Did you ever think that Spotify, the cloud music service, embraces DevOps?  Or did you think that DevOps is just about mobile apps is just about app development? The website Infoq has written up a brilliant, introspective examination of the music-service and how its IT department approaches DevOps as part of  monthly DevOps War Stories. This one written by Spotify’s engineering team lead, Mattias Jansson.

DevOps the portmanteau of Development and Operations which is basically all about software developers keeping an open communication with IT professionals to everything goes smoothly.

So, now, do you still think DevOps in Spotify is a myth?

DevOps exists in Spotify though its employees may not be aware of it or do not label it as such.    At Spotify, developers and engineers have overlapping responsibilities, skill sets and interests, and there are operational-developers and there are engineers who have strong operations background.  Though you might think that overlapping responsibilities would cause chaos, but because of strong communication, everything turns out fine.  The situation is not perfect, Spotify still needs to iron out some kinks, but at least it is clear on the basics of DevOps.

“The lessons the DevOps movement has taught us are many, but one of the most important is the value of aligning the goals of Dev and Ops,” Jansson said about DevOps @ Spotify.  “Get them to work side-by-side, give them space to learn from each other. By getting the two groups to communicate regularly, the developer will have a chance at understanding the reasons why Ops need to act a blocker at times- and will learn how to plan ahead and produce changes in alignment with the requirements of the Operational environment. Also, once Ops start to see their hardware and the services running on them as malleable datastructures which one can apply code upon, the developer suddenly has a different reach- he/she will be able to affect not just the code as it exists in packages, but will have much more flexibility on how the packages are applied in production.

“Likewise, by injecting operational thinking into the development process, the frequency with which Operations engineers need to spend time on interruptions and clean-up is lowered, and their time can be spent on longer-term projects.”

Because of the synergy in DevOps, the Spotify team looked at it in a broader sense.  What if the DevOps synergy gets translated into the other aspects of Spotify, like it’s engineering team’s closest leadership figures?  Will this make things function better?

Enter POTLAC

POTLAC stands for Product Owner, Team Lead, and Agile Coach and sounds a lot like “potluck” or the act of bringing your own food to a gathering, but you share it with others, and others do the same thing and the attendees communicate with one another so that there will be no repetition of meals or lack thereof.  POTLAC works similarly.  The leaders communicate with each other so that there is no overlapping of duties and if any problem arise, it gets easily resolved.  With open communication, tasks are delegated more efficiently and divisions function harmoniously.

Ultimately, what Spotify wants to convey is that communication is very important in any company.  Though you might think that two divisions do not or will not get along and clash, with communication, things will work out fine.

Pick up the full article over at Infoq.