The impacts of the COVID-19 global health pandemic on our lives and work will ripple out for years. With almost no notice, nearly the entire world has been thrust into remote work. As we adjust to this new normal, DevOps can help.
Wait… what’s DevOps? Simply put, it’s an engineering culture of collaboration, ownership, and learning with the purpose of accelerating the software development lifecycle. First introduced about 10 years ago, DevOps built on the foundation of Agile to focus on culture, process and tools — in that order.
While DevOps is designed for developers and operations engineers, I believe the methodology applies to anyone in tech, and beyond. Whether you’re a manager, a PM, an engineer, a business owner, or a marketing specialist, you can apply pieces of DevOps to improve your workflow.
Focusing on People
Many of the challenges of remote work are technical, but human. And how we interact with tools and each other will greatly impact your success.
Improving Morale
I have news for you… no one’s primary priority is work right now. I know, I know. Our quarterly reports aren’t going to be pretty. But that’s just not important right now. People are.
Within a few weeks of exponential acceleration, our priorities shifted from shipping software and setting strategy to surviving. Many of us are worried about family far away, doing our best to establish a makeshift homeschool for our kids, and deeply scared about what comes next. That’s completely normal. It’s OK to not be OK. But how do we support our colleagues without hugs and the gift of in-person connection?
GIFs. OK, not just GIFs, but they are fun! You have to create community remotely. And the best way to do that is via video calls and chat. At Microsoft, we use Microsoft Teams for both.