La Fosse and News UK hosted ‘Integrating a DevOps Culture at an Enterprise Level’, an event that brought together technology professionals interested in gaining expertise about how to make DevOps a part of their business.

The attendees, from engineers to C-level executives, were given insights into best practice for embracing DevOps, as well as the potential pitfalls that can hamper integration, through three case studies presented by DevOps experts from News UK, Home Retail Group, and Attenda.

Read our takeaways:

Make everyone DevOps

To give DevOps the importance it needs, don’t have a dedicated ‘DevOps team’ – otherwise there’s a risk it will get ignored by the rest of the business as irrelevant or confusing. Make every team a DevOps team, regardless of the name they go by, or the function they’re part of.

Trust your gut

While DevOps’ fast feedback practices mean that some ideas naturally get amplified and others fall by the wayside, be prepared to go with your instinct when you have to. You will generally know whether an idea is worth pursuing or not, and should be ready to jettison those not worth focusing on.

Think like an engineer, not a developer

The mindset of a developer is to produce code, but engineers aren’t afraid to think more broadly – about what business processes need to be instilled to avoid that 3am phone call when a deployment goes awry. But steer clear of the rockstars of the engineering world – their start-up way of thinking can be ahead of what’s really possible within the bounds of the enterprise and cause disruption.

Don’t try to be Google

While it’s tempting to try to keep up with the breakneck release speed of Google, not every business needs to keep up that pace. If it suits the organisation to release once a week or even slower, then that’s the right path to follow.

Not everything needs to be DevOps

Even the most enthusiastic DevOps practitioners aren’t 100 percent DevOps, and use hybrid models. If you’ve been using ITIL until now and find it works for you, then work out a way to integrate the two – it can be done.

Testimonials

“Very good event overall, well organised and with excellent facilities, can’t think of anything to improve it.”

“The start of a journey that is going to lead to something special in the DevOps community.”

“Fantastic event organised by Chris at La Fosse in bringing together leaders in DevOps to share their thoughts and experiences with the wider community”

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