Creating a culture for Continuous Delivery

Crea%ng a Culture for Con%nuous Delivery

John Esser Director Engineering Produc%vity

Change Architect Ancestry.com ChefConf 2013

Ancestry.com is the world’s largest online family history resource with more than 2 million subscribers, 11 billion records, and 4 PB family history data. Ancestry.com can help you discover your roots and tell your unique family story.

You are here my child…

What is culture?

•  “Culture is the byproduct of consistent behavior.”

•  It is what the organiza%on values, rewards, and reinforces. It defines a “norm.”

•  Culture develops over %me; it becomes engrained.

•  Culture is in the organiza%onal subconscious; it is habit; it is reflexive.

What is culture?

•  Culture is manifest in the organiza%on’s social structures: group and team structures, rela%onships, and communica%on paUerns.

•  Culture is hierarchical. There are super-‐cultures and sub-‐cultures.

•  Culture is emo%onal.

Cultural forces are powerful and formidable.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” -‐Peter Drucker

Culture eats everything! Strategy for breakfast, collaboraBon for lunch,

and execuBon for dinner!

“Culture…[creates] either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or

miserable stagna%on.” -‐Shawn Parr, Fast Company

Culture can be changed!

But it is oIen not easy to do.

Lessons Learned @ Ancestry

How we created a culture that supported con%nuous delivery and

other cool changes.

Memories, Light the corners of my mind Misty water-‐colored memories

Of the way we were

“Ancestry was already successful, but had problems and issues like every company. Except, there was a vision and a sense that Ancestry was capable of more, much more.”

Ancestry.com Phase I -‐ Transforma%on

Agile – Lean Boot Up (Scrum)

Enterprise Agile Framework

Architecture Standards for agility

IaaS / Private Cloud

Con%nuous Delivery

2 year period (April 2010 – April 2012)

Ancestry.com Phase II -‐ Matura%on

Refine CD plahorm

Standard-‐iza%on / Unified tools, approaches

Lean adop%on into other areas of business, e.g. marke%ng.

Business Agility

2 -‐ 3 year period (2012 – 2015?)

Lesson #1: Be [or u%lize] a change agent.

Evangelist

Parent

Coach Colleague

Psychologist

Manager

Lesson #2: Adopt a Lean-‐Agile mindset as the

founda%on for change.

LEAN

Agile (Scrum, Kanban,

XP, etc.) DevOps

Lean Startup

LeanUX

Con%nuous Delivery

Lean is fundamentally about flowing value to the customer

as quickly as possible.

The Lean Mindset

AUend to value stream and flow

Systems thinking; think holis%cally

Eliminate waste to reduce cycle %me and increase efficiency

Autonoma%on

Respect for people

Commitment to con%nuous improvement.

People X Process

Realize that both are necessary.

Lesson #3: Prepare for change.

Red Pill, Blue Pill?

23

“This is your last chance. Aper this, there is no turning back…You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up and believe whatever you want to. You take the red pill…you stay in wonderland…and I

show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. – Morpheus, The Matrix

Lesson #4: Envision, evangelize, educate.

Envision a future, but speak as if it were happening NOW.

Educa%on/evangeliza%on events

•  Small team training sessions. •  Weekly brown bags. •  Tech talks. •  Book sharing sessions. •  Cul%vate communi%es of interest. •  EMBED into the team.

YOU CAN’T OVER DO IT.

Lesson #5: Create a posi%ve emo%onal reac%on.

Your proposal must be reasonable and logical, but emo%on is what will

invoke desire and ac%on.

You must win over their hearts and minds.

Paint a picture of how life in the future will be.

Find pain, remove it.

Use stories,

use successes, use experiences.

Lesson #6: You must challenge the “norms.”

Typical things you need to challenge

•  “Tradi%onal” IT •  Silos / Func%onal groups •  What devs / ops / test / product do? •  Vendor/cookie-‐cuUer solu%ons. •  ITIL / SOX misapplica%on

CASE STUDY

Who is responsible for deploying and operaBng the applicaBon?

Who is responsible for applicaBon

availability?

Ops is accountable for availability

App may be unstable Ops restricts changes;

doesn’t want to be vic%m Ops requires

deployment of applica%on.

Ops enforces opera%ng/running applica%on.

Ops requires change control; “slows

down” development

“Tradi%onal” Ops

“Dev Must Own What They Build ‘Cradle To Grave’…You Build It You Run It.” -‐Werner Vogels

Ops Transforma%on

•  Be a service organiza%on •  Owns availability of infrastructure •  Provides capacity •  Promotes infrastructure standards. •  Op%mize for delivery speed above cost/efficiency.

Lesson #7: Some%mes you just have to force it.

This is risky. Do this carefully.

Scene: BeauBful fall day in September 2010… Me (to Ops group): “We need every team to be able to deploy at least daily if they need to.” Ops 1: “What?! That isn’t possible. We can’t even deploy now without serious problems and you want us to do it more open. That is a recipe for disaster.” Ops 2: “How will we hold that many Change Advisory Boards?” Ops 3: “I don’t want to be available at all hours on Dev’s beck and call to roll their code…that sucks.” Me: “No, they will do it themselves.” Ops (in unison): “What?! You are nuts.”

Me Them

Engineering Produc%vity


Dev Ops


Con%nuous Delivery Tools

Test Tools

DevOps

18 months later…

•  50% of all deploys are done with our con%nuous delivery plahorm. “Blob roll” is dying.

•  30-‐40 deploys per week and increasing (previously 1 per 2 weeks).

•  Incidents with auto-‐deployed services have significantly decreased.

•  Business is now leveraging capability to increase innova%on.

Lesson #8: Pa%ence…s%ck to it…

transforma%on takes %me!

5 years (and not done)!

Agile – Lean Boot Up (Scrum)

Con%nuous Delivery

Business Agility

The next thing!

4-‐5 years

3 years

2 years

1 year

Thank You.

Q & A

Technology

Creating a culture for Continuous Delivery