I joined Eveline Oehrlich, Chief Research Officer at the DevOps Institute, on the Humans of DevOps podcast for a conversation about whether DevOps is dead. Spoiler: it is not. But the reality in most companies is that we have not progressed as far as many people think. In this episode, we talk about what a Chief of DevOps actually does, why companies still struggle with walls of confusion, how platform engineering enables scaling, and my prediction about digital factories.
What Does a Chief of DevOps Do?#
As Chief of DevOps at Zühlke, I work as a thought leader. That means speaking at conferences, creating videos, writing blog posts, defining the DevOps strategy and offerings for the company, building education programs, and training people. But the most important part of the role is working in real projects. Only by making your hands dirty in actual client engagements can you truly lead thought in this space.
The Walls of Confusion Are Still There#
When I go into companies today, I still see the same picture I saw years ago. The business has bright ideas, writes them into Word documents and Jira tickets, and throws them over the wall of confusion to the development team. The developers build something and throw it to QA. QA tests something and throws it to operations. Operations struggles to keep it running. The customer gets the result and says: “This is not what we wanted.”
These walls of confusion persist because most companies have not organized themselves across the value stream. They still have silo organizations. They still work in projects with start dates, end dates, and yearly budget goals. Many companies say they are doing DevOps because they introduced a “DevOps team” or hired a “DevOps engineer,” but that is not really doing DevOps.
“We have not yet progressed really into the direction of DevOps. What many companies are doing is they say we have that DevOps silo introduced or we have the DevOps engineer. But that is not really doing DevOps.”
Culture Change Must Come From the Top#
DevOps has three dimensions: mindset, culture, and technical practices. On the technical side, most organizations are doing reasonably well. The real challenge is the cultural and mindset shift. That change can only come from top management. Without executive buy-in for a genuine cultural transformation, DevOps teams are fighting against windmills.
There is a hopeful side: the teams that are doing great DevOps work are producing visible outcomes and results. Over time, these results bubble up to executive leaders, who begin to see that DevOps is an overall culture change, not just a technology initiative.
Scaling DevOps with Platform Engineering#
When you have a small company or a single product, doing DevOps is relatively straightforward. Scaling it is the hard part. When multiple product teams work independently, each team tends to reinvent the wheel. They build their own toolchains, manage their own infrastructure, and carry a massive cognitive load.
This is where platform engineering comes in. A platform team builds a platform, including APIs, self-service portals, and a marketplace, so that product teams can build, maintain, and operate their products efficiently. The platform team creates value for the teams while the product teams create value for the customers.
What skills does a platform engineer need? You need to be a software engineer. A platform is a product that requires building user interfaces, APIs, databases, and integrations. On top of that, you need a strong DevOps mindset and deep knowledge of cloud-native technologies.
The DevOps Naming Debate#
The term DevOps is not perfect. It implies just development and operations. People suggest DevSecOps, BizDevOps, DevXOps, and many other variations. I think this debate leads nowhere. DevOps is about bringing all people, all processes, and all technology together to continuously deliver value. The exact term matters less than having a shared understanding of what it means.
Organizing Across the Value Stream#
Eveline asked me what I would recommend to a Chief of DevOps who wants to expand their DevOps journey from a people and culture perspective. My answer: organize across the value stream.
Identify the value streams in your company. Understand how you generate value, what steps are needed, and which people are involved. Then organize those people into value stream teams, sometimes also called product teams. Give these teams budget and the power to make decisions. Empower them to focus on their customers and build great products with built-in quality.
This shifts the focus away from projects (“we need these 10 features”) toward customer-centric product development with happy customers and happy employees.
My Prediction: Digital Factories#
When Eveline asked me to pull out my crystal ball, I predicted digital factories. We can already see it happening with platform engineering. Companies are standardizing their software development and moving toward industrialization.
In a digital factory, teams are organized across the value stream, producing digital products or cyber-physical products. The platform engineering team provides the conveyor belt for these digital factories. Software development is no longer about every team reinventing everything. Instead, standardized components fit together because they follow common standards.
“My prediction is we will see a lot of digital factories coming up.”
Key Takeaways#
- DevOps is not dead, but most companies have not truly adopted it yet. Silo organizations, project thinking, and missing cultural change are still the norm.
- Culture change must come from the top. Without executive commitment, DevOps teams lack the mandate for real transformation.
- Platform engineering enables scaling. A platform team builds a product that reduces cognitive load and lets product teams focus on delivering value.
- Organize across the value stream. Move from silo-based project teams to empowered product teams aligned along value streams.
- The future is digital factories. Standardized platforms, organized teams, and industrialized software development will define the next era.