The importance of collaboration, a DevOps pillar

Remember I talked about the pillars of DevOps, and what DevOps actually is?

The pillars of DevOps. What is a DevOps engineer?

Michelle Mannering Sep 27 '21 4 min read

#devops #devrel #discuss

Well, I wanted to dive a little deeper into the importance of collaboration and why it is a pillar of DevOps.

Not code, collaboration

A lot of people hear the word "DevOps" and they immediately think CI/CD. All thoughts center on coding and nothing else. This isn't everyone obviously, but many people believe DevOps is a tool, a platform to help get code deployed out into the world. This is part of it but not the only part. DevOps is as much a cultural change, a mindset, and practices as it is about the tools and products used.

Image: Antonio Janeski via Unsplash

Collaborating and working together as a team is really important. It allows people to bring different perspectives to the table and makes for better products and services for your customers. Working together isn't anything new, and if you've ever worked in a team, you'll know that a good team is able to get things done more efficiently and effectively.

The right team with good collaboration can beat a team or organisation with highly skilled workers, yet poor collaboration and communication. Not only does teamwork and communication go a long way to building better products and services, it will also boost morale throughout the workplace so have good talent retention.

People don't want to leave a team they feel loyal to. A team that treats each of its workers like valued members and encourages each of them to play to their strengths.

Teamwork

One of the things that is so important for collaboration is teamwork. Just because everyone is "talking" doesn't mean everything is being done effectively. By working together and playing to each other's strengths, everyone can achieve more.

Breaking down tasks and assigning them to individuals or smaller teams goes a long way to ensuring your goals are met in a timely manner.

But this kind of teamwork goes the other way too. Working in small siloed teams is good for breaking down and completing small tasks. However, good teamwork needs to happen across the whole company to ensure they are successful.

Image: James Layh via Facebook

I'll share more about working across multidisciplinary teams in my next post.

Discuss

Are you effectively collaborating in your workplace? What are some of the things you and your team are doing to encourage communication and collaboration?