Over the past few months, I have listened to a lot of customers asking how they can get "the DevOps", as if it were something you could purchase off the shelf and miraculously begin reaping its benefits. Simply stated, I'm seeing a very similar set of behaviors from customers as I saw years ago when everyone wanted to buy "the Agile".

One day I was discussing this phenomenon with a colleague over beers. The level of snarkiness during that conversation was at an all-time high when I decided that my next venture in life was to take all of the open-source automation tools I could find, add a couple of books (including The Phoenix Project, of course) and stick all of it in a box to sell on the web as "The Big Box of DevOps" for tens of thousands of dollars. I was even planning to add a second SKU which came with over-priced consulting with an engagement length that was long enough to bring me a fat paycheck, but short enough that I could be well gone before the damage I had wrought on the client became apparent. The whole joke was that, like the Agile/Scrum fad of a few years ago, there are plenty of companies that think they can buy their way into a better place without changing how they operate.

Since I am not the kind of person that would take advantage of people's ignorance I put aside my get rich quick scheme and settled on using this space to help folks through their DevOps adoption journey. My plan is to write about people, processes, and products that can help organizations improve the value they provide to their customers. In the end I hope that this blog becomes a platform to lift the veil of ignorance about DevOps.