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May 22, 2014 by John Heintz Leave a Comment

Don’t Blame the Capital Letters

After seeing several references to a blog post [1] attacking DevOps as the cause of harm. This morning I saw it again and quipped:

Nothing with a capital letter is the root cause of any problem: #Agile, #DevOps, … Look to lowercase words: trust, collab, purpose, people

— John Heintz (@jheintz) May 22, 2014

Examples of capital letter branded ideas/processes/frameworks that I’ve personally seen blamed for all manner of ills include Agile, Lean, DevOps, Six Sigma, DevOps, Flat and Hierarchical Org Structures, and Waterfall. However, all of these are simply “thinking tools” that can be used for good or evil. I reject that these tools can be the underlying cause of any of these ills.

(I don’t even blame Waterfall for many of the death marches in its wake. Waterfall is _supposed_ to have feedback loops and we should collectively re-examine a plan that isn’t working. Waterfall isn’t ignoring those things, project leaders and management are!)


Instead, we should look towards essential aspects of human nature: trust, collaboration, purpose, autonomy, safety, thinking about the future, honesty, value, growth, learning, and any others that affect how we socially interact.


[1] The topic is DevOps and the post is here: https://www.jeffknupp.com/blog/2014/04/15/how-devops-is-killing-the-developer/ and I can certainly sympathize with some of the pains and failings written there.

Filed Under: agile

September 13, 2013 by John Heintz Leave a Comment

Video: Business Impact DevOps

I had the good fortune to work with The InnovationGames® Company and record some videos on Agile and DevOps topics.

This video is Luke Hohmann and me being interviewed on the the selling and buying process for agile infrastructure and DevOps technology. The value proposition is based on speed and quality to production:

Filed Under: agile, DevOps, video Tagged With: Luke Hohmann

September 13, 2013 by John Heintz Leave a Comment

Video: Mechanics of Agile Development

I had the good fortune to work with The InnovationGames® Company and record some videos on Agile and DevOps topics.

This video describes some of the language and mechanics of Agile to someone who isn’t already familiar with it:

Filed Under: agile, DevOps, posts, video

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