The DevOps Agile Skills Association (DASA) was a sponsor of the โExecutive Connectionsโ sessions held for leaders at itSMF USA – Fusion 18 Conference in St Louis.
![](https://www.devopsagileskills.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/fusion18-team.jpg)
One of the program activities was a chance to explore DevOps challenges and recommendations with Gene Kim, keynote speaker and author of the Phoenix Project book.
These are some of my takeaways from the session with Gene, biased towards people, culture and leadership aspects. Why am I focusing on these areas?
In the executive connections workshop on the first day of the conference, we made an inventory of the delegateโs pain points. โPeople and cultureโ was a top scoring issue, primarily around buy-in to new ways of working, end-to-end working, integrating different ways of working, ownership and linking activities back to business strategy and goals. It was interesting, yet worrying, to see that two highly recognized โundesirable behaviorsโ discussed during the exercise, related to the two top-scoring ABC cards (Attitude, Behavior, Culture) cards below. These were top cards for the last 15 years chosen in global workshops!
![](https://www.devopsagileskills.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ABC-cards.jpg)
On the second day of the Executive Connections, itSMF leaders got a chance to chat with Gene about DevOps and ITSM.
One observation from Gene, to help put the itSMF delegates mindsets at rest, was the explicit recognition of the value of ITILยฎ principles, adding that knowledge gained from ITIL practices generates important feedback into the DevOps ways of working.
However, ITIL needs to shift from a perception of it being a โbureaucratic, control focused cultureโ to one of โan enablement culture,โ as well as embracing a broader view of ITSM. However Gene added, it isnโt just ITIL and Ops needing to change, both Ops and Dev must shift their attitudes from technology to โwhat technology can do for the businessโ โ which relates to the top scoring ABC card โToo little understanding of business impact and priority.โ Looking at the inventory of pain points, Gene also stressed the importance of culture and behavior for making the adoption of DevOps a success, referring back to the State of DevOps report. (Here is a DASA blog summarizing both the State of DevOps findings as well as feedback from more than 400 teams have participated in the Phoenix Project simulation).
Leadership โ the Make or Break Capability
Gene recognized that adopting the DevOps philosophy, mindset, and way of working can be met with skepticism, not just from technology staff, but equally from business and IT leaders as well, yet we all know that a transformation of ways of working is necessary โ driven by the need for Digital Transformation. But, Gene added, if you are looking around waiting for someone to take the lead, and nobody does, then you should say โit might as well be meโ โ this takes courage and a sense of ownership. A specific mindset and behavior that imperative throughout the organization. To quote Mike Orzen, โImproving daily work is more important than doing daily work,โ which is everybodyโs responsibility.
When it comes to improving, however, Gene suggested that Blameless Post-mortems are crucial to unlocking open sharing of valuable lessons across the organization. Once again in my mind, leaders must foster this โblamelessโ culture if they want to create a culture of โexperimentation,โ and โcontinual learning and improvement.โ (Here is a blog showing the importance of โCourageโ, โgaining Leadership buy-inโ, and behaviors leaders said they needed to adopt to make DevOps successful and foster the right culture).
End-to-end and Top-to-bottom Mindset Shift
But it wasnโt just Dev and Ops mindset change. Security mindsets must shift from security controls to control โobjectives,โ Product owners must shift from a focus on โfeaturesโ to โoutcomes,โ business and IT leaders must focus on โValue,โ and recognize that it is not just a matter of the benefits and features. There must also be a focus on risks and technical debt when prioritizing work and allocating resources โ This relates to the second top-scoring ABC card โEverything (features) has the highest priority according to the business.โ As Gene explained in his opening keynote โTechnical debt is like Financial debt. Without countermeasures, it just gets worseโ.
Strategic Initiatives โ Tied to Business Value
In the inventory exercise on day 1, the number 2 top-scoring item and discussion topic was โStrategic fitโ and โIT having a seat at the table.โ In our global workshop around โBusiness & IT Alignment,โ we find that the majority of IT organizations are still struggling to make the shift from โService Providerโ to โStrategic partnerโ โ This requires โTrustโ and โCredibility.โ Gene stressed in the discussion โwe also need to start marketing our value to the business.โ However, this means improving our understanding of the business outcomes expected. Mark Smalleyโs presentation and whitepaper โbusiness value from DevOpsโ stressed the need to start communicating in business terms.
It was also one of the top takeaways from the DevOps theory to Practice Phoenix Project simulation workshop we delivered at the Fusion conference.
If we take a look at many of the recommendations from Gene, we can see a direct link back to the DASA skills areas โCourageโ, โLeadership,โ โContinual Improvementโ and โTeambuilding.โ One of the unique aspects of the DASA Team Competence Model with the DevOps training arena is the addition of the knowledge area โBusiness Value Optimizationโ โ helping realize the strategic fit and make the shift from โfeatures; to โoutcomes.โ
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