When deciding to implement DevOps, you may not be sure when the best time to get started will be. Will other teams and individuals within your organization get on board immediately, or will it take some time and convincing? Can you get support from the top of the chain, and can they assist you in pushing forward a new way of operating so that people feel comfortable making the change? Is it imperative to make the change due to technical needs such as cloud offerings? All of these things can affect when the best time to implement DevOps is, so you will want to carefully decide what the best approach will be.
The main difference between doing DevOps right and otherwise is how the people interact with each other. Shared knowledge, common goals, and desire to succeed are all traits of organizations wanting to do it right.
Source: Necco Ceresani for Xebia Labs
If everyone is already on board, then obviously it is a good time to go ahead as long as you have the necessary infrastructure and plan in place to do so. This, of course, is not usually the case unless you are in a particularly small organization where there is not a great deal of separation of teams from one another and you convey your message to as many different affected parties as possible much more quickly.
If you don’t have enough support yet, be sure to get a good plan with plenty of input from others to assist you in getting more people on board with the idea. This can also be helped by looking at the additional things below that can help you gain further support from others.
A vastly important and necessary factor is being able to get support from the top. If your leadership is not on board, it is unlikely you will be able to go forward with the implementation until they are. Again, if you have a good plan with input from others within the organization to help support your proposal, you will likely be able to get leadership on board much more easily.
Also, if leadership does not want to take an active role in getting people on board, it can certainly slow things down, as there may be some who feel no urgency to make any changes without a little support from the top. So, do your best to get the full support from leadership as this can get things moving forward much more quickly.
The most successful implementations start from practices you already know and use, scaled to organizational level and consistently improved with best practices. Big bangs ‘ where everything is restarted from scratch ‘ are bound to cause disruption and distraction.
Source: Mike Dunham for Scio
Whether or not you have support from the top, making others feel comfortable with the idea of changing things can go a long way toward getting a large number of people and team leaders on board quickly.
For example, if you simply show each team how DevOps would benefit them and save them time before implementation, then you stand a better chance of gaining their support. If you simply demand that teams start implementing new procedures on a specific date, you are likely to get much more negative results instead.
If you have leadership on board already, this can be enhanced if they will take part in this process and assist in showing how such a change will benefit each individual, each team, and the organization overall.
Of course, if there is a major need to change as quickly as possible, such as security issues with the current processes, then you may be able to convince others to get on board by explaining the issues that are causing this change to be necessary and timely. In such a case, it may be necessary to make the change anyway, so you will definitely want support from the top if this approach must be taken.
When doing so, as mentioned, you should already have a plan in place for the transition and get people as much information, training, and assistance as possible so that they are able to take an active part in the process. Many times, if people understand that they are helping to solve a potentially serious problem, they will be more willing to lend a supporting hand.
In the end, just be sure you have as many of these bases covered as you possibly can before deciding to make the switch. The more comfortable everyone is with making the change, the better a time it is to begin implementing DevOps in your organization!
