I'm always waiting

One of the things I have noticed over the past few years is that I seem to be waiting more and more. My town seems to be getting denser, thus causing lines at the grocery store, gas stations, etc. For those of you that are married, I am sure you can appreciate the title. When thinking of all this time, it seems to be wasteful. My valuable time, just waiting on something or someone else.

In Technology, this is truly the case. I was always waiting for something to complete my project; ordering hardware, software, waiting for the network to be built or configured, security, a VP’s signature (you know who you are)… more waiting! It is amazing I am still sane.

In manufacturing, a product is built when ordered and JIT (just in time). I think of the Cloud with the same mentality. The IT infrastructure build can take 4-6 weeks or more to get to the point where the developer can start porting their code to the new environment. Most organizations fail to plan that far in advance, causing products to be behind schedule, animosity between groups and overall dis-satisfaction. Instead of waiting for the environment to be built, you can provision what you need (JIT). If you only need it temporarily, you can archive it and decommission it. Try doing that with your EMC storage; No take backs, hehe.

Additionally, the DevOps strategy is all about time to market and efficiency. Developers and Operations work as a team, to empower each other and get their project or application completed in a timely manner. No waiting for hardware, software, testing, etc. Provision and get that application out the door. Operations worries about managing the applications not if a hard disk is underperforming or when the next disk shelf is coming. DevOps is about much more than the technical infrastructure shift. Companies are going to need to change their method and move to the DevOps partnership model. Granted, the advance still relies on people, process, and technology for DevOps to be effective. The cloud by itself doesn’t do anything to streamline an organization and it is up to the business leaders to recognize the company culture needs to change to adopt this strategy.