We know the “right thing” to do is to work together, to remove bottlenecks, to automate, automate, automate. But when the status quo is finger-pointing, mistrust, blame, and over-exhaustion from increasingly complex manual releases, it seems impossible to find a way to climb out of the downward spiral. How did an IT department turn this around to become a harmonious department with common goals and over 10x faster cycle times?

Winning the hearts and minds needed for lasting DevOps change requires something more than just great automation. This is the story of how Wotif found a way to incentivise a DevOps transformation across an entire IT department, resulting in cycle times measured in hours instead of weeks/months. While this journey involved technology such as DropWizard, Puppet & ZooKeeper, Matt (dev) and Alexandra (ops) extract principles that they hope can be applied to any organisation at grassroots and leadership levels using existing toolchains to support not only the best ideas of the present but also the legacy of the past and the unknown innovation of the future.

We know the “right thing” to do is to work together, to remove bottlenecks, to automate, automate, automate. But when the status quo is finger-pointing, mistrust, blame, and over-exhaustion from increasingly complex manual releases, it seems impossible to find a way to climb out of the downward spiral. How did an IT department turn this around to become a harmonious department with common goals and over 10x faster cycle times?

Winning the hearts and minds needed for lasting DevOps change requires something more than just great automation. This is the story of how Wotif found a way to incentivise a DevOps transformation across an entire IT department, resulting in cycle times measured in hours instead of weeks/months. While this journey involved technology such as DropWizard, Puppet & ZooKeeper, Matt (dev) and Alexandra (ops) extract principles that they hope can be applied to any organisation at grassroots and leadership levels using existing toolchains to support not only the best ideas of the present but also the legacy of the past and the unknown innovation of the future.

We know the “right thing” to do is to work together, to remove bottlenecks, to automate, automate, automate. But when the status quo is finger-pointing, mistrust, blame, and over-exhaustion from increasingly complex manual releases, it seems impossible to find a way to climb out of the downward spiral. How did an IT department turn this around to become a harmonious department with common goals and over 10x faster cycle times?

Winning the hearts and minds needed for lasting DevOps change requires something more than just great automation. This is the story of how Wotif found a way to incentivise a DevOps transformation across an entire IT department, resulting in cycle times measured in hours instead of weeks/months. While this journey involved technology such as DropWizard, Puppet & ZooKeeper, Matt (dev) and Alexandra (ops) extract principles that they hope can be applied to any organisation at grassroots and leadership levels using existing toolchains to support not only the best ideas of the present but also the legacy of the past and the unknown innovation of the future.

We know the “right thing” to do is to work together, to remove bottlenecks, to automate, automate, automate. But when the status quo is finger-pointing, mistrust, blame, and over-exhaustion from increasingly complex manual releases, it seems impossible to find a way to climb out of the downward spiral. How did an IT department turn this around to become a harmonious department with common goals and over 10x faster cycle times?

Winning the hearts and minds needed for lasting DevOps change requires something more than just great automation. This is the story of how Wotif found a way to incentivise a DevOps transformation across an entire IT department, resulting in cycle times measured in hours instead of weeks/months. While this journey involved technology such as DropWizard, Puppet & ZooKeeper, Matt (dev) and Alexandra (ops) extract principles that they hope can be applied to any organisation at grassroots and leadership levels using existing toolchains to support not only the best ideas of the present but also the legacy of the past and the unknown innovation of the future.