This week is the big family re-union of the DevOps family at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2022 in Las Vegas. I was lucky enough to be invited back as a speaker and was preparing my talk about DevOps Heresy – things I do that break the “common” rules of DevOps when I realised I cannot squeeze it all into my allocated time.
In my talk I speak about things that might surprise you about some of my teams. I would have called these DevOps Heresy myself a few years ago ( … and I am looking over my shoulder wondering whether the “DevOps police” is turning up any minute)
– The team did not fail pipelines with failed tests
– The team did deploy code that had failed security scans
– The team chose manual cloud deployments over automation
– The team moved from Full Stack to a federated model
I have learned so much from working in large complex enterprises over the last few years that I wanted to share it all in one talk – and of course I realise there is not enough time to cover it all.
Hence I feel I have no choice but to write a series of blog posts that go deeper into the world of DevOps heresy and why I think context is king.
My talk finishes with the unsolved riddle of how to find the right balance between pragmatic progress and evangelism that pushes the boundary. This is the real trick of any large-scale transformation I find. I will remain a pragmatic evangelist of DevOps. Looking forward to sharing a few steps of my recent journey with the community.
Not A Factory Anymore 
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Great article — “breaking the rules consciously” is a refreshing lens on DevOps.
I really appreciate your acknowledgement that context matters above all: what you’d once called “heresy” (failing a pipeline, deploying code with failed scans, choosing manual cloud deployments) may well be the right decision in certain large-complex environments.
For academic institutions and research organisations, this insight is especially pertinent. It reminds us that teaching DevOps and toolchains isn’t just about enforcing best-practices as dogma — it’s about cultivating judgement: when do we follow the rule, when do we deliberately choose differently, and how do we adapt process to context?
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