Quotes from Gene Kim

never fear conflict, never be afraid to tell the truth, and never be afraid to say what I really think.

our most fragile artifacts support either our most important revenue-generating systems or our most critical projects. In

Without automated testing, continuous integration is the fastest way to get a big pile of junk that never compiles or runs correctly.

the systems most prone to failure are also our most important and are at the epicenter of our most urgent changes. When

In any system of work, the theoretical ideal is single-piece flow, which maximizes throughput and minimizes variance. You get there by continually reducing batch sizes.

outcomes are what matter—not the process, not controls, or, for that matter, what work you complete.

Show me a developer who isn't crashing production systems, and I'll show you one who can't fog a mirror. Or more likely, is on vacation.

Creating and prioritizing work inside a department is hard. Managing work among departments must be at least ten times more difficult.

Imagine a world where product owners, Development, QA, IT Operations, and Infosec work together, not only to help each other, but also to ensure that the overall organization succeeds. By working toward a common goal, they enable the fast flow of planned work into production (e.g., performing tens, hundreds, or even thousands of code deploys per day), while achieving world-class stability, reliability, availability, and security.

I've also come across otherwise smart [people] who are of the mistaken belief that if they hold on to a task, something only they know how to do, it'll ensure job security. These people are knowledge Hoarders. This doesn't work. Everyone is replaceable. No matter how talented they are. Sure it may take longer at first to find out how to do that special task, but it will happen without them.

Good morning, and I'd like to just answer the question that you're probably thinking. The answer is, yes, we're the team that built the current mobile apps—both of them. We're not proud, and we're just glad users can't rate an app with zero stars.

The flow of work goes in one direction only: forward. Create a system of work in it that does that. Remember, the goal is single-piece flow.

Right now, we focus mostly on having deployable code at the end of the project. I propose we change that requirement. At each three-week sprint interval, we not only need to have deployable code but also the exact environment that the code deploys into, and have that checked into version control, too.

In our world, Development and IT Operations are adversaries; testing and Infosec activities happen only at the end of a project, too late to correct any problems found; and almost any critical activity requires too much manual effort and too many handoffs, leaving us to always be waiting.

When Dev teams had problems with testing or deployment, they needed more than just technology or environments. What they also needed was help and coaching. At first, we embedded Ops engineers and architects into each of the Dev teams, but there simply weren't enough Ops engineers to cover that many teams. We were able to help more teams with what we called an Ops liaison model and with fewer people.

We're on the hook for a huge number of projects. So, let's look at what our capacity is.

Auditors have friends?

any improvement not made at the constraint is just an illusion, yes?

we are no longer able to respond quickly to our changing competitive landscape, nor are we able to provide stable, reliable service to our customers. As

You know, deployments are like final assembly in a manufacturing plant. Every flow of work goes through it, and you can't ship the product without it.

When I tell him, he looks disgusted. "We spend more money watering the lawns at the manufacturing plants every week! Dick is going to hear from me about this. If he's not willing to spend money, we may lose orders—even if your project is just insurance so we can collect on all the hard work my sales team does—it's a no-brainer!

Today, organizations adopting DevOps principles and practices often deploy changes hundreds or even thousands of times per day. In an age where competitive advantage requires fast time to market and relentless experimentation, organizations that are unable to replicate these outcomes are destined to lose in the marketplace to more nimble competitors and could potentially go out of business entirely, much like the manufacturing organizations that did not adopt Lean principles.

Business agility is not just about raw speed. It's about how good you are at detecting and responding to changes in the market and being able to take larger and more calculated risks.

problems, like dog poop left in the rain, rarely get better just by ignoring them.