This post is the next in our Inside DevOps series, where we share lessons learned from those on the frontlines of DevOps.
Hear from Fabio Segredo, Lead DevOps with Glintt Global. Glintt is a Portuguese technological leader listed on Euronext with over 1,200 technologists.
How did your DevOps Journey start?
Fabio: My journey into DevOps started around 2016 with the drive for improvement and automation of manual tasks. As I worked on different projects, I couldn't help but notice recurring patterns of inefficiency and bottlenecks. These inefficiencies often resulted in project delays due to handoffs between departments, lack of communication, and misunderstandings. That's when I stumbled upon DevOps. I started digging deeper and learning more about it. I realized it could potentially provide a solution to our inefficiencies. Simultaneously, it appealed to me as it offered a holistic approach to software development and IT operations. From that moment on, my journey became a pursuit. I immersed myself in a continuous journey of learning, diving deep into the principles, practices, and tools of DevOps. The journey continues to this day.
What is DevOps to you? How do you define it?
Fabio: DevOps is a philosophy grounded in a set of guiding principles. Those principles drive collaboration and open communication (mainly between developers and operations), efficiency, and speed throughout the SDLC, as well as continuous learning and experimentation. It's more than a specific set of tools. It's about embracing a mindset that values collaboration, learning, and adaptability so organizations can develop and maintain sustainable work practices.
What are some DevOps best practices your organization has implemented?
Fabio: We’ve been implementing DevOps practices for a couple of years now, but some of the more noticeable ones would be a culture of collaboration with a blameless approach. The open communication lets us shift left and incorporate testing, quality, performance evaluation, and security early in the development lifecycle. The adoption of technology and tools is done with care. There’s a particular focus on the concept and objectives, followed by the tools if necessary. Documentation has become an asset, and observability has become a natural companion. All this is done with continuous improvement in mind.
What's the biggest challenge Octopus has helped you with?
Fabio: At some point, we were using different deployment tools (built in-house), each with a different purpose. Some of them were running locally in clients and it wasn’t efficient or scalable. We were able to discontinue those tools and centralize everything in Octopus. This automatically allowed us to get a better insight into each client (for example, versioning, deployment rates, and centralized logs) and boost performance.
What’s the most challenging part of DevOps?
Fabio: Besides the cultural shift and adoption of technologies, maintaining a balance between speed and stability. Fast delivery is encouraged by DevOps, but it needs to be balanced with reliability, security, compliance, and quality. This requires careful planning and iterations to improve the process.
What’s the most rewarding part of DevOps?
Fabio: When you start to see changes in the mindset and culture of an organization, all the pieces start to fall into place. You have a fluid workflow and no more silos. You can redirect resources to things that bring business value.
What advice would you give someone just starting their DevOps journey?
Fabio: Start by familiarizing yourself with the core principles of DevOps. Understand why these principles are important and how they influence development and operations practices. Learn important technologies and tools by creating your own projects or contributing to open-source projects to gain experience. Keep learning, and stay up to date with the latest trends. Make sure you join DevOps communities, connect with peers, and learn from other people’s experiences.
What DevOps trend have you been following lately?
Fabio: I’ve been closely monitoring the evolving landscape of GitOps and Platform Engineering trends, understanding how they intersect and complement DevOps.
What DevOps book do you recommend?
Fabio: Some of the books on my shelf that I highly recommend are:
- The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations by Gene Kim, Patrick Debois, John Willis, and Jez Humble
- Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale by Jennifer Davis and Ryan Daniels
- Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems by Niall Richard Murphy, Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, and Jennifer Petoff
- The Site Reliability Workbook: Practical ways to implement SRE by Betsy Beyer, Nial Richard Murphy, David K.Rensin, Kent Kawahara, and Stephen Thorne
What's one thing about you that might surprise us?
Fabio: I taught myself to play piano through online resources when I was 18 years old. I used YouTube and other music websites to learn different techniques and songs, but simple ones, nothing too complex.
If you’d like to be featured in our series, Inside DevOps, please reach out to Joanna on LinkedIn to set up a time for a quick chat.
