Why Executives Can’t Change
(Breaking Bad Equilibrium)
John Willis @botchagalupe

Why Executives Can’t Change

• Faster
• Cheaper
• Better
Everyone’s Doing It!

• Technical Debt
• Risk Compliance
• Long Lead Times
• Reliability
• Collaboration
Why Can’t They Change?

It’s a strategy that all the
players in the game can adopt
and converge on, but it won’t
produce a desirable outcome
for anyone.
Bad Equilibrium

False Analytics
http://www.slideshare.net/swardley/an-introduction-to-wardley-maps

Game Theory

Is a state of allocation of resources in
which it is impossible to make any one
individual better off without making at
least one individual worse off.
Pareto Efficiency

A situation is inefficient if someone
can be made better off even after
compensating those made worse off.
Pareto Inefficiency

A concept of game theory where the
optimal outcome of a game is one
where no player has an incentive to
deviate from his chosen strategy after
considering an opponent's choice.
Nash Equilibrium

Sarah
Steven
Split Steal
Split
Steal
100%50%
50%
100% 0%
0% 0%
0%
Nash
Equilibrium
X
X
X X

Pareto Inefficient Nash Equilibrium
A Bad Equilibrium

Ibrahim
Nick
Split Steal
Split
Steal
100%50%
50%
100% 0%
0% 0%
0%

Nick
Ibrahim
Split Steal
Split
Steal
100%
0%
0%
0%

Breaking a Bad Equilibrium

30x 200x
more frequent
deployments
faster lead
times
60x 168x
the change
success rate
faster mean time to
recover (MTTR)
2x 50%
more likely to
exceed profitability,
market share &
productivity goals
higher market
capitalization growth
over 3 years*
High performers compared to their peers…
Data from 2014/2015 State of DevOps Report - https://puppetlabs.com/2015-devops-report
Recent IT Performance Data is Compelling

Fast
CheapGood
“Pick Two!”
Golden Triangle

Generative Behavior
ResilienceSpeed
“Must Have All
Three!”
New Triangle

28
Devops Results
Enterprise Organizations
• Ticketmaster - 98% reduction in MTTR
• Nordstrom - 20% shorter Lead Time
• Target - Full Stack Deploy 3 months to minutes
• USAA - Release from 28 days to 7 days
• ING - 500 applications teams doing devops
• CSG - From 200 incidents per release to 18

Devops Kaizen

•Performance Assessment
• Culture and Technology (Scorecard)
•Value Stream Assessment
• Current Sate
• Coaching and Improvement Kata
• Future State
•Dojo Experience
• Continious Learning
Devops - Executives Can Change!

DevOps Retrospectives follows a repeatable process
Map end-to-end process1
Identify wastes, inefficiencies,
bottlenecks
2
Identify countermeasures3

We are doing Graphical Storytelling with VSM notation

Apply Lean Waste Analysis
Structured Waste
Identification
Free-form waste identification

Start with Structured Waste Classification
Inspired by Mary Poppendieck (original) and Jeff Anderson (adaptation)

Countermeasures
Countermeasures should
be:
● Actionable
● Preferably backlog
ready
● Preferably small
batches of work

Common Countermeasure Patterns
Shift Left
Small Batches
Ops Involved Early
Verification Driven Handoffs
Standard Catalogs
*As a Service (pull-based self-service)
“Prod-Like” in all environments
Everything through an SDLC

Use the VSM to design Kanban Board. Use Kanban to track/manage daily work.

Devops Retrospective Flow
1.Key Outcomes
2.Countermeasures
3.Storyboard
4.Kanban Board
5.Post Retrospective
1
2
3
4
5

Devops Coach

Devops Automated Deployment Pipeline
40
Source: Wikipedia - Continuous Delivery

The Value Stream

The Value Stream
3

The Value Stream
3

The Third Way
▪ Toyota Kata
▪ Improvement
▪ Coaching
3
Source: Mike Rother - Toyota Kata

The Third Way
▪ Toyota Kata
▪ Improvement
▪ Coaching
3
Source: Mike Rother - Toyota Kata

Dojo
Experimental Learning

•Experiential learning about DevOps tools and
techniques.
•Team transform their projects to use the
recommended DevOps principles and tools.
•Adaptive training to empower teams to be
DevOps successes.
•It is also a vector by which best practices are
communicated and new behaviors are role-
modeled and practiced.
•The training evolves over time as the
organization’s needs and maturity changes.
Transformation Immersion Center

•Share: I provide opportunities to share
knowledge and make success visible.
•Communicate: I create common
communication channels.
•Standardize: I increase standardization
and consistency of processes and
tools.
•Empower: I develop leadership
capacity
Dojo Strategies and Tactics

•One Day Workshops
•Multiple Day Bootcamps
•Five Day Flashbuilds
•30 Day Challenges
Dojo

•Colocated Teams
• Versus Cubes or Offices
•Understand Flow
• Backlog,WIP, Blockers and Bottlenecks
•Hyper Sprints
• BML, MVP, Vanity Metrics
•Embedded Coaching
• Technical,Agile and Devops Coaches
Dojo