Why Team Structure Is the Foundation of DevOps Success

A report titled Full-Stack Teams, Not Engineers, published by IT Revolution and led by Jason Cox, Director of Platform and SRE at Disney, argues that DevOps “is not an organizational structure; rather, it defines a way to organize independent teams, a culture, a set of Lean principles, and a set of practices.” The report emerged from IT Revolution’s fifth annual DevOps Enterprise Forum held in Portland, Oregon.

The core thesis: the idea of the full-stack engineer is “more myth than reality.” Rather than recruiting a unicorn who can design, build, deploy, and operate software across the entire stack, organizations should instead build full-stack teams — diverse groups whose combined skills cover every phase of the software delivery lifecycle.

“Instead of hunting and waiting on the perfect full-stack engineer, a more sustainable paradigm would be for organizations to create full-stack teams. This balanced team is filled with people possessing a core set of skills plus different specialties.”

Jason Cox et al., Full-Stack Teams, Not Engineers — IT Revolution

What a Full-Stack Team Actually Looks Like

Cox and his co-authors provide two practical models for composing a full-stack team:

Model 1: Skill-Diverse Product Team

In this model, a team is assembled around a specific deliverable. The report gives the example of an internal customer health dashboard team composed of two back-end engineers, a front-end engineer, a data scientist, a data analyst, a designer, and a product manager. Each member is essential, but rotation between roles and cross-teaching within the team are strongly encouraged. Members also participate in communities of practice across teams to build and share deeper expertise.

Model 2: Embedded Functional Experts

In the second model, functional specialists are embedded directly into product teams. Team members carry two reporting relationships: a primary one to the product team leader, and a secondary one to their functional area manager, who is responsible for skill development and career progression. Embedded team members take ownership of both delivery and operational reliability while also ensuring the wider team gains literacy in their specialty.

4 Ways to Energize Your DevOps Teams

Beyond team composition, culture and physical environment play a significant role in DevOps effectiveness. A second IT Revolution report introduces the concept of the Dojo — from the Japanese for “place of the way” — as a transformation immersion center for DevOps teams. The concept is outlined by Ross Clanton, Executive Director of Technology Modernization at Verizon, and his co-authors.

Target’s CIO Mike McNamara describes how the Dojo model worked in practice at their organization:

“The Dojo is an immersive, six-week session where teams execute their normal work with Agile coaches on site to support them and provide anything they need from a DevOps point of view. The Dojo has been fantastic in getting teams engaged with Agile and DevOps, removing the natural resistance and fear of change, and then supporting the team through the changes while maintaining productivity. It’s been a huge success for Target.”

Mike McNamara, CIO — Target

Clanton and his co-authors outline four concrete steps to establish a Dojo that energizes DevOps initiatives:

1. Create a Space for Learning and Fun

Place the Dojo in a high-traffic area of the office. Visibility broadens exposure to what teams are experiencing, creates curiosity across the organization, and drives future demand for Dojo services. The physical space should feel open, inspiring, and welcoming — not another grey conference room.

2. Arrange Team Tables That Optimize Collaboration

Seating layout matters. Options include individual desks grouped together with dual monitors at each station, or a “family-style” table with no monitors to enable free-flowing conversation. The governing principle: everyone should sit in close proximity so that in-person collaboration becomes the path of least resistance. Whiteboards are essential for visualizing ideas and maintaining shared situational awareness.

3. Design Open Spaces That Enable Inter-Team Collaboration

Silos dissolve when teams can learn from each other organically. Some of this happens naturally — teams overhear adjacent conversations that happen to be relevant to their own problems. But open spaces also create intentional networking opportunities, allowing teams to identify where they can support each other and surface shared problems earlier.

4. Set Up a Communication and Collaboration Hub

Clanton and his co-authors recommend creating a “demo lounge” — a dedicated area equipped with a projector or large display surface, comfortable and informal seating, sound amplification, and video conferencing capability to connect with other Dojos or remote teams. The demo lounge gives all Dojo teams a venue to share their work, and gives stakeholders — management, business partners — a natural entry point to observe progress without disrupting the team’s flow.

Mastery Takes Time — Teams Make It Possible

As Cox and his co-authors note in the Full-Stack Teams report, “it takes years of hard work to become a master of anything, and DevOps skills are no different.” No single engineer can realistically own the entire DevOps landscape. The organizations that consistently deliver software at speed and scale are those that invest in assembling, developing, and sustaining diverse teams — and in creating the environments that let those teams do their best work.

Whether through the embedded-expert model, the skill-diverse product team, or an immersive Dojo programme, the underlying principle is the same: DevOps culture lives in teams, not individuals. Getting that structure right is the prerequisite for everything else.

Source: Originally reported by ZDNet. Reports referenced: Full-Stack Teams, Not Engineers and the Dojo report, both from IT Revolution’s DevOps Enterprise Forum series.

There’s no one tool that can do it all. But in the end, it is all about tools that provide maximum ROI within the given budget.

Automation of IT and cloud infrastructure has become a must in modern times. The rapid automation process is led by the surge of effective and helpful IT/cloud automation tools in the market. However, there are a lot of challenges while selecting tools, such as a lack of powerful computing, inconsistency in data monitoring, network issues, and troubleshooting.

With multiple aspects of the infrastructure that need to be managed alongside these key pain points, there is no one tool that can do it all. Lack of proper tools can maximize IT downtime, affecting other aspects of the business. According to the report ‘State of Digital Operations by PagerDuty,’ 40.4 % of respondents claim sales to be the most affected non-IT department in terms of loss due to IT issues. This directly affects profit.

Maximizing productivity is another major concern when it comes to automating IT and cloud infrastructure.

While selecting an automation tool for your company, you must focus on the following aspects:

Consistency with requirements
Support structure
Trouble-shooting
Productivity
Budget
In over 10 years of working as a technical consultant for a software development company, I have tried and tested multiple tools to help the organization with its overall IT requirements. Here are 5 tools currently in the market that in my experience have been extremely effective in IT/cloud infrastructure automation for organizations:

1. Ansible

Ansible automates a range of IT aspects including configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, etc. It is focused on the way various systems of your IT infrastructure interact with each other rather than managing one component at a time.

Ansible can be easily managed using a web interface called Ansible tower. The tool provides a range of pricing models where users can choose from a basic, standard or premium package and get a custom quote for the features they use. The costs range from $5000-$14,000 a year for Ansible Tower.

It is an extremely user-friendly and easy-to-manage automation tool.

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2. Datadog

Datadog is primarily a monitoring tool for cloud applications. It provides detailed metrics for all your cloud applications, servers, and networks. It can be easily integrated with other automation tools such as Ansible, Chef, Puppet, etc.

Datadog pricing plans include Synthetics, Log Management, Infrastructure and APM priced at $5, $1.27, $15 and $31 per host, per month, respectively. These can be further priced based on pro and enterprise packages.

Datadog can help in quick detection and trouble-shooting of problems within the system.

Thus, it is quite a time and cost-effective solution for managing your cloud infrastructure.

3. Puppet

Puppet is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that lets users define the desired state of their infrastructure and automate the systems to achieve the same.

It monitors all your systems and prevents any deviation from the defined state. From simple workflow automation to infrastructure configuration and compliance, Puppet can do it all. The open-source tools are free while the enterprise model for more than 10 nodes is chargeable. Companies can get custom quotes based on their requirements.

Preferred by companies such as Dell and Google, Puppet is the perfect tool to maintain consistency in the system while maximizing productivity.

4. Selenium

Primarily created for testing web applications, Selenium is a robust tool for automating web browsers. It is the perfect tool for web-app testing and management. Companies can create quick bug-fixing scripts as well as develop automated, regressive bug fixing mechanisms with Selenium.

Selenium combines software, with each serving a different purpose: Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE); Selenium Remote Control (RC); WebDriver; and Selenium Grid. It’s free, open-source software that can be sponsored under the standard Apache 2.0 license.

It’s quite easy to use and install and provides supports for extensions as well.

5. Docker

Docker is a tool that focuses on continuous integration and deployment of code. Developers can easily create and manage applications using Dockerfiles.

Dockerfiles enable application management in isolated environments including code, system files, libraries, and other functions. Hence, it is preferred by companies engaged in multi-cloud and hybrid computing.

Users can choose from three enterprise editions of Docker to manage docker containers starting from $750 per node a year.

Docker saves up a lot of time and resources while enhancing the productivity of systems and can also be easily integrated with existing systems.

Consult with your DevOps team to understand what suits best. In the end, it is all about the tool that provides maximum ROI within the given budget. Keep in mind that you should constantly evaluate your tools alongside your requirements and upgrade when necessary. Maintenance is a must.