PuppetConf 2017

The expectations and responsibilities for a modern operations team are high. Today, ops is expected to build and design delivery pipelines, have continuous statistic collection as a part of their monitoring services, and complement the development process with continuous integration and delivery practices, all while still maintaining critical back-office applications that most wouldn’t wish upon their enemies. How did it get that way? What separates the operations teams that lead from the ones who react? To dig in, we’ll consider a reactive team mired in fire-fighting and incapable of making headway, then watch as change that betters the team’s output and perception throughout the organization is slowly introduced. We’ll cover root-cause analysis efforts, bringing pain forward, experimentation, shifting left on quality, and selling automation and DevOps practices to management. This talk will not focus on tools, but rather procedural and cultural improvements that highlight the journey operations has undergone, and how we can prepare for the future.