
You Don’t Need a DevOps Team - babich
https://medium.com/@101/you-don-t-need-a-devops-team-78a89165fc5b#.b7yeg2i4l
======
chucky_z
Isn't the whole point of a devops individual/team to reduce friction to "...
break down barriers, increase automation, bring collaboration and iterate."?

I understand that there should be company buy-in and individuals could handle
this themselves but if there's no clear start/end point there could (will) be
a huge waste of man hours and potentially $$.

So maybe a subtitle for this article could be "But it may help."

~~~
babich
Thanks for your reply!

Yes, my point was about the goal. And it should be set properly (e.g. our goal
is our product and happy customers, not "Hey, now we have the best process as
other guys").

------
toomuchtodo
"You Don’t Need a DevOps Team. What you really need is a holistic approach to
software development. Yes. it’s not an easy route. It takes a long time for
teams to get good at these things and it will affect the way in which you
organize your company, not just your development or operations functions.
You’ll be surprised at the end — your organisation’ll get to the high ground
of effective process. The one that best fits your needs. So break down
barriers, increase automation, bring collaboration and iterate."

So all of your developers are going to have operational experience? And be on
call 24/7?

~~~
babich
Nope, you should have a good Operation (!) engineer, not DevOps.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The startup I'm at rolls the two roles together. I do operations, as well as
"devops" tasks (everything between the repo and the deploy).

I'd love feedback on how other teams or orgs are handling this.

~~~
babich
Well, you have a pretty challenging job, but also an opportunity to improve
the situation. Startups are very interesting place because both business and
culture is still growing.

One good (but general) advice - think how to make a process efficient (e.g.
more automation for tasks and less complexity in a state of integration and
problem solving).

------
xyzzy4
You also don't need more than one employee. But the marginal value of hiring
more employees (including DevOps) might be good enough to justify it.

~~~
babich
Well, it depends on a company size. But when you have a growing business,
usually it's better to hire a good developer or a good operation engineer and
focus on communications.

