Part one:
Collaboration and communication

Fostering a culture of open communication and cross-functional collaboration to drive software development success.

Part one:

Collaboration and communication

Ah, collaboration! A word that gets tossed around so much in the context of agile working and DevOps practices that you would be forgiven for assuming that a collaborative culture exists simply by ‘doing DevOps’.

But collaboration is not merely a group of individuals or teams who happen to be working on the same project or following some of the same processes. It comes when people work together as a unified group, to achieve a common vision and set of goals. It’s when siloed working has been eradicated and competing interests put aside in pursuit of aligned objectives.

DevOps discussion is heavily weighted towards the processes and tools that can support a collaborative culture and make communication easier – all in the service of building software faster with fewer errors. But all the shiny new tech in the world won’t do you any good if you haven’t achieved that culture in the first place.

So let’s start there…

Understanding the cultural shift

Where teams have traditionally worked in silos, each responsible for their own small part in the machine, DevOps is a huge departure. Not only in terms of the speed and agility involved (see part two), with a dependency on automation, but also the collaboration required to achieve it. With this collaboration comes a shared responsibility, whereby a developer oversees a product through the entire course of its lifetime.

This collaboration and communication mean DevOps teams become autonomous, trusted to make decisions and changes without a long-winded approval process. They rely on their own knowledge and lean on self-service tooling to get the job done, without a fear of failure. And they work with operations folk to create monitoring and reporting strategies that deliver fast feedback. This lets them iterate quickly and improve their code.

Next, let’s look at a few actions you can take to weave more collaboration and communication into your culture.

Discover your DevOps state

How to create a more collaborative, communicative culture

Build cross-functional teams

DevOps teams are involved with every step of your software development life cycle, which means that each team member needs a broad range of knowledge and skills. In reality, it’s unlikely everyone will have the competency level required to fulfil every task. It’s more important that there’s a basic level of knowledge across the board, complementary areas of expertise are covered, and teams are encouraged to share responsibility rather than individuals working in isolation.

How do you know if your teams are cross-functional? You’ll need to carry out a competency assessment to understand what skill and knowledge areas are covered, and where the team’s shortcomings lie.

With the assessment complete, you’ll have the information you need, to know where to upskill (by offering team members the chance to develop in the areas they need to), to bring in new talent, or move people between teams to balance out competencies across the business.

Expert advice:

The DevOps Agile Skills Association’s competence model identifies and defines four skill areas and eight knowledge areas required for a high-performing DevOps team. They are:

Skill areas

Courage
Team building
DevOps leadership
Continuous improvement

Knowledge areas

Business value optimisation
Business analysis
Architecture and design
Programming
Continuous delivery
Test specification
Infrastructure engineering
Security, risk and compliance

Surveys and interviews are the most simple ways to determine a team’s strengths and weaknesses in these areas. But, at a glance, you might already have a clear idea if your team (or teams) has all these competencies ticked off, and where some training might be required.

Discover your DevOps state

Improve your developer experience

A good developer experience, or DevEx, is one where developers have access to all the information they need and can switch between focused work and collaborating with the rest of the team, helping them complete tasks quickly and efficiently. When it comes to DevEx, collaboration is king.

It’s enabled by visibility and transparency. Think of the former as the availability of knowledge and the latter as the ability to share knowledge openly and proactively – culture plays a big role here. Improving collaboration means providing teams with the tools and frameworks that allow both visibility and transparency to occur without constantly dragging people into unnecessary meetings.

Expert advice:

If you want a better understanding of where your DevEx is at, you’re going to need to take a good, hard look at it and then action any insights to make improvements. This might involve:

Surveys – ask your developers about everything, from how satisfied they feel at work to the tools they use and code quality.
Interviews – get more depth about challenges your people are facing, where bottlenecks lie, and their ideas for improvements. Exit interviews can be helpful too.

Metrics – poor retention rates might be a sign your DevEx isn’t working, productivity metrics will give you some idea of how efficient your workflow is, and onboarding time clues you in to how good your documentation is and how supportive the team are to new starters.
Tool tracking – get to know how much developers use the tools on offer and which features are hardly used.

How do you foster a communicative culture within your team?

Regular stand-ups and retrospectives
Utilising collaborative tools
Encouraging knowledge sharing

Share knowledge

Collaboration doesn’t happen without communication. When information is siloed by individuals or teams, efficient DevOps cannot occur. Developer self-service and an internal developer platform (IDP) enables everyone to interact using one centralised hub. With chat channels, discussion forums, and knowledge bases built in, they make it much easier for people to understand each other, keeping conflict at bay.

Expert advice:

With access to information, cross-functional teams can evolve and basic competency across all areas can improve. But what should your IDP include? For starters, this curated catalogue should have all the resources your people need to succeed, from code templates and software libraries to APIs, best practice guidelines, and troubleshooting tips.

From the top

This cultural shift can’t be a grassroots effort – it has to come from the top and continue to be led as adoption spreads. That means executive sponsorship of any new tools or process changes, and leading by example when it comes to collaborating with others and effective communication.

Expert advice:

DevOps leaders don’t have to just be in the C-suite. Make sure each DevOps team has a cultural change ambassador who is knowledgeable and passionate about DevOps processes and tools, and encourages others to embrace this way of working.