Our meetings at the DevOpsConf conference focused not only on the tools of engineers, but also on the processes for which these tools are needed. This doesn't seem to be enough for the business to see how to get the most out of DevOps for the product.
Therefore, we added a focus on how people in different positions can determine what maturity of DevOps practices has been achieved and how to consciously choose technical development goals in their organization and team. In other words, I want to see where in the DevOps field I am now and what my next step is.
The main measurable characteristics of DevOps are the stability of the application and the productivity of IT teams, from idea to putting a feature on production. Therefore, we talk a lot about time to market and monitoring and continue the technical track.
And IT teams are made up of real people who can not only produce good KPIs, but also do useful work. After all, if the DevOps approach has gained popularity in the world, then, probably, someone needs it. For you, we met with Product Owners and businessmen who do not always know what DevOps is (as if we know: D) and asked them what it is important for them to get from techies. What is this very good.
The first step was to change my vocabulary and communication. We did not speak in our usual terms, but tried to use the language of the products. Even as a way of communication, we chose CustDev interviews, as is customary in the grocery world. These interviews confirm or refute our hypotheses about what is important in working on a product from the business side.
Here are the hypotheses we tested in our meetings:
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I talk via Zoom with my longtime acquaintance, who is convinced that a person who has never sold in his life has nothing to do in the Product Owner profession. She often appears in radio and TV programs, conducts seminars in her subject area. As soon as the self-isolation regime was facilitated, she and her husband and child rented a house on the banks of a magnificent lake and moved to live and work there all summer. Her company has been in the online services market for almost 20 years. In first place in terms of ratings in its subject area.
- Please tell me, are you doing any special work to shorten the development cycle and launch features in production on your team?
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We continued the conversation, and over the next half hour Natalia said that major product changes are now taking place much more confidently and calmly. The main factor in this change, she says, is her confidence in the team and the team's trust in her.
My next call is to Phuket. Igor moved there a few years ago and for this he had not the easiest negotiations with his employer. Back then, remote work was a novelty, and all employees worked in an office in Moscow. Now squeals and fuss of his large family are heard behind the scenes. His company is also a leader in the Russian market in its direction.
- Suddenly I became a remote expert this spring! (laughs)
- Please tell us what conscious steps you took to increase the stability of the application and why?
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Then Igor said that he had the opportunity to work ahead of the curve. A significant part of the tasks is aimed at the development of new technologies and interfaces. The first results of the experiments are already available to users, for example, communication in a natural language. At the same time, today we can rather talk about the Research part of R&D. The company is mastering the technology in advance to take advantage of the maturity of artificial intelligence technologies to gain a competitive advantage.
If we talk about experiments, the application settings were divided into three main groups:
- Grocery. Product owner can enable or disable the feature, as well as roll it to a given percentage of users or even a specific list.
- Service interaction settings are the responsibility of developers.
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Curiously, the first request to split the settings came out of production when the releases were still being manually launched. 20 releases per day to change the settings - this is not what pleased the admins. Already when the settings service was ready, it created a technical readiness to "turn the knobs" for the product owners.
We also phoned the guys who lead the product in companies where the potential for the development of DevOps is much greater. They launch startups or work for a large customer. In other words, and more through pain, they talked about the same values for the Product Owner as the previous interlocutors.
We found that the findings of our study confirm the findings in the Google report The 2019 Accelerate State of DevOps: Elite performance, productivity, and scaling (Russian version ).
We have identified four core values for Product Owners when using DevOps:
- Predictability of the time of feature implementation and confidence in the quality of software is a necessary basis for active experiments.
- Reliability of work is selling = money. When traffic hits a running application, this not only allows you to rationally use your promotion budget, but also increases user loyalty, and therefore market share.
- The speed of experiments determines success for both a startup and a business with a mature product. If it is important for a startup to quickly discover user preferences and successful responses to them, then a mature product needs user retention, stability of mass revenue, and research - work for the future of technology.
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Therefore, at the conference we will talk about both important technical topics and new ones. For example, Alexey Pikulev, who is preparing a workshop on the diagnosis and development of trust, will talk about trust. We will continue to research engineering practices and tools, as well as the organization of processes. Business communication with the team and between teams will be discussed at the already traditional process track of the conference.
Guys, don't worry if there will still be many technical talks at the conference. Because we, program committee members, love system administrators and DevOps engineers who are not. And even we ourselves are.
We will make most of the activities at the conference interactive, because there are enough talking heads on the Internet. After all, every conscious engineer can not only find video reportson the topics he needs, but also read articles (for example, articles following all DevOpsConf in Alexander Titov’s profile).
Our goal this fall is to give each company the opportunity to land a virtual landing from Product Owners, technical experts and engineers of all stripes. So that the IT special forces navigate the terrain and return to work with a developed plan to capture the universe!
In the following articles, we will tell you about CTOs, developers and security personnel - why the conference is to them.
DevOps Live — 29-30 6-7 2020. , , .
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