Lean DevOps

Robert Benefield is an experienced technical leader who has decades of experience delivering robust on-demand services to solve hard problems in demanding ecosystems including banking and securities trading, medical and pharmaceutical, energy, telecom, government, and Internet services. His continual eagerness to learn and work with others to make a difference has taken him from building computers and writing code in the early days of the Internet at Silicon Valley startups to the executive suite in large multinational companies. He shares his unique experience in the hopes that others can continue to build on it without having to collect quite as many scars along the way.

Introduction 1
Chapter 1: The Problem with IT Service Delivery 7
Approach #1: Reduce Delivery Friction 9
    The Downsides of Targeting Delivery Friction 11
Approach #2: Managing Service Delivery Risk 12
    The Downsides of Targeting Service Delivery Risk 14
    The Essence of Delivery 15
Beginning the DevOps Journey 17
Summary 18
Chapter 2: How We Make Decisions 21
Examining the Decision-Making Process 22
Boyd and the Decision Process 23
The OODA Loop 26
The Ingredients of Decision Making 29
    Ingredient 1: The Target Outcome 30
    Delivering Measures over Outcomes 36
    Ingredient 2: Friction Elimination 39
    Ingredient 3: Situational Awareness 42
    The Challenge of Trust 44
    The Fragility of Mental Models and Cognitive Biases 45
    Ingredient 4: Learning 48
    Failing to Learn 48
The Pathway to Improved Decision Making 53
Summary 54
Chapter 3: Mission Command 55
The Origins of Mission Command 56
    Learning How to Lead Effectively the Hard Way 57
Managing Through Unpredictability 58
    Knowledge and Awareness Weaknesses 59
    Misalignments 60
    Misjudgment of Ecosystem Complexity 61
The Anatomy of Mission Command 62
Commander's Intent 63
    Brief 66
    Situational Overview 67
    Statement of the Desired Outcome or Overall Mission Objective 67
    Execution Priorities 67
    Anti-Goals and Constraints 68
Backbriefing 69
Einheit: The Power of Mutual Trust 71
    Creating Einheit in DevOps 74
    Continual Improvement 75
    Staff Rides 78
    After Action Reviews 79
Organizational Impacts of Mission Command 80
Summary 81
Chapter 4: Friction 83
Understanding Ohno's Forms of Waste 84
    Muda (Pure Waste) 86
    Muri (Overburden) 109
    Mura (Fluctuation and Irregularity) 113
See the Whole 125
Summary 126
Chapter 5: Risk 127
Cynefin and Decision Making 128
    Ordered Systems 131
    Unordered Systems 134
Reimagining Risk Management 143
    Have Clear and Understood Target Outcomes 144
    Make the Best Choice the Easiest Choice 145
    Continually Improve Ecosystem Observability 147
Summary 151
Chapter 6: Situational Awareness 153
Making Sense of Our Ecosystem 154
The Mental Model 157
    The Problems with Mental Models 158
Cognitive Bias 161
Gaining Better Situational Awareness 163
Framing 164
    Finding and Fixing Framing Problems 165
Information Flow 169
    Why Ecosystem Dynamics Matter 169
    Meeting Your Information Flow Needs 172
Analysis and Improvement 181
Summary 182
Chapter 7: Learning 183
The Emergence of Skills Attainment Learning 184
    The Rise of the One Right Way 186
Outcome-Directed Learning 188
Creating a Learning Culture 191
Day-to-Day Kata 191
    Improvement and Problem-Solving Kata 192
    The Coaching Practice 193
Summary 195
Chapter 8: Embarking on the DevOps Journey 197
The Service Delivery Challenge 204
    Traditional Delivery Fog in the Service World 205
    The Challenge of the "ilities" 207
The Path to Eliminating Service Delivery Fog 209
    The Role of Managers in Eliminating Service Delivery Fog 210
    Identifying What You Can or Cannot Know 214
    Ways the Team Can Eliminate Service Delivery Fog 219
Summary 220
Chapter 9: Service Delivery Maturity and the Service Engineering Lead 221
Modeling Service Delivery Maturity 223
    The Example of Measuring Code Quality 224
    Service Delivery Maturity Model Levels 225
    Service Delivery Maturity Areas of Interest 228
    Configuration Management and Delivery Hygiene 232
    Supportability 235
    Single Point of Failure Mitigation and Coupling Management 239
    Engagement 241
The Service Engineering Lead 243
    Why Have a Separate Rotating Role? 244
    How the SE Lead Improves Awareness 246
    Organizational Configurations with the SE Lead 248
Challenges to Watch Out For 250
    Incentivizing Collaboration and Improvement 251
    Developers Running Production Services 253
    Overcoming the Operational Experience Gap 254
Summary 256
Chapter 10: Automation 257
Tooling and Ecosystem Conditions 258
Building Sustainable Conditions 260
    5S 261
    Seeing Automation 5S in Action 278
Tools & Automation Engineering 283
    Organizational Details 285
    Workflow and Sync Points 285
Summary 287
Chapter 11: Instrumentation and Observability 289
Determining the "Right" Data 291
    Know the Purpose and Value 293
    Know the Audience 297
    Know the Source 302
Making the Ecosystem Observable 307
    Instrumenting for Observability 310
    Instrumenting Development 310
    Instrumenting Packaging and Dependencies 314
    Instrumenting Tooling 316
    Instrumenting Environment Change and Configuration Management 317
    Instrumenting Testing 319
    Instrumenting Production 320
    Queryable/Reportable Live Code and Services 321
    Presenting Task, Change, Incident, and Problem Records Together 321
    Environment Configuration 322
    Logging 323
    Monitoring 324
    Security Tracking and Analysis 325
    Service Data 326
Pulling It All Together 327
    Instrumenting a Wastewater Ecosystem 328
    Instrumenting an IT Ecosystem 331
Summary 333
Chapter 12: Workflow 335
Workflow and Situational Awareness 336
Managing Work Through Process 337
Managing Work Organically 339
The Tyranny of Dark Matter 340
    Learning to See the Disconnects in Action 343
    Resolving Disconnects by Building Context 347
Visualizing the Flow 349
    Workflow Board Basics 351
    State Columns 352
    State Columns for Operations 353
    Swim Lanes 355
Task Cards 358
Preventing Dark Matter 359
Using the Board 362
Seeing the Problems 363
Limiting Work in Progress 365
The Limits of a Workflow Board 367
    Managing the Board 367
    Managing Flow and Improvement 368
Summary 368
Chapter 13: Queue Master 371
An Introduction to the Queue Master 372
    Role Mechanics 374
     "Follow the Sun" Queue Mastering 384
Queue Master Rollout Challenges 389
    Team Members Don't See the Value 389
    More Traditionally Minded Managers Thwarting Rollout 390
    Pushy Queue Masters 391
    Junior Team Members as Queue Masters 391
    Queue Masters Who Struggle to Lead Sync Points 394
Summary 394
Chapter 14: Cycles and Sync Points 395
Inform, Align, Reflect, and Improve 396
    Top-Down Alignment Control Approach 397
    Alignment Through Iterative Approaches 397
Service Operations Synchronization and Improvement 400
    The Tactical Cycle 400
Important Differences Between Kickoffs and
Sprint Planning 404
    Daily Standup 408
    Retrospective 411
    General Meeting Structure 413
The Learning and Improvement Discussion 415
    The Strategic Cycle 421
Strategic Review 424
    General Review Structure 426
    A3 Problem Solving for the Strategic Review 427
Summary 432
Chapter 15: Governance 433
Factors for Successful Governance 434
    Meeting Intent 435
    No Target Outcome Interference 437
    Maintain Situational Awareness and Learning 438
Common Governance Mistakes 440
    Poor Requirement Drafting and Understanding 440
    Using Off-the-Shelf Governance Frameworks 445
    Out-of-the-Box Process Tooling and Workflows 450
Tips for Effective DevOps Governance 453
    Understand Governance Intent 454
    Make It Visible 454
    Propose Reasonable Solutions 456
    Automation and Compliance 458
    Be Flexible and Always Ready to Improve 458
Summary 460
Appendix 461

9780133847505   TOC   6/7/2022