Developing a “dev ops” mindset is key to taking ownership of your value creation process. We live at the confluence of two social movements that threaten to sweep away everything that has come before them. You could make the case that this confluence causes people not to take action.


Introducing the Social Context

In previous segments, we have talked about the Great Fragmentation and the Great Acceleration. You think of the Great Fragmentation as the reason why everything has become about niches. Why people never talk about mass production wtih reverence. 

The second social driver is called the Great Acceleration. You can hear this in every conversation where someone says I can’t believe this has happened so quickly. I can’t believe that so many people have switched to this new thing so quickly.


Introducing Dev Ops

Dev Ops is a set of tactics for delivering new services very rapidly. It’s becoming a mindset that you can use to guide your day. Dev Ops assumes that nothing is ever finished.  It suggests that there is value in releasing a bare-bones service.

You could even make the case that dev ops is behind the current rate of techno-economic change. People who care about customer success need to provide their customers with the minimally viable product so they help identify improvements.


What Dev Ops means to you

Adopting dev ops tactics will provide you with the tools you need to engage in constant improvement of your service. It provides a strategy for justifying the early release of services and a roadmap for identifying milestones along the way.

As subscription makers, you may be tempted to think of your service as a product, to think of your sales as transactional. However, adopting a dev ops mindset will open up new avenues for ensuring customer success.

The definition of customer success is not something that you can control. You may not even be able to identify it for all customers. In the best circumstances, customer success is something that you and your customers can at come to terms after much discussion.

Dev Ops can help you rapidly produce the minimally viable services that can move the conversations along. Taking months to respond to suggestions or recommendations will kill your subscription service quicker than anything. It will also destroy any goodwill that you have built up over time.   


Identifying Dev Ops Tools

The most important Dev Ops tool is git. Git is a software version control tool. It keeps track of the changes you make to individual files in a product. Most implementations also allow you to identify the differences between files so that you can merge them.

Originally, Git was used by opensource software developers. Learning how to use it has become a cost of admission for anyone who wants to build a reputation working on opensource projects.

However,Git is becoming an audience development or engagement tool. Audience members are given access to work-in-progress books or articles and asked for comments.

You look for tools that allow customers to help you build something lasting when you are identifying Dev Ops Tools.


Conclusions

Dev Ops will provide you with both the mindset and the tactics you need to satisfy your customers. This will help you to identify the Dev Ops Tools to address your specific challenges.

Zachary Alexander