DevOps, a methodology for enhancing communication between software development teams (Dev) and operations teams (Ops) has continued to influence the industry over they years. As DevOps practices have evolved, industry leaders and companies have weighed in on how it can be best put to use. Following that thinking, here’s a list of three “Easter eggs” discovered in SiliconANGLE and theCUBE coverage of DevOps history.

With the upcoming holiday of Easter it is a common practice to hide tasty treats in colorful eggs for children to discover–there really is nothing similar in DevOps but with SiliconANGLE‘s coverage over the years sometimes something tasty can be found and more often than not it is colorful.

DevOps today Easter egg: The continuing growth and relevance of DevOps

Gene Kim, noted researcher, author, former CTO of Tripwire, Inc. and author and DevOps enthusiast at IT Revolution Press spoke to theCUBE at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2015 about the depth of effect that DevOps has had on the industry.

The talk that I loved from yesterday was from Doctor Steven Spear from MIT about his lesson learned studying and decoding the production process twenty years with his work with Alcoa and the U.S. Naval Reactor Corps … One of the capabilities that he spoke about that’s common in every one of these high learning dynamic organizations is the ability to take local discoveries and turn them into global improvements.

Local learning can be turned into global learning. That really is the next step, an improvement works in one area now how can we elevate the state of the practice for thousands of workers?

Kim mentioned that the state of the DevOps community is fairly small, but it has begun to see a global reach where knowledge is being shared within the industry to learn and embrace best practices. The DevOps Enterprise Summit 2015 alone, he noted, represented 500 plus organizations and amid them over a million technology workers.

“To build a world class technology organization you need world class workers,” Kim added, speaking to the need for an expanding toolset. DevOps Enterprise Summit in 2014 saw 500-600 people and this year 1200 people showing an ever growing maturity amid the DevOps community.

Thinking outside the software box Easter egg: What about DevOps for hardware?

Software engineering (and by extension DevOps) must be built upon a physical layer and that layer is supported by hardware. This fact raises the question: Is there a DevOps paradigm for hardware? Certainly with the ever-growing advent of smarter and more resilient firmware, hot-pluggable modules and the Internet of Things forming ad hoc networks as more devices are discoverable there’s a case for hardware developers finding a place in DevOps.

At O’Reilly Fluent 2013 conference Brady Forrest, Head of Accelerator, PCH International argued that hardware bridges the gap between software and the external world.

To make his point, he brought up IoT solutions such as Nest (Nest Labs, Inc.): a learning thermostat designed to control multiple devices in a home. Because the different segments of the smart home (or any IoT network) are separate but connected means that they can be iterated and replaced independently by hardware developers (with software to support it).

“I think when we get to a place when we can iterate hardware as fast as software that’s when my new gambit will have paid off,” Forrest says.

Over the years this space has continued to grow with IoT devices being the forefront of rapid prototyped devices that can be cheaply made and deployed. Sensors, drones, hot-pluggable hardware extendibility for household and industrial items means more modularity and communication between hardware makers and software developers is needed. Already DevOps functions due to a tight communication between software development (Dev) and operations (Ops).

Moving past just Ops Easter egg: Misconceptions in connecting Dev to Ops (and everyone else)

Over the years DevOps has continued to change and grow and define itself but largely it’s seen as a cultural shift to bridge the gap between development and operations—however, it’s also been obvious that this includes infrastructure, security and product management in the same mix.

Mandi Walls, Technical Practice Manager at Chef, also known as the DevOps Diva, spoke to theCUBE at O’Reilly Velocity 2013 conference about DevOps trends. In doing so she struck a nerve with the expectations of DevOps that still resonate today.

One thing Walls mentioned is that some people continue to see DevOps as a replacement for Ops, when it’s really much larger than that. As DevOps has come to be better defined by tools that bring departments and groups closer together with better communication and lifecycle transparency:

The whole ideas that your successful project or successful products placed before your customers were fully integrated and everyone who touches that product over its lifecycle—cradle to grave—whether its development, product management, operations those folks are focused on efficiencies, performance and all of these good relationships across teams. We’ve seen too many of these folks see DevOps and only see the Ops part and miss out on integrating with Dev and making relationships stronger.

That was 2013, when SliconANGLE asked Walls the same question today a slowly changing landscape emerged. She said:

Yes, the perception that DevOps was supposed to replace Ops (even though it’s more about linking Ops with Devs) still exists. It’s not so much a misconception now as it is low hanging fruit; especially for teams that are moving to cloud infrastructure, the “classic” operations tasks like fixing hardware, running cables, and racking systems, take less precedence. The change in work for operations folks is obvious.

Walls describes a culture where software development teams are not quite ready to change to fit the DevOps model. The business of agile development is still percolating through the industry and as a result most development teams still do much of their work the old way: produce code, test it against expectations in production and then finally ship it to Ops with the expectation, as Walls says, “Ops can turn their Yugo into a Maserati.”

“Another misconception has been that DevOps means developers are always available, which of course has created resistance,” adds Walls. “In fact, DevOps is about shared responsibility. If something breaks, everyone works together to fix it.”

With production lifecycles shortening and automation cutting out tedious work done by Dev (for testing) and by Ops (for configuration and deployment) it provides more time to both teams, with the advantage of greater communication, to tackle problems that arise.

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