2. Enterprise DevOps: I Wouldn’t Start from Here — Understand Your DevOps Starting Point There is an old joke in the UK about a couple of city dwellers providing thoughts and experiences on potential approaches driving through the countryside and becoming lost. After to identifying an automation foundation that enables DevOps several minutes driving around, they see a local farmer. in a large, established organization. Drawing next to him they wind down the car window. Create a standard taxonomy “Excuse me, could you tell us the best way to get to the of capability nearest town?” The farmer looks at them, nods, pauses and says: “Well if I wanted to go to town I wouldn’t start In large organizations, one of the key challenges is to ensure from here.” that a standard taxonomy is used. This assists in optimizing knowledge sharing and understanding the available solutions If you are introducing DevOps across a large enterprise you and experience in the enterprise. The enterprise architect will probably have a lot of empathy for the farmer’s view. function should own the Enterprise Information Management Given an inherited technology estate, along with embedded (EIM) solution and it makes sense for this to detail the standard process and practices, it is sometimes difficult to know capabilities you are looking to deliver. where to start. You are also likely to inherit at least some vociferous individuals advising why current practices have Defining these capabilities is critical. Technologists, as a rule, to remain as they are. are better at defining solutions than requirements. By focusing on capabilities rather than solutions (or tool We shall start by stating that it is a given that DevOps names) you drive a higher quality of debate. It is also adoption revolves around creating a culture that provides easier to identify gaps. In a cross-technology organization, it support for autonomy and removes centralized command can highlight surprising areas of strength. For example, the control behaviors. It is not delivering a raft of tools. That mainframe platform tends to have strong automated said, there is plenty of excellent content that details the deployment capabilities which are often missed when concepts and behaviors required. We are not going to continuous integration and automated testing is discussed. attempt to replicate that. Rather, we shall concentrate on 4.