Jeff is the author of Actionable Agile tools (available on Amazon, and direct from the author at bit.ly/aatbook).

Jeff and János share the story of a DevOps transformation at Meltwater, where they both work. We start by discussing the big differences between an Agile and a DevOps transformation. 

The big difference between Agile and DevOps transformations

As they describe it, a DevOps transformation is more about the technical aspects of software development. While in an Agile transformation we may look at processes, and team composition, the DevOps transformation that Jeff and János describe was focused on removing the hand-overs, and building the technical infrastructure necessary for that to happen. Their goal was to create, and support cross functional teams that would be able to implement, deploy and operate their software in production. 

Change management in a DevOps transformation

Like in any other transformation, however, it was critical to think about how to introduce, and support the change within the organization. In this segment, we talk about the change approach Jeff and János used to support the DevOps transformation. We discuss the importance of working through small and focused experiments that allow teams to try new things, but also learn and move on. As opposed to being “forced” to adopt something because someone outside the team told them so. 

In this segment, we refer to other episodes where this transformation has also been discussed with Jeff and other guests. You can listen to Jeff and Scott Rosenblatt discuss the DevOps transformation from the management’s perspective.

 

Experimentation, learning and management support as key success factors in the change

Like in any change process, certain things did not work as expected. However, the team at Meltwater was able to use those experiments (small changes designed to try a new approach, with a specific goal in mind) to learn and advance their practices. This approach, which is in contrast to “deploying” or “installing” a process, takes into account not only the technical aspects of the change (what needs to change), but also the human aspects (how we can introduce those changes, and what needs to evolve after being tried for the first time). 

In this segment, we talk about management support for the change, which we also discussed in this episode with Jeff Campbell and Simone Sciarrati. We also refer to another episode where the role of the Product Owner was used effectively to support the DevOps change.

About János Csorvási and Jeff Campbell

János is a Principal Engineer on Meltwater’s developer productivity team, he’s been with the company for several years in various roles including exploratory testing, infrastructure development, software engineering and helping other engineers succeed at their jobs.

You can link with János Csorvási on LinkedIn. 

You can also read Meltwater’s Engineering blog where they have described their transformation story as well. 

 

Jeff is an Agile Coach who considers the discovery of Agile and Lean to be one of the most defining moments of his life and considers helping others to improve their working life not to simply be a job, but a social responsibility.

He is the author of actionable agile tools, which you can get on Amazon and directly from the author at bit.ly/aatbook

As an Agile Coach, he has worked with driving Agile transformations in organisations both small and large.

You can link with Jeff Campbell on LinkedIn and connect with Jeff Campbell on Twitter.

You can also learn more about Jeff Campbell’s work at his company’s website.