Information Technology

At this point you know you’re going DevOps. Your management is on board and ready to help as necessary. Your tiger team is only a couple people so far, but they’re enthusiastic and well respected. Now what?

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Now you need a pilot project. You have to find somewhere to start in your project portfolio. You are going to transform not just the product that the pilot team is building, but the processes, workflows, and team dynamics. As you’ve been talking to people in your company, getting feedback on things like goals and who’s awesome, you’ve probably piqued the curiosity of more than a few folks. You might have multiple projects that want to try out your fancy new DevOps processes that you can choose from to start a pilot.

What makes a good pilot candidate? Lots of different project characteristics can make a good pilot. Most importantly, you don’t want to start too big the first time out. Rolling out the DevOps machine for a key central service is going to be hugely frustrating while you’re figuring out which tools work best for your environment and how to improve your communications and processes.

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You also don’t want something that is too small. It’s easy to dismiss a tiny pilot project with "Oh, sure, that team can do DevOps because they’ve only got five people. We have six in QA alone; it will never work!"

The first time out, try for a project team that is collocated. Changing up process and communication is hard; doing it across five time zones is a good hurdle to avoid if you possibly can. If all your teams are distributed, look for teams with a long history of working successfully across long distances. Their team culture may already reflect some of the characteristics of a DevOps culture that you’re looking for.