For those in the software industry, DevOps is a word we have encountered in the past few years without knowing precisely what it means. It’s generally a movement to break down silos in between Development teams and Operations teams within organizations – all with an eye to enhance the business. In this work, Viktor Farcic interviews a bunch of people with the primary question, “What is DevOps?” They all center around this same definition.
To be frank, I did not find the most compelling thing in this book to be finding out what DevOps was about. Asking that question got me through the first two or three interviews. Rather, what kept me going through this book is the sheer wealth of knowledge provided by interviewing people across the IT spectrum. Farcic had conversations with people in consulting companies, in tech companies like Docker and RedHat, and other people doing interesting things. As such, they collectively provided a comprehensive look at the state of IT development and deployment. It was fascinating to see how each one thought about the present and the future and to hear what of today’s technologies and practices they thought would last into the future. Again, that’s where I found the real treasure and value for my time spent reading.
I work in a software lab at a leading academic medical center in the United States. Most academic research groups, in my experience, do not divide operations and development groups strictly. Rather, teams are cross-functional and centered around providing a piece of software to an industry. For instance, I develop Flight Tracker for Scholars, a tool that tracks the career development of academics. I work with a team that is centered on career development research, and I do much of the marketing, customer relations, development, and deployment on my own. DevOps, for situations like mine, is a concept that we have already reckoned with. This book benefited me, therefore, in its touching a wide swath of people from a wide swath of industries.
In my experience, most IT people do not read a lot of books. We read posts on the Internet and news articles instead of in-depth treatments on topics. That fact saddens me because some topics require an in-depth look. This book provides a good, in-depth look at today’s software industry. Anyone in IT could benefit from understanding what their colleagues at other institutions are working on. Reading this book will allow folks to come again to their work afresh and ready to contribute by working smarter. Farcic is a skilled interviewer with a wealth of interesting connections. Reading what he’s been focused on is an excursion well worth one’s time.
The DevOps Paradox: The truth about DevOps by people on the front line
by Viktor Farcic
Copyright (c) 2019
ASIN: B07R23CJN7
Page Count: 533
Genre: Software, Management
www.amazon.com