How to Kickstart DevOps: Practical Practices and Cultural Shifts

If you are still unsure whether to adopt DevOps, start by reviewing the State of DevOps Report and focus on practical tools that solve concrete problems, then work backward to upgrade processes and organizational culture.

From practice to tools: Begin with DevOps practices, use tools to address specific issues, and let the combination of practice and tooling drive process and cultural improvements.

1. DevOps Practices

All roles—development, testing, and operations—should start with continuous integration, which includes version control, automated builds, code quality checks, and automated testing.

1.1 Version Control

Version everything: source code, dependencies, artifacts, environment configurations, and data. Use Git or Subversion, adopt branching strategies, store documentation in version control (e.g., Markdown in GitLab), and consider storing large binaries with Git LFS or similar solutions. Manage artifacts with Nexus or Artifactory using SNAPSHOT, Staging, and Release tiers. Infrastructure as Code and unified change management are also recommended.

1.2 Automated Build

Standardize code structure (e.g., Maven’s Convention Over Configuration) and ensure engineers write their own build scripts. The goal is a fully automated compilation process without manual packaging.

Note: Build includes compilation, code scanning, and unit testing; here we focus on compilation.

1.3 Automated Testing

Understand the testing pyramid.

Encourage engineers to write unit tests and aim for high coverage as a team goal.

1.4 Code Scanning

Static and dynamic code scanning improves code quality, which directly impacts product quality. Measure technical debt, define quality standards, visualize debt, repay debt each iteration, and set quality gates.

1.5 Code Review

Conduct frequent, small code reviews to foster shared knowledge and improve code quality.

1.6 Automated Deployment

Automate complex and repetitive deployment tasks using tools, open deployment to testing teams, and leverage Infrastructure as Code, virtualization, containers, full‑scale deployments, canary releases, and blue‑green deployments.

1.7 Continuous Feedback

Integrate automated build, scanning, review, testing, and deployment into a continuous delivery pipeline, triggering these steps on every commit.

1.8 Automated Operations

Focus on continuous delivery and technical operations (SRE). Practices include operational standards, monitoring (black‑box and white‑box), incident handling, and capacity planning.

2. DevOps Organizational Culture

DevOps is fundamentally a culture of continuous experimentation and learning, rooted in Lean principles that eliminate waste and create value.

Trust and mutual help are the foundations; shared responsibility leads to automation, built‑in quality, and feedback loops.

2.1 Internal DevOps Community

Form a loose internal DevOps community to connect cross‑functional members, share best practices, and invite external experts.

2.2 The Satir Change Model

The model describes five phases of change: initial, resistance, chaos, integration, and new, each with actions to accelerate transformation.