Bringing Dev and Ops togetherHow to help the development team get on board.

A tenet of the agile manifesto is "customer collaboration over contract negotiation." It's just as relevant for the relationship between development and operations teams.

Collaboration over contract negotiation

Ops teams tend to obsess on security, and with good reason. Devs care too, but don't always have the expertise.

Ops can offer security training to developers, and invite them to threat briefings. Show devs the monitoring data around malware or DOS attacks. Sharing knowledge is a great way to build relationships.

Security is an icebreaker

Give the development team a way to deploy and monitor their applications themselves. This lets the operations team empower the devs, changing the role of Ops from gatekeeper to helpful partner.

Security is an icebreaker

The best people to support a complex app are the people who built it. Help Dev monitor and support their apps. Once the dev team knows they will be responsible for production problems, they'll be more likely to make sure their software is operable, stable and resilient.

You built it, you run it

Start with the developers who show an interest in infrastructure as code and automation. Teach them about things like monitoring dashboards, configuration management or automated test. They'll share their new knowledge with their colleagues and generate more dev interest in operations.

Getting started

Some high-value things for Dev and Ops to work on together:

Non-technical work like capacity planning, incident management or auditing requirements.

Designing shared services. Define user needs together.

On-call rotations. Sharing this work will align developers' interests with Ops' interests. No one wants the 3 AM call.

Share the work

Remember, people need time to adjust their work habits and processes. Don't change everything at once. Talk with the Dev manager early in the process, as well as the managers of other teams affected by the change to a DevOps way of working.

Stay flexible, and remember the goal is to build better apps and release them with little to no pain.

Change takes time

For practical tips on getting DevOps buy-in from your operations team, the development team and executives, check out the DevOps Guide for IT Managers.

More in the DevOps for IT managers series:DevOps Principles for IT Managers Why Your Team Needs DevOps Get Executive Backing for DevOps