Throughout the past month, we have been putting a special focus on DevOps and how it can be a transformational part of your business. We’ve helped to define what exactly DevOps is, laid out what our phased approach to DevOps would look like for your business, and talked through some recent buzzwords surrounding security and DevOps. We hope you have gained some valuable insight into DevOps philosophies and practices during this recent close up.

To round out the month, we’re going to be focusing on some further reading materials if you want to dive a little bit deeper into DevOps as you plan your digital transformation. Here at Fishtech Group, we have been passing around a book written by three progenitors of the DevOps movement that may help put DevOps into context for you through a real-world application.

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win is set in a fictional company called Parts Unlimited. Written by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, the book gives the reader a small glimpse of DevOps and how companies can integrate different departments, like IT, to align with overall business goals rather than their own individual functions.

While we recommend reading the whole novel, there is one particular idea that can demonstrate how you can help foster a DevOps culture at your business, or at least get an idea of what it looks like when DevOps is implemented correctly. This is idea is summed up as “The Three Ways of DevOps” in the novel. Let’s break it down a little bit more by looking at each way individually.

The First Way says that work should always flow in one direction – downstream. In the novel, the First Way focuses on eliminating constraints and creating a fast workflow that moves from development, to operations, to IT, and then ultimately to the customer. The First Way looks at the system as a whole, rather than fixating on a specific department.

The Second Way looks to create, shorten, and amplify feedback loops. The Second Way integrates feedback, not only from the customers, but also from the different sectors of a company, like operations and development. Through the implementation of this philosophy, communication is increased, allowing for fewer surprises as work gets finished, and allows for faster changes.

The Third Way focuses on continued experimentation in order to learn from mistakes and achieve mastery. This philosophy augments the Second Way in that continued communication will allow you to experiment with more frequency to continue to take risks and find the best way forward through your DevOps practices. Without proper communication and experimentation, your business will not succeed or progress.

The Phoenix Project has been a great resource for our team to better understand the core concepts of DevOps, straight from minds of some of the creators of the movement. If you are wanting to learn more about DevOps in an easy-to-digest setting, think about picking this novel up and follow the DevOps journey of Parts Unlimited as they transform their business for the better.

If you are still looking for a few more resources to dive into as you continue to explore DevOps, we have a short list of recent articles that our DevOps team has sent our way that may help whet your appetite:

Of course, we are always open to talking DevOps and seeing how it can transform YOUR business for the better. If you would like to set up a consultation with our DevOps team, fill out the form below, and let us help guide you on your own Digital Transformation.