"You do not have to be Albert Einstein to handle your IT assignments 'On Time' (i.e. To Schedule), 'At Cost' (i.e. To Budget) and 'To Specifications' (i.e. To Scope)"
Yaacov (Jack) Bar-Tor
Information Technology
YBT Services Pty Ltd
Technical Leadership
In the process of implementing a DevOps culture, you will likely be asking your technical staff to change their tools, behaviours, and workflows. You will want someone on hand to be your go-to person to talk about DevOps to your teams. It might be you! And that is awesome! It could also be an architect or other senior person who is well liked and well respected, or a few of these folks so you don’t overburden a single person.
This person, or team of people, will serve an important role, a combination of evangelist, tools expert, process subject-matter expert (SME), and buddy. They’re like your camp counselors. They’ll teach a little bit, answer questions, reassure the reluctant, and bring the marshmallows at the end of a long day. These folks are hard to find, and often aren’t who you think they are. The last person you want for a job like this is someone who’s smart but a complete jerk everyone hates but who happens to know how to use the tools. Find the people who everyone wishes were on their team, borrow some of their time, and form a working group to help other teams.
Without these folks to shepherd the various factions of your organization, it’s easy to lose a few sheep along the way. Your SMEs can be there to build interpersonal relationships and open communication paths with outside teams, cutting down on friction and politics.