptime and reliability... it's only natural to hesitate when "rocking the boat" and changing your entire workflow is brought up.

We've just recently hopped on the Kubernetes train with a few of our web apps, and we just spun up a GitLab instance to house all of our custom code and scripts. We're lagging behind the industry, but we're getting there. DevOps is definitely the future, and it's exciting to be a part of the team that gets to usher in the new age of IT around here. It's taken many engineers and many proofs of concept to convince our leadership that containerization and DevOps practices are "safe" enough to push forward.

The biggest advice I can offer anyone looking to "rock the boat" is simple: do your research, be prepared, and be ready to have those awkward conversations because they WILL happen.

flackovic said:

we have processes and procedures that have been in place for decades,

I think this should say "we have processes, procedures, and people that have been in place for decades."  Or maybe that's just my own interpretation.

As a long-(enough)-in-the-tooth IT guy, I'm totally happy with change when it comes to technology - frequently it's my favorite part of the gig: learning new tech.  But when there's such a paradigm shift (Yes, I also cringe when I use that phrasing) in the way Information Technology operates as a whole, I can be just as much a stick in the mud. If I'm not careful, I'll start to sound like the people I laughed at who got Novell NetWare certified.

I feel like the closest we've come to something of this magnitude in recent memory was the rapid shift from Waterfall to Agile development.  But where the move to Agile was concentrated with the development teams themselves, the move to DevOps encompasses all of IT.

I think you hit the nail on the head for one major thing: do the research and plan everything.  We all have that one team member who  documentation and research projects.  This is an opportunity for them to shine.

flackovic said:

we have processes and procedures that have been in place for decades,

I think this should say "we have processes, procedures, and people that have been in place for decades."  Or maybe that's just my own interpretation.

As a long-(enough)-in-the-tooth IT guy, I'm totally happy with change when it comes to technology - frequently it's my favorite part of the gig: learning new tech.  But when there's such a paradigm shift (Yes, I also cringe when I use that phrasing) in the way Information Technology operates as a whole, I can be just as much a stick in the mud. If I'm not careful, I'll start to sound like the people I laughed at who got Novell NetWare certified.

I feel like the closest we've come to something of this magnitude in recent memory was the rapid shift from Waterfall to Agile development.  But where the move to Agile was concentrated with the development teams themselves, the move to DevOps encompasses all of IT.

I think you hit the nail on the head for one major thing: do the research and plan everything.  We all have that one team member who  documentation and research projects.  This is an opportunity for them to shine.