The “Three Ways” are principles that all of the DevOps patterns can be derived from, which we’re using in both the “DevOps Handbook” and “The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win.” We assert that the Three Ways describe the values and philosophies that frame the processes, procedures, practices, and practices of DevOps.
The First Way: Flow/Systems Thinking
Emphasizes performance of the entire system, as opposed to the performance of a specific silo of work or department
- Focus is on all business value streams that are enabled by IT
- The outcomes of putting the First Way into practice include never passing a known defect to downstream work centers, never allowing local optimization to create global degradation, always seeking to increase flow, and always striving to achieve profound understanding
The Second Way: Amplify Feedback Loops
The goal of almost any process improvement initiative is to shorten and amplify feedback loops so necessary corrections can be continually made. The outcomes include understanding and responding to all customers, internal and external, shortening and amplifying all feedback loops, and embedding knowledge where needed
Culture of Continual Experimentation and Learning
The Third Way is about creating a culture that fosters two things: continual experimentation, taking risks and learning from failure; and understanding that repetition and practice is the prerequisite to mastery.
- Experimentation and taking risks ensure that we keep pushing to improve, even if it means going deeper into the danger zone than we’ve ever gone before.
