This document summarizes Victoria Blessing's journey leading a culture change towards DevOps at Texas A&M University. It describes how she graduated from Texas A&M and was recruited to champion DevOps in 2013. It also discusses how she educated others on DevOps concepts through workshops and emails. It highlights that changing culture, especially in a tradition-bound university, requires slow, steady evangelism. The document advocates adopting DevOps practices to break down silos between development and operations teams and improve collaboration.

1. OUR DEVOPS JOURNEY:
An Exercise in Changing Culture

2. VICTORIA BLESSING
➤ Operations Engineer, College of Architecture,
Texas A&M University
➤ Graduated from Texas A&M in 2014
➤ Recruited to DevOps bandwagon in 2013
➤ Professional Yak Shaver

3. “YAK SHAVING”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/snapperwolf/6952219933/

4. “YAK SHAVING”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trXjZ70ab1Q

5. We have a culture problem?

6. “Developers need to understand
infrastructure. Operations people need to
understand code. People need to f**king
work with each other and not just occupy
space next to each other.
-John Vincent
http://blog.lusis.org/

7. DEVOPS CAN’T BE
SUCCESSFUL
WITHOUT A
CULTURE SHIFT

8. COLLEGE OF
ARCHITECTURE

9. by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
You need this book

10. THE PHOENIX PROJECT
➤Main Lessons
1.There are 4 types of work
2.Work-in-progress is the silent killer
3.Unplanned work accrues technical debt
4.Bottlenecks constrain work

11. THE PHOENIX PROJECT
➤The Four Types of Work
1.Business projects
2.Infrastructure projects
3.Changes
4.Unplanned work

12. THE PHOENIX PROJECT
➤The Three Ways
1.Systems thinking
2.Amplify feedback loops
3.Culture of continual experimentation
and learning

13. AFTER WE
ESTABLISHED OUR
DEVOPS CULTURE, THE
REST WAS EASY
(sort of)

14. TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

15. UNIVERSITY ENVIRONMENTS ARE
ADVERSE TO CHANGE
…not to mention one as rooted in tradition as
Texas A&M (whoop!)

16. SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE
➤ Initial Evangelism
➤ Workshops, lots of emails
➤ Getting a bite, and putting together a team
➤ Closing a deal

17. ARE YOU READY TO MAKE A
CULTURE CHANGE?
(and adopt Chef too)

18. VICTORIA
BLESSING
@_vblessing
vblessing@arch.tamu.edu