DevOps following in ITIL's footsteps
Listening to the DevOps world (I am immersing, or at least paddling) it sounds so exactly like the ITIL experience that I am literally laughing out loud:
- nobody understands what Devops means
- Devops in people's titles
- people recruiting only Devops
- companies saying I want to buy a Devops
- it's not Devops that is wrong it is the way you do it
- you can't buy a tool that gives you Devops
- if Devops is the end goal you are doing it wrong, have a business objective
- the blame game
- you can't have a Devops project
- bringing in a Devops expert or Agile coach won't fix it
- don't try to change culture just behaviour
- "wait we want Devops but we don't actually want to change anything"
Etc etc
Substitute ITIL in any of those. Been there...
DevOps has climbed the Hype Curve. Its miraculous benefits are being sold in travelling roadshows, and being touted in mainstream media. Managers who don't have their own ideas are dropping ITIL and Cloud and SaaS and Agile as the silver bullets, and turning to DevOps instead.
And sure enough some negative views of DevOps are creeping in as it starts to thunder down the back side of the Hype Curve into the Trough of Disillusionment. Wait for it....
LOL. You'd think we'd learn.
[from my comments below:
There is a core element of value in all those concepts, and most of the main proponents act with the very best of intentions to improve things. I heard a quote that Gene Kim promotes the suite of concepts in The Phoenix Project because he "wants to make a million lives better" - I believe that. And I believe that any simplified concept, whether it be ITIL or Devops - can help improve IT. The problems arise because
(a) proponents react against resistance with increased zeal which can drift into evangelism (they lose objectivity) and
(b) salesmen abduct the idea then cheapen and distort it to make a buck and
(c) lots of other people with limited understanding make it mean whatever they want and/or misapply it then "discover" it doesn't work
]
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