Build a Work From Wherever, Whenever Culture for DevOps Teams | DevOps Onramp 2023

you Hi everybody. It's Andy Mann from sageable here. Super excited to be at strong conference today today.

I'm going to talk about something sort of we'll be touchy feeling that's okay. It's a devops conference. It's about culture as much as about technology.

So I want to talk with you today about how I built a work for Wherever Whenever culture with my devops teams using devops principles. I'll explain what some of that means first. I just want to make sure you we all are on the same page.

You look work from wherever we never look you can call a remote working your hybrid working or whatever you'd like. It's here to stay the God now very respected industry animals from doing its own primary research has said this just recently 60% of employees expect to work remotely at least once a week compared to only 38% who reported that before the pandemic So it's pretty strong primary research from a honorable and respected research firm. But you know what?

This is not just hoity-toity stuff is about coal-faced. It's about what people think and what humans want. So let's go to Reddit instead.

This is what our thread on the Australia subreddit and you can probably tell by the language. Sorry mate, but I'm not gonna go my life miserably. Word username from Reddit if you've ever made already, you know that sometimes it's not safe for work.

But look this is the two contrasting views. This is the sort of senior honorable Wall Street Management Consultant viewpoint on one side on the other side. This is the whole face work or individual contributor who's affected most on a day-to-day basis viewpoint on the other side and they're both the same.

Workers are not going back full time to work. There are exceptions. Of course, there are process work physical work.

There's a bunch of people who can't do that. There's once we don't want to do that, but fundamentally the workplace does not look the same. so What do I know about that?

I'm just a Techo right true. I am not an HR expert. I am a tech leader and I've done this before I did this recently.

I've spent 25 years working leading remotely across different roles. I've been in Tech a lot longer than 24 years. Look at this air, but I've been remote for 25 years as an individual contributor as a leader as an executive as a consultant in product an engineering and marketing and sales in all sorts of roles.

I know this is good work. I know it can be done and I know how to do it most recent hours the CTO at a company called kumu Enterprise video software as a service and I actually implemented a whole work from Wherever Whenever culture globally send people home closed offices shut down data centers move to the cloud the whole business. We actually officiate officially implemented work from wherever whenever or ever how you communicate your policy is really important.

I'm not going to go into that today, but do understand HR and legal are an important part of this leadership discussion. I'm going to talk to Dave about technology leadership and work from wherever whenever but absolutely be handing love with your legal and HR partners. I am now the global CCO in Foundry at sageable.

So if you need advice on this or anything to do with digital transformational technology leadership come look me up. so priority number one Revisit your cyber security procedures privacy governance compliance. All of this super super crazy important.

Everything is going to be really need to be Revisited. It really is. It may not need change but it probably gonna need change in many cases.

You'll need to adapt and accommodate remote work in your policies. Yeah, you need to ensure that work from home work from Wherever Whenever policies deliver on your customer governance needs. It might not be able to do that with the typical work from home setup.

Especially if your starts using personal devices by the way, you know, multiple data center security standards ISO needs and others for example require certain corporate controls. So you need to lock door with a key card access but this is a nist, uh, cyber security framework requirement. I tell you I'm broadcasting this today from my home office.

Do you think I've got it a pass card lock on my door or side don't so some of these normal policies and procedures wouldn't think twice about if you're using even lower clouds space you're gonna have to change because they become sort of absurd in work from Wherever Whenever policies In some Case by the way, you will have to certify that you do things you have to certify data is safe. You cannot do certain processes. So you have to certify certain exceptions.

That's where you need to work with your customers to make sure you understand what's acceptable to them in a regulated industry. You absolutely need to work with your lawyers to understand what's acceptable to the law. You might need to provide and even require us.

I know I know. I know I did research primary research on the importance of bring your own devices. It drives productivity.

It drives satisfaction. I was so many good things. You know, what sometimes cyber security is not negotiable.

And sometimes you need to do things like put MDM onto a handheld device before you can let your Cloud up so you do it use it for a remote support. You might need to do things like apply for hard disk encryption. Make sure the pii is never saved and stored on any device that is not encrypted.

And so this might mean you need to mandate use of devices again. I'm so sorry. We're possible you absolutely want to enable staff to bring their devices.

You know, they do get better Tech. They they're happier in most cases gonna save you money. But sometimes you have to bite the bullet because cyber security is priority.

Number one. I actually say it's probably number zero probably number zero don't go to jail right good start doing business everything flows from being. By the way, document all this document your cyber security and governments report requirements explicitly for your remote workers.

When you work from home, you've got a whole different set of requirements and challenges you to deal with in terms of governance and compliance. So you absolutely document it share it make sure people know what they're meant to do. You're just assume it talk to them directly.

You might need to establish things like a clean desk policy a data storage policy. People got hard drives at home. What are they putting on them?

Are they backing up pii stuff like that again? It might be something you can't control technologically, but you need to maintain that and so you'll need to certify it through policy. You know, let's face it data center clean room procedures don't exactly work when you're doing a cloud Ops and data recovery and incident response to a block in the morning from your kitchen table.

So start with cyber. Next this is pretty much motherhood apple pie. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time here, but look, you know, if you're going to have to go to work from remote work from wherever whenever you're gonna have to use cloud Tech.

I assume you probably are already. Even basic style right? Where do you run your product database if you don't have premises, so where do you run hard where so coming?

For example, we had encoders physical boxes, which took video in and encoded into digital type. Okay capabilities dedicated chips. These are not standard Intel or AMD stuff.

We needed to find Colo space look avoid color. If you can cost a lot. It's much less flexible.

It actually opens up new veterans protect maybe but sometimes you can't avoid it. Use the tools to call our collaboration online use the tools for collaborating and development for collaborating operations for collaborating in product and product management store Common documents common artifacts together in someone like Google Docs, you know, I will tell you that one thing video really does change everything when you talk about work from home work from Wherever Whenever so take this with whatever grains of salt you'd like. I used to work for a video company.

That was basically Cloud so I have certain biases but I really believe that video changes every Um, you can have video on always I like to do that in my meetings, by the way with my technical team. And by the way, they don't love that because a lot of the people I work with the people. I employ they're introverted their code focused and you know, they choose to work with computers not people for reasons and I get that but you know what sometimes I don't care what you look like.

I don't care if you've been for a run. I don't care if you haven't had a shower, you know, what presence bias is a real thing. We need to see each other's faces.

Occasionally. I always mandate video on for my meetings for that reason. I want to make it a safe space, but then I want to see your face.

I ask my team to put video on for other meeting because I think it's good for them. That presence bias is a real thing. If you can see someone's face you start to recognize them as human as a person that I work with you start to not think of them as that it person, right?

But that's gonna be up to them. But certainly in my meetings video is on. I also by the way encourage you to record and store every video you do with your team, maybe not for one-on-ones.

But if there's any larger group, especially when team members can't make it because maybe they're in the wrong Geo the wrong time zone. Maybe they're off sick. Maybe they're taking care of elderly parents or said children.

They need to come back and review that artifact that cultural artifact. So record store make it available. And please please record in a proper scene.

It's a proper content management system. No SharePoint one drive are not proper conduit Management Systems. Look, I used kumu.

Of course, I did because that was the part we have but there's lots of good videos storage systems. You can make available even secure private where you can control access and even do cool things like transcriptions and so forth for the people who maybe can't hear or don't speak the language use this to make all of this communic. Should always cloudy communication accessible.

So you do include everyone although one last thing. Oh, you can see the tools that I use my team used while I was at Kumo. So your elastic profile and your relics and desk for our operation Jenkins Hansen ansible for the automation.

We used a bunch of different Dev team collab tools mostly atlassian Suite office for email and productivity. But Google docs for collaboration. That was problematic.

By the way, I would in future pick one slack take some group chat Zoom. I'm not a huge fan but it's it is the lingua Franca of the teleconferencing world right now. We use teens where we had to but I was not a big fan personally and like I said, we used to move for the CMS, although one thing we used up a technology meeting owl.

It's a technology device. It's a microphone and multiple 3D 360 degree cameras so that you can bring everyone into the virtual conference. Not just whoever is sitting close to the microphone in the conference room.

So with that you can now start to do asynchronous workflow what I mean by that is it doesn't have to happen in real time. It doesn't have them at the same time. You can do a lot of things with teams that are distributed even across time zones with asynchronous workflow.

So asynchronous work by might be something like we're gonna hold a meeting but all of my team in India can't make it because it's midnight there. So we're gonna record it do transcriptions and let you play it back with comments in real time. So you can feel like you are But next time we're gonna do it in Indian time, and that means that people in California will have to do it on a video catch up Mom.

These are asynchronous workflows. Look when you send an email. That's an asynchronous work.

You're not expecting a response straight away. People think chess is synchronous. But other people think it's not.

So again, you need to work on these workflows with your teams. so establish the processes especially across time zones Define what you expect explain and measure clear goals make them smart by the way, you know smartball smart goals simple measurable attainable realistic timely that smart Set the top down goals that are aligned make sure that every okr NBO kpi, whatever you call them for every one of your team is aligned so that they can look at that goal when they need to make their own decisions. So this is a key part of leading an asynchronous team.

You're not always around to answer their questions when they need to know do I code this do I code that do I deliver now? Do I not do I stop doing this? I can start doing that.

if they don't know they need to ask you and if you're not around like so they either make a mistake or slow down. Maybe they might make the right decision maybe not but if you give them the clear goals if you document through a racy model or something similar who has responsibility for what when why and how if you document their human API, how do people contact them? How do they get work done how they get work started.

How do they find out whether it's working how they know when it's done if you establish slis or slos or you know, just objective for your team not just for your system, but for your people so that you can share the commitment to get the job done as a team. And then document all that around the known good patterns that drive better results, you know state of devops report is a very good source for that. I'll talk about that a moment in terms of metrics.

If you can do all this then what you're doing is establishing systems thinking this is such a strong devops principle. I believe in it very deeply this idea of if I know my role in the entire system of planning building testing delivering and running software. Then I can make good decisions for myself at any time for my work if I am t-shaped people and I know a little bit about what my peers are doing in other areas other departments or other roles then even better.

I really am part of the system. I know about the system now I can make those good decisions. Look you need to make sure that you all have understanding especially those calms right when you think about communication techniques.

What is what is urgent? What's not so in my team email was not urgent, but it was persistent. Slack was a hit and run event if you were there and you could answer great, but my team actually taught me no scrolling up on slack.

It's a it's it's it's it disappears. Text message is super urgent. Get back to me right away phone call pick up the phone.

This is a disaster happening. Right now. We had this documented we knew each other's modes with new each other's time zones.

We put into slack and and in calendars we block time to do Project work. We did a bunch of stuff like that to know who interrupting when but you've got to make sure that all of this is known and shared and agree because not everyone is in the room at the same time anymore and you're not there to answer those questions. One of the most difficult things that I get asked about is how do I manage performance for my development and operations teams when they're not in the room?

Look, I've been doing this for 25 years. I've been managed when I'm not in the room as well. It's not rocket science.

Really you can't manage by walking around anymore. So you've got to manage with data. So measure what matters like I said start with those sodorometrics the state of devops report.

No measure the value stream look at the productivity from a team perspective. Look at it from Individual perspective use data to understand delivery efficiency and Effectiveness. But also make sure you consider the human because understand that data does not always capture human activity, for example Data on delivery lead time on deployment frequency on cycle time does not take into account even slightly how hard or easy a specific feature might be deliver whether the developer had to create had to build new skill set in order to be able to do that code and build it properly where they had to rope in two or three of their peers to get a really elegant solution.

Whether existing code had to be refactored we had to do this c** all the time. We used to have a big monolithic code base every time we did feature development. We would haul it out of the monolith and refactor as a micro service every single time.

We did that we added work which was not captured in our estimates and the data. But the converse is always don't measure what doesn't. look lines of code is that is the big bad example, it's so easy to game that metric and if you ask your team to meet certain numbers you are telling them I want you to do this.

And the things like line of code, they will. That's not what you want to look at. You want to look at real output.

So on the right there, you can see what I think of as some devops metrics. There's been around for a while. I got these when I was co-author on the state of devops report and thought about these, you know beyond just meantime to repair meantime between failure cycle time deployment frequency and failure rate.

Think about how do you measure your Effectiveness in cultural development? How do you measure the efficiency of the processes? How do you measure the quality of the code that you're delivering both from a sort of a testing point of view but also from user experience point of view.

How do you measure the system efficiency and productivity your service big enough, you know? I always question activity metrics, but bottom line you do still need to measure activity because if you don't do anything then nothing gets done and but ultimately you need to know the impact of the work. Are you getting sign up so you can check out so you revenue or people using this function there's all sorts of things you can do.

By the way, Remote Management doesn't mean absent management. You might not be sitting in the home office with your team. But you're still there.

You're still there manager. You're still their leader. You still need to connect you would still need to drop in.

You need to make that normal. By the way. I know some managers will call first.

I'll text are you free, you know, I get it. You don't interact flow. That's really important.

You need to establish mechanisms for your people to protect their flow. When you get into this mental state where everything just comes straight through and you're super productive people get a skiing or or running. I get it writing coders get it coding.

It drives output drives Focus. You've got to protect it. But use mechanisms for that block out calendars put out of office into your slack and as a manager, if you don't see that drop in occasionally, make sure you know what they're doing.

They're okay, you know make it normal. You're not checking up on them. You're checking in on them that's already big difference to me.

So yeah continue to be a manager managed by metrics though because you no longer can do manageable by walking. As a leader you have to ensure remote culture is not an oxymoron. Look remember cultures and output not an input.

It is reactive. It is not predictive culture is not what you say. It is a result of what you do.

It's not a mandate for how you will act. It is a record of what you have done. So you got to continue to create and maintain culture.

I love co-creating a strategic Manifesto with my so I started with corporate values mission. Strategic Mission Vision goals the top three and by the way cooler was things like Drive emitter results. So real board level stuff drill it down into departmental team and even individual goals.

You get to decide together. Also, by the way, what it means to be a functional team to achieve those goals especially work with your lead. Regardless of who's in what office you can focus on the outcome and again make these goals smart.

strategic measurable attainable realistic and time make sure they're aligned make sure you get that ability for your team to engage this system thinking if they understand the true north of their business and how they're day-to-day work delivers on that. Then you're going to get systems thinking people who are empowered to make good decisions independent and that is amazingly powerful for productivity and quality. I do recommend that you accommodate time for non-work look research shows that average knowledge workers actually are only productive for around four hours a day.

Look, we ask people to work eight hours. But a lot of that is unproductive time in an office. It's going getting a coffee.

It's talking with your peers. It's it's a whole bunch of stuff in a home office. It might be going for a quick bike ride.

You'll see right. Sometimes you mental health. You need to do things like this.

Accommodate the fact that your people will not be working at their desk on their keyboard for eight straight hours. You know that to be true. You've seen it in the office.

There's no reason to expect it when people are in their home office either. Part of what you do have to do those swap out your goals for continuous goals, but being so talk about okrs and kpis. Typically we do Performance Management and so forth on what Whatley basis Certainly.

I hope we're not doing annual anymore. Even quarterly is not fast enough. If you let your team float in the wind for three months at a time.

Do you really think they're gonna get the results that your business needs you need to manage this right? Like I said activities important, but you need to manage output. So continuous delivery goals are really important.

They make them open make them public make it so everyone can see again in an office environment. Everyone sees everyone you see everyone else's work. You see when they're struggling too, by the way.

make that up normal part of work from home and remote work as well monitor continuously monitor transparently monitor objectively your team's performance and correct course quickly when you need to By the way, part of this openness and transparency is about sharing cultural artifacts. We know in devops. This is a big part of what we do culture is a output.

It's a product of what we do. So one of the things we do is we share the artifacts that represent culture. So whether it's the raw documenting roles and processes and practices maybe with us a dashboard about delivery times feature retirement bug retirement and uptime and availability.

Yeah, whatever it is distribute the creation the sharing the celebration of your cultural artifacts to create that engagement ownership, even when you're not in the office those cultural Effects, by the way, they should be digital cultural are effects. So that people aren't in the office can see them because at some point no one's gonna be in the office. And do make sure everyone matters individually and collectively as I mean by, you know, no physical artifacts people working from home get excluded when you do that.

Make sure you accommodate everyone in meetings in goals in your directions on what you want to achieve. Do you call on your quiet introverts in teams? They can hide and we know that they have stuff to contribute.

I don't want to make people uncomfortable or embarrassed but I need everyone on my team to contribute and engage. This is work from home can be very isolating. You need to promote that engagement.

Well, I mix it up too. Like I said mix up when you have meetings so that people different times don't enjoy where you have meetings so that people who can normally not physically meet with their peers get that chance. Along those lines.

That's why you have to make sure that all your remote staff are first class members of your team. So I talked about video the video on video or video changing everything and talk about my techniques, but I do use telepresence do you use those related Technologies? Like like the meeting owl to enhance the ability for people who work from home to feel like they are in your office.

Also part of that is anticipating articulating and enforcing the norms and conventions of your meetings, you know, so my rules so my conventions no side conversation, right when you you know this when you've got people in the room talking to each other it overrides the condenser mic and the people from home all of a sudden you can't make out anything your isolated. You're not a first-class team let the speaker finish. So now interruptions one person speaking you time similar sort of thing published the agenda stick to the agenda don't do random acts of a gendering because if people aren't necessary in a meeting at 2 o'clock in the morning, maybe they shouldn't be there and they can stay in bed.

But if you all of a sudden bring up an agenda item that they need to attend to they're not there. It's not fair. You're not including them.

You're not first class team members. What else did I do? I'm consider fully virtual meetings.

Even when you're all in person or most of you in person. Look if you're all in person laptops are closed be in person be present when you can but when you've got mixed and hybrid work from Wherever Whenever teammates who aren't maybe there or maybe we'll watch a recording later considering having everyone with their laptops open with the camera on a microphone. It can get difficult technologically.

I'm an audio engineer by by qualification. So maybe you need a headphone rather than a public speaker to stop feedback, but it's all possible. Then everyone gets the same experience.

That's what I mean by be first class members. Well, they trust yourself to make the decisions of where they need to be there in that room at that time based on your agenda. Yes, you're the manager you're their leader.

You should absolutely feel the right to ask them why but also, you know at some point you just have to trust but verify because they're probably not going to do the work in the time frame that you I'll use their own time again measure outputs. understand your people and it won't matter when they're working. What you will see is what they produce.

Along the same lines use explicit mechanisms to bring everyone look at Kumo at Splunk at CA. We had employee resource groups to bring together similar kinds of people. So yeah an employee Resource Group for the dev team one for the QA team that sort of thing but also, you know, this is the sort of Spotify model yield model.

So for the people who are similar so lgbtqia plus people PSC people people are just sports fans, or maybe it's a crochet Club. Yeah carve out these opportunities possibly a leaders the rg2, by the way, because we've got unique challenges, don't we But again record store share it all make everyone open have it at different times maybe having in different locations use tools to translate to summarize to to transcription because not everyone can turn this sound on at home either, right and again establish those clear protocols and published them to yourself to your team and to everyone who interacts with your team. So they know what your interfaces are what your Protocols are what your expectations are.

So now you start to work together better. Um, all those lines folks on yourself a little bit to be an authentic leader in a Humane leader bring yourself to work. But also know that not everyone's being comfortable being there authentic self at work sometimes work is just work and it's not a family.

So it's a leader you need to accommodate these unique differences. I love to do things like a disc assessments. I don't like mbti but these personality assessments so I know what individuals are like and how they respond in different situations helps me work better with them as a human.

I meant I model my own behaviors. For example, I open up my Strava no cycling social media for my team to let them know that sometimes I need to blow off steam and I go for a bike ride in the middle of the day. I get my work done, but it might not be in the time frame that they expect just as if they can get their work done a time frame.

I don't expect could be the middle of the night. They could be up all night with midnight feedings and so sleep through half the morning, but then they work all night. This is what worked from wherever whenever is all about.

So act intentionally to understand your team. What is their individual challenge work style work-life balance? Remember mental health is already important part of work from wherever whenever it is isolating.

It can be depressing. It can be very difficult. But if you make these opportunities to include people and you're a human leader yourself, Asking people how they feel today.

It's not value judgment on the business. How you doing today? Let me know if I can help.

Can I get some work off your plate? Can I give you something more interesting to do can I connect you with someone who can help? That's as a lead.

I think my job is to help my team to be better be more successful and it'll work from wherever we're an environment. I've got to be humain leader if I want to achieve you outcomes I want for the business. As with devops sharing is everything right sharing is caring share your team successes cultural artifacts right launch feature a time and a bug fix a particularly difficult problem solve.

Share your failures too. Right? Remember when you're in the office everyone knows you see when someone drops there here.

You see when someone pounds the desk and explains in anguish. You don't ever see that and work from Wherever Whenever environment so share failures as well. Share it up and out but s***.

Well personally share your own successes and failures. Mainly your failures right make your team know that failure is an option failure is a normal failure means you're trying new things and that's okay by forward fail small fail fast fail cheap, but show that failure is okay and share especially successes up. And out so that the entire business sees your work from Wherever Whenever team and what they're contributing to the business.

but also remember context sport sometimes you have to turn up in person. Even with video sometimes you have to eyeball people so encourage approve and fund travel. For a car for collaboration look he's saving so much money in rent and data center costs you can afford it.

Set expectations for that in person attendance too. By the way when you are in person your team should be there with you. There are current potential for exceptions always for the human in your team.

But ultimately if you're making on visit someone if they're making the other to visit their team or their peers or others turn up be in the office. Don't join the meetings virtually. On the same token be fully present do what you can only do in person when you're in person focus on you know, whiteboard sessions to get our brainstorming together.

Don't worry about shouting over each other maybe suspend some of those rule because you're all in the room together play with cutouts on the UI ux model right physical cutouts to get the best version of your product interface. I dress up we're silly hats do roll play. Do the things you can only do in person get a team t-shirt money.

Shut down those laptops. Be present when you're present. And distribute any artifacts to everyone when you're done so that everyone's included.

So that's pretty much all I have to say I will just finish with. One slide. Oh my goodness.

Look as a leader and a manager can be confronted you're used to walking around. You'll see your people used to see where they're working or they're slacking on having a coffee or they talked with mates. They talk about a work problem and they talk about the football.

New processes empowered workers self-driven decision makers lack of visibility. Look, I know you feel out of control. You want to reassert?

You will inevitably think about monitoring practices and performance and productivity you all think about technologies that do that but please please key loggers face detection attention analysis remote control of people's cameras and microphones. Oh, wow, so invasive likely counterproductive probably illegal in many jurisdictions and just playing creepy look, Understand what your people want and need give them clear Direction. Let them be empowered to make good decisions as part of an overall system.

And then Monitor and course, correct frequently. And you won't need to do any of this do not be creepy manager proficient and skilled technology team takes trust and you will need to build new managerial teams. But you know what, it's doable.

I've done it. I've given you some ideas today. So I hope this has been helpful.

If you need any more information, or you want direct personal Consulting on how to drive this work from Wherever Whenever cultural change. Please come and see sageable. com or visit us on social media or violating and with that.

I'll send you back to the rest of this amazing texture on conference. I'm Andy manassasable. Thank you so much for your time.