Continuous Improvement
The first key to DevOps leadership is never stop
learning and improving. We all know about Kaizen and if you don't, Google
it. I see our journey in IT similar to my tennis journey.
A long story, that fits really well for this
scenario in my life, was in 9th grade when I decided to play tennis because my
friends were playing. I had only ever played Basketball. I
practiced and played some tennis matches during the season, but a pivotal
moment occurred at the end of the season when another guy and I had to play 3
matches. The winner of 2 of the matches would be in the last spot at the
district tournament. I won the first match. Awesome! I let it
get to my head some, yet I was winning the second match. I had a match
point and an easy overhead to win it. I got in position like normal, and
swung hard as I could because I wanted to slam the ball over the fence. Instead,
I just hit the ball straight over the fence. I could not believe it.
After that, I could never mentally recover and he came back and won the
second match. I was frustrated and could not let it go. I got destroyed
in the last match.
Instead of playing at the district tournament, I sat
around with the team. I had time to
reflect and watched the guy I played get destroyed in his match. Wow,
would I have lost too? Then, I saw the guy that won the tournament. He was way, way better than us. I went
from, “I am going to win and play at district” to, “I really suck at this sport”.
This got me motivated to play a lot more tennis. I practiced every
chance I got in the summer. The next year I actually got second in
district and got to play at the regional tournament. I am thinking I am
really good again. Wrong. I got destroyed at regionals in the
second round by a guy who got destroyed his next round. Again, I was
amazed at how much better some people where. Overtime I got better, so did
the people I watched play.
Back to practicing and during the summer. I worked
at a country club so I could attend a tennis camp for free. The first
week I was there, the head coach made me play a match against a girl. I
was thinking, “Don't you know I went to regionals last year and you want me to
play a girl?” Surprisingly, she beat me 6-0, 6-0. I did not even
win a game. I found out she was the state champ the year before and was
practicing for college. You can image how this felt. It felt like I
had taken two steps forward but 4 steps back.
I kept having these moments through out my tennis
life. I went to the state tennis tournament the next year and lost in the
semifinals. I lost again in the state tournament my senior year. After
that, I played college tennis and barely made the team. Again, I was motivated to practice more to
stay on the team. I basically spent 10 years of my life playing and
learning tennis. Somewhere in there I graduated high school and college
and obtained a Masters Degree.
What I discovered over and over, was that most of
the people that were really good, and beating me, had been playing tennis since
they were 8 years old. (Unicorns) I started when I was 15. (Donkey)
I see this a lot in IT today. People always look
around and see other companies, and people, are better off than they are. (Unicorns)
They just say, “We can't do that at my company” or, “We will never be
able to do that DevOps stuff.” (Donkeys) The fact is; every day you can get a
little closer to doing DevOps or improving IT. Everyday you must make
opportunities to improve. You can't wait on others to improve. You must take
your career into your own hands. You have to be determined to improve yourself,
your team, or your company everyday. Check out this video on taking control of your own career:
I feel so strongly about this, if you are in your
20s or 30s and have not learned anything new in the last 2 months from your
team or company, you should leave. You should do this,
even if it means taking a pay cut. I did this after my first job. I
realized I was basically dying a little everyday because I was not learning
anything new. I was that guy who knew everything and no one to learn from.
Changing jobs turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. I ended up on a team of of incredibly smart
people who taught me OOAD, Automation, CI, Infra, Architecture, Agile, TDD and
how to work as a team. We did DevOps 15 years ago and it was natural. I have no
idea where I would be today if I had not made the decision to go and learn
more.
As I improved as a tennis player, I noticed that
others started looking at me as a good tennis player. I knew I was not
great, but I had become better at the physical and mental aspects of the game.
This is when I started to give back and help others, just like I had
been helped. I taught college tennis camps, gave lessons, and worked at
country clubs. I was amazed how much it helped me get better by teaching
others. I am amazed everyday how many people in IT have not had the
opportunity to learn some things that I have been blessed to experience over
the years. I find that most people want to learn, but have never been on
a team, or with a company, where they can learn. If you want to do
"DevOps", then take the time to teach others around you. You can do
presentations at local user groups. You could record training sessions and post them on the YouTube.
Anything that helps raise the knowledge level of people around you will
ultimately result in IT delivery improvement.
Another related factor to continual improvement is tool maturity. I
get so tired of hearing the Chef vs Puppet vs Ansible or Jenkins vs Team City,
or .Net Vs Java or whatever. I feel many people today never truly mature
a tool, especially in enterprises. Tools are just like people and need opportunities
to improve. I don't know if this is a generational thing or not, but
every time something gets hard or different, we give up and get another tool.
You can't truly get value out of tools until you mature them across many
teams or users. You need to have as few tools as possible and
continuously improve them. See what others are doing with the tools, and
mature the ones you have.
With all this said, realize that sports, IT, and
life are all about continuously improving. Don't just give up and move to
something else. Keep learning and maturing as a person, and help others do the same. Like in tennis, I saw many times that I could improve my craft. Stay up to date with IT trends and software development changes. It is not easy, but improving year after year in Tennis was not easy either. No one said being a leader is easy.
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