Breaking down silos between development and operations teams can be a challenging task, but it is essential for the successful delivery of software products. In this article, we will explore ten practical tips to solve the problem of siloed teams between developers and DevOps.
1. Establish Shared Goals
Set shared goals and metrics to encourage alignment and teamwork
Developers focus on delivering new features and functionality, while DevOps teams focus on ensuring that software products are reliable, scalable, and secure.
These differing goals can create silos between teams and lead to miscommunication and conflicts. It is crucial to craft common goals, which support the main business requirements.
Identify the desired outcome: Start by identifying the desired outcome or objective that the team wants to achieve. This could be a specific project delivered or an overarching goal for the organization.
Communicate the goals: Once the goals have been identified, communicate them clearly to all team members. Ensure that everyone understands the objectives and how their roles contribute to achieving them.
Ideally, it should be reflected in the OKR planning framework.
2. Foster a Culture of Collaboration
Encourage cross-functional teams and promote communication and knowledge sharing.
Team members need to understand and appreciate each other’s roles and responsibilities to collaborate effectively. Make sure the function of each is clear enough to understand.
Team Topologies is a good framework to use for that. Depending on the goals set in the previous stage, the role of the team can vary, it can be:
Technical support and troubleshooting role
Enabling some function or service
Providing Internal Developer Platform
It is crucial that everyone is aligned with the function, so the rules of the game a clear.
After that build a collaboration environment:
3. Hold Joint Meetings
Holding joint meetings is an effective way to discuss project progress, identify and resolve issues, and make decisions as a team.
It is crucial to have a structure for those meetings to not let them turn into a mess. Death by Meeting is a good read on the topic and suggests holding a combination of daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, or retrospective meetings with less regular planning sessions and demos.
These meetings allow team members to understand each other’s work and progress, identify and resolve issues collaboratively, and make decisions that benefit the entire team. Joint meetings can help build a shared sense of ownership and encourage collaboration.
4. Encourage Participation
To break down silos, it is essential to encourage participation from all team members, regardless of their role or department. Everyone on the team should feel empowered to contribute their ideas and suggestions.
Setup idea box page in documentation software
Employ gamification
Experiment with things like hackathons, boot camps, workshops, etc.
Get feedback and incorporate it
Creating a safe and inclusive environment where everyone’s contributions are valued can help build trust and collaboration. Encouraging participation also promotes diversity of thought, which can lead to more innovative solutions.
5. Use Collaboration Tools
Create a page describing different use cases of collaboration and which carrier is the best to use. Ideally, you would want to shorten a cycle of interaction by replacing traditional ways to ask for help:
sending a message in Slack or Microsoft Teams,
sending an email
creating a ticket
by using techniques like
GitOps
ChatOps
self-service tools and platforms
It is crucial to take Jobs-To-Be-Done into consideration in order to not build something no one would use. So some balance should be maintained.
6. Implement Cross-Functional Training
Implementing cross-functional training can encourage team members to learn and understand each other’s roles and responsibilities. Cross-functional training can be in the form of
workshops
shadowing
on-the-job training
video-recordings
When team members understand each other’s roles, they can collaborate more effectively, make better decisions, and build a more integrated team. Cross-functional training can help break down silos and build a culture of collaboration.
7. Rotate Team Members
Rotations can increase empathy and help to understand the challenges and responsibilities of each other’s roles.
If approached creatively team members can keep working on the goal from their original team while rotated, for example:
Developers can get their hands dirty with:
the tuning of the infrastructure for the product they maintain
how security works for it on the high level
Infrastructure folks could dive deeper into:
the way typical service is developed
the way integration and unit testing works for it
how to implement and deliver change for it
It is essential to ensure that rotations are voluntary and provide adequate support and training. Hence if implemented properly it could unveil brilliant findings missed in a regular flow otherwise.
8. Implement Agile Methodologies
Agile methodology is typically used for software development.
The nature of the work for Infrastructure teams makes it harder to do the same. It is crucial though to adopt agile for transformational projects in order to start moving the needle.
Start by implementing Agile practices in small steps. For example:
start with a single Agile ceremony, such as a daily stand-up meeting,
gradually add more Agile practices as the team becomes more comfortable with the methodology
balance the process with the old flow, getting feedback and gradually shrinking it
This will help to avoid overwhelming the team and ensure that they have enough time to adapt to the changes.
This way the processes for different teams will become less siloed which will boost collaboration as well.
9. Encourage Feedback
And establish a feedback loop
Encouraging feedback from all team members can help identify issues and opportunities for improvement. These can be a few actionable tips:
Use Feedback Tools: Use feedback tools such as surveys, feedback forms, and feedback sessions to gather feedback from team members. This will help to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to share their feedback.
Provide Timely Feedback: Provide feedback in a timely manner so that team members can take action quickly. Delayed feedback can be ineffective and can lead to frustration.
Recognize Feedback: Recognize team members who provide feedback and acknowledge their contributions. This will help to encourage others to provide feedback and build a culture of continuous improvement.
Celebrate Successes: Celebrate successes and improvements that have been made as a result of feedback. This will help to build momentum and encourage more feedback and improvement.
Encourage Two-Way Feedback: Encourage two-way feedback between both team members. This will help to ensure that feedback is not one-sided and that both teams are contributing to the feedback loop.
Good Luck!
Subscribe to my newsletter and feel free to connect with me on Linkedin, and follow me on Twitter and Other socials in order to not miss the next episode!