How do I convince my team to do it…?

Which tools a team chooses are useful only if they help the team work toward cooperation and collaboration. Focus on these and tools will fall into place.

If there’s one question I get asked more than any other, it’s “How do I convince my team to do X?” where X is some DevOps-ish thing, such as continuous deployment, TDD, git rebase, or a thousand other things.

If you’ve ever asked a question like this (to me or anyone else), unfortunately I don’t have a silver bullet answer for you.

Rather, I have an observation:

DevOps is about a cultural change, not a technical change.

The technical practices, tools, and changes associated with DevOps exist to serve the cultural change, not the other way around.

I believe this is at the core of the frustration many people feel (including myself at times) when a team or individual seems to “not get it” with regard to some technique or tool.

Which tools any given team chooses from the DevOps toolset (or any other toolset) are incidental, and are useful only insofar as they help the team work toward a culture of cooperation and collaboration.

Focus on these, and the right tools will naturally start to fall into place.

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