Cameron HaightIn my DevOps presentation today at Gartner Symposium (many thanks for the great crowd by the way), I mentioned only partly in jest that I think the DevOps movement needs a new name – or at least some different marketing if I may be so bold (my apologies to Patrick Debois). Something perhaps edgier – something that potentially evokes (at least in my mind) the rebellion against much of the conventional IT wisdom. My thought? Occupy Information Technology or “Occupy IT.” Is this too edgy? Is this too political (by the way, it’s not meant to have anything to do with the non-IT world other than the rebellion theme)? Feel free to comment.
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11 responses so far ↓
1 Patrick Debois October 19, 2011 at 4:16 pm
Hi Cameron,
no offense taken
Is the presentation public somewhere? Please help me understand, the marketing you are hinting at. I’d love to understand what you mean by that.
Concerning the name: see this presentation http://www.slideshare.net/jedi4ever/devopsdays-downundervfinal slides 46+
Patrick
2 anon October 19, 2011 at 6:02 pm
sigh…
3 John Wilis October 19, 2011 at 8:29 pm
Cameron,
The name is fine. It has survived two years with out any #vendor or #analyst help. I am excited that in 2011 you guys finally get it. I also understand Gartner’s need to own it (i.e. change the name). Here’s an idea .. support and grow with it.
John Willis
a.k.a @botchagalupe
4 anon it October 19, 2011 at 8:46 pm
The shark has been jumped
5 Paul Muller October 19, 2011 at 10:22 pm
Hey Cameron – as the Bard once put it “what’s in a name?”
I literally just posted on DevOps and directed people to your thoughts on the topic given the heat around definitions that DevOps seems plagued by (http://www.enterprisecioforum.com/en/blogs/paulm/it-salad-dressing-sometimes-you-need-shake-it).
In response to your question: Yep. The topic of shaking up IT delivery needs to be de-geeked. DevOps principals are a great start and the movement needs help to gain the eyeballs it deserves.
No, I don’t believe that an emotion driven approach a-la the protestors in NYC helps. DevOps already seems to suffer form this today. For example, despite being a tool agnostic movement, the lack of formalized processes and best practices seems to result in DevOps conversations rapidly splitting in a Chef vs Puppet vs “the big four” (vs ITIL)
A “slogo” won’t help with credibility but it might help with awareness.
However, as an industry, we need to make sure we’re prepared to capitalize on that awareness with actionable steps, not colorful signs and catchy chants.
6 Manuel Pais October 20, 2011 at 4:56 am
Occupy IT says nothing about what it’s about.
DevOps says everything in a simple and catchy way imho.
7 Patrick Debois October 20, 2011 at 10:21 am
Paul, Cameron, never mind the name. I’m honestly interested in both you guys perspective on what you think needs to change.
Are we talking, a well described and specific written procedure, certification, etc? Please do explain what you are after on the analysts level. I really want to understand.
Patrick
8 Cameron Haight October 20, 2011 at 3:06 pm
Thanks Paul for your comment. Understand that the term I suggested is in jest (though not the suggestion for a new name per se). I believe that overall however what DevOps is and does is more important than the name. If there needs to be a focus IMHO, it’s more along the line of helping practitioners know when they are “doing” DevOps. It’s a balancing act though – too prescriptive and we’re back to ITIL.
9 Cameron Haight October 20, 2011 at 3:17 pm
John – thanks for your comment. See my response to Paul please. Also, we’re (and least I’m) not trying to own anything – kind of goes against movement’s Zeitgeist in my opinion. We may be a bit late to the party (not so late as 2011 though), but the good news is that we’re trying to open up the concept to a broader audience. Many enterprises see the capabilities of some of the big cloud vendors and they “want some of that.” Question though is how do they get there given all of the “legacy” (infrastructure, processes and management tools) that they’ve already invested substantial sums in. I’m hoping that with all of the thought leadership that you, Patrick and others have provided – plus some of my own thoughts that we can help them get there. Thanks again!
10 Paul Muller October 20, 2011 at 4:38 pm
@Patrick – having helped get the ITIL movement started in Aus back in the early days, what I think made the difference was a clear sense of “you know you’re ‘there’ when…”
In other words, maturity. CMMi would define the most basic steps of maturity as moving from Chaotic to Repeatable and from there to Defined.
IMHO, ITIL’s most significant breakthrough was taking what was tribal language (let’s face it, we ALL logged incidents and resolved problems prior to ITIL, we just each had differing words for the same thing) and codified it into something defined.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want yet another X.400/OSI “camel”. DevOps is young enough to be considered “beautifully malleable” and it needs time for practical experience to shape best practice.
However, sooner or later you’re going to want to hire for DevOps skills (as we are at my company). Right now, I’m not sure what skills I should *repeatably* recruit against – do they need to be buzzword compliant (any fool can say “infrastructure as code” and still not know what it means) or can there be formal certifications?
@Cameron’s point is more profound – how do we spark the imagination of business AND IT that the old ways are unsustainable long term and that we need to change? This is where folks like yourself and DTO have such a vital role to play – but what’s the rallying cry? What’s DevOps Y2K moment?
11 Eric Minick October 27, 2011 at 11:13 am
Ah… the “how can I reliable recruit for this” question with a mention of certification to boot. When you get clear enough about “what this is” to make a certification, you will enable it in the enterprise and anger the early adopters.
The best analogy I know is Scrum. It really has enabled the enterprise to get more Agile (although its still pretty weak) and in that sense, I love it. But do I believe that a 3-5 day CSM training class enables you to really lead an Agile team? No, no, no. But at least I can hire someone who not only can claim to have lead an agile team, but also has a training certification. From an HR perspective, that’s a plus in the enterprise.
I await the eventual scrumification of DevOps. I think it will probably be a good thing for the industry overall, but we all know it will happen. There’s too much training money to be had and the market abhors a vacuum. To continue to stretch the analogy, I think we’re still not yet even in the XP days of DevOps. We don’t even have the list of practices that are so awesome, the enterprise rejects them as crazy.