Changing the culture around DevOps

Viktor Farcic: When you try to change the culture, do you have a plan? I remember someone told me that you could not really predict a complex system; the only thing you can do is poke it and see what comes out.

Jeff Sussna: You're correct in thinking that you can have techniques that you use to introduce people to your system, and then you have to relate to what happens when they interact with those techniques. Everybody is a little bit different.

I teach, and when I do a coaching engagement, I always start with, depending on the size of the organization, anywhere from a week to a month spending a lot of time doing an embedded observation to really understand who and where they are. From there, I start introducing new techniques; whether it be stand-ups, continuous integration, or automated server provisioning, it really doesn't matter.

Then the fun starts when we're introducing Kanban. We're thinking, "That's straightforward...