Creating and Maintaining an Inclusive DevOps Culture Video: https://youtu.be/qkp1N94iDs4

1. COPYRIGHT 2019 DEVADA
Fireside Chat: Creating and Maintaining an
Inclusive DevOps Culture
With Judy Johnson
Exclusive DZone Core Virtual Event courtesy of

2. Agenda
● Introduction
● How does Diversity help us do better and more DevOps?
● How does DevOps encourage Diversity and Inclusion?
● What can you and your organization do to encourage
Diversity and Inclusion?
● Discussion/Questions

3. About judy
Judy (she/her) has been a software engineer for many years, and at Onyx Point
since 2015. Her many job titles have included Software and System Engineer,
Project Manager, ScrumMaster, and retail (CD store) clerk. Her hobbies include
baking, attending hockey games and rock concerts, and trying to finish a good
book. Judy loves to volunteer, especially in events that promote diversity in
technology. She’s especially proud that both of her awesome daughters are
engineers.
Twitter: @miz_j
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judyfinkjohnson/
(disclaimer: my opinions do not necessarily represent those of my employer)

4. Wiki DevOps Definition
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev)
and IT operations (Ops). It aims to shorten the systems development life
cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps
is complementary with Agile software development; several DevOps
aspects came from Agile methodology.

5. DevOps - “The Three Ways”
Three Ways (via Gene Kim)
● The First Way emphasizes the performance of the entire system, as opposed to the
performance of a specific silo of work or department — this as can be as large a
division (e.g., Development or IT Operations) or as small as an individual contributor
(e.g., a developer, system administrator).
○ Team over individual
○ Encourage people to speak up
○ Mix together people with various skills
○ No silos

6. DevOps - “The Three Ways”
Three Ways (via Gene Kim)
● The Second Way is about creating the right to left feedback loops. The goal of almost
any process improvement initiative is to shorten and amplify feedback loops so
necessary corrections can be continually made.
○ Feedback, Retrospection
○ Continuous Improvement
○ Blameless post-mortem

7. DevOps - “The Three Ways”
Three Ways (via Gene Kim)
● The Third Way is about creating a culture that fosters two things: continual
experimentation, taking risks and learning from failure; and understanding that
repetition and practice is the prerequisite to mastery.
○ Taking risks
○ Always learning
○ Not being afraid to fail

8. DevOps
DevOps initiatives can create cultural changes in companies by transforming
the way operations, developers, and testers collaborate during the
development and delivery processes. Getting these groups to work cohesively
is a critical challenge in enterprise DevOps adoption. DevOps is as much
about culture, as it is about the toolchain. (Wikipedia)
● DevOps is not just automation
● It’s about Culture, Communication,
Community, Valuing people,
Breaking down silos, Reducing fear

9. Diversity
Dimensions of diversity
● Individual differences between
employees can create value and
foster innovation and creativity, or
can lead to conflict.
● How diversity is constructed and
reproduced within diversity
management and inclusion
determines how employees feel
accepted and included and, thus,
how they are able to realize their
potential and to contribute to the
organization’s vision and aims.

10. How does Diversity help us do better and more DevOps?
● Diversity of thought, people feel free to
express ideas
● Multiple perspectives encourage
out-of-the-box thinking
● “Edge Cases” - not only does having
multiple backgrounds allow voices to be
heard but often these concerns are
universal
● There is not “that one expert”
© 123RF

11. How does DevOps encourage Diversity and Inclusion?
● Multi-functional teams (stemming from Agile) encourage people with
different strengths work together for a holistic view of the tasking
● DevOps creates community, we do not want everyone doing the same
thing or thinking the same way
● Contributions are always valued
● DevOps processes include documenting, testing, code review,
pair/mob programming, all of which allow a person that may be new to
the team, or even the field, to be immediately productive
● “Minimize harm,” “Reduce Fear”

12. Attracting a Diverse Team
● Recruit from universities, meetup groups
● Community involvement - attend/host meetups,
encourage volunteerism
● Don’t be afraid in the interview process to look
for folks who may not have the exact experience,
but show a willingness to learn
● Ensure the environment they see when they
interview is welcoming and diverse

13. Inclusive Hiring
● Specialized websites https://www.diversifytech.co/post-a-job
● Care in wording of job descriptions
https://breezy.hr/blog/3-simple-rules-for-using-inclusive-language-in-y
our-job-ads
● Gender decoder for job ads http://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/
○ “Male” words (aggressive, confident, driven) vs
○ “Female” words (interpersonal, supportive, collaborative)

14. Maintaining good people - Why we Stay
● Understanding
● Belonging
● Meaningful work
● Challenge
● Flexibility
● Feeling valued and heard
● Not being afraid to be themselves (this is where I have my
baked-goods part of the talk)
● Happy employees will bring friends

15. Maintaining good people - Why we Leave
● Feeling invisible
● Feeling undervalued
● Extra work “representing the underrepresented”
● Lack of respect
● Silos - lack of communication, lack of “big picture” exposure
● Bro / Frat Culture
● Toxic environment

16. Mentorship
● Mentors
○ Many and diverse
○ Bidirectional relationships
○ Similar backgrounds, situations
● Local Role Models
○ Yeah, I can aspire to be CEO, but who can I find
that is fewer steps away and has time to listen?
● Allies/Advocates
○ We can’t do it alone!

17. Thanks!
● Larry Gordon at XOps @laurencemgordon
● The 3 DevOpsDays friends that helped put together the original talk:
○ Victoria Guido @victori_ousg
○ Jameson Hampton @jameybash
○ Banjo Obayomi @banjtheman
● My friend, Amanda Arnold, who convinced me to talk inclusion with her for the
very first time at a Diversity in Tech event at the University of Maryland
● All the folks I have learned from (both good and bad examples)

18. Creating and Maintaining Inclusivity - Discussion
● What DevOps work can you give someone with less
experience?
○ Test, document, code review - productive and learning from
start
○ Pair/mob programming
● What benefits does an inclusive environment bring to
technology systems?
○ Different experience brings different thought processes
○ Ideas, needs, “edge cases”

19. Resources
● Black Lives Matter - How the Tech Community can Provide Support (Jennifer Riggins)
● http://www.incontextdesign.com/womenintech/ (Karen Holtzblatt)
● https://www.inc.com/mariyam-khaja/how-to-be-an-ally-to-black-lives-matter.html
● Better Allies - (Karen Catlin, Former VP of Engineering at Adobe) @betterallies
● Black Code Collective - blkcodecollctve@gmail.com
○ "We are black software developers creating a welcoming community to grow our
skills, share knowledge and help each other progress through our careers. "
● Diversify Tech (Veni Kunche @venikunche) - Find folks looking for jobs - Sites and
resources
● Compassionate Coding (April Wensel @compassioncode) - Training, blog, other
resources
● http://gendershades.org/overview.html (Joy Buolamwini)The Gender Shades project
evaluates the accuracy of AI powered gender classification products.