With these changes, being technically sound is not good enough, there are behavioural, or soft skills that will be required.

This is why beyond a technology strategy you also require a behaviour strategy, one where that no matter where the technology goes your people can be ready.

Change the behaviour and change thinking.

Here I suggest a behaviour strategy that revolves around introducing DevOps to develop these four areas that I consider to be critical for the future of work.

1. Analytical and strategic thinking

As things change quickly, you need to think ahead, and then be able to put the pieces in place to get there. For this you need to be able to look at all the trends and analyse it, then put a strategy in place to take advantage of the opportunities.

We need to employ systems thinking to see how we can increase productivity and flow through the process. And use data to make better decisions.

This aligns with the 1st Way of DevOps, thinking from left to right.

2. Think of the end customer and user-centred design

In the world of automation, the things that will make humans, well, human, is our ability to connect. We often refer to this as Emotional Intelligence.

This is going to be a key skill in the future of work. It will allow us to develop services that help the customers and not cater for ourselves, such as novel technological solutions that add little value to the customer. Yeah, that’s a pretty cool server, but did it reduce the wait times of our customers?

Take time to speak with customers, even if there are no issues or projects ongoing so we can understand them.

This aligns with the 2nd Way of DevOps, increase and amplify feedback loops.

3. Creativity and innovation

Creativity and innovation is a key part of ensuring that we can stay relevant. This means thinking of new ways to use emerging technology to meet business and personal goals. It also means doing experiments and trying new things.

This aligns with the 3rd Way of DevOps, the development of a culture of experimentation and learning.

4. Active and Purposeful Learning

In a fast-changing environment, you need to keep up with the new technologies otherwise you may get left behind. This means actively taking time to learn new things, and also learning from mistakes.

It also means not being afraid to make mistakes and developing a growth mindset, whereby you don’t believe that your abilities are fixed, but that you can change.

I’ve also encouraged my team to be purposeful with their learning, in that don’t learn as they do, which is reactive by nature, but choose to learn something even if it’s not actively in use. And also teach others so that they may learn as well.

This also aligns with the 3rd Way of DevOps, the development of a culture of experimentation and learning.

Original article: Changing Behaviours through DevOps

©2025 Interxect Services Limited. All Rights Reserved.

The term “DevOps” was first coined in 2009 by Patric Debois (sometimes called the “Godfather of DevOps”), and became even more popular after Gene Kim’s novel “The Phoenix Project” was released.

There isn’t a proper definition of DevOps. As Gene Kim puts it, “DevOps is more like a philosophical movement, and not yet a precise collection of practices, descriptive or prescriptive.”

DevOps is more of a movement whereby Software Developers and Systems Operators no longer work in silos, and instead work together in providing a service, hence the term DevOps.

There are two main processes in DevOps:

• Continuous Integration – as new code is developed and tested for modules, features, or fixes, it is added to the master codebase for the entire application.
• Continuous Deployment – as new builds are created by the software developers, it is deployed into the production system.

Several benefits can be had by implementing a DevOps philosophy:

• Faster development as changes are implemented continuously and tested continuously.
• Rapid Delivery as new features are deployed as fast as they are implemented.
• Less downtime as updates are implemented in short bits so an entire upgrade is not required.
• More automation means less mundane work, and more new stuff to create. Automation is a big part of DevOps since it allows the Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment cycles.
• Improved reliability, not only because DevOps includes continuous monitoring of systems, but also because small changes are being made, better designs can be accomplished, while errors can be quickly determined and addressed.

But there will be hurdles to implement DevOps in many companies:

• Many businesses are built on a waterfall model, where they go through big changes every so often.
• There is a need to learn new skillsets. Software development of course, but also skills in tools to help automate and test, such as Puppet, Ansible, and Selenium.
• But mostly, the challenges of getting people to do something new, and work together for that change.

DevOps will play a huge role in how many businesses move into the future, they should get ready for it. To make the move to DevOps, the thinking needs to change.

I’ll go deeper into the topic in a later post.

Original article: What is DevOps

©2025 Interxect Services Limited. All Rights Reserved.