Skip to main content
Redhat Developers  Logo
  • Products

    Featured

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
      Red Hat Enterprise Linux Icon
    • Red Hat OpenShift AI
      Red Hat OpenShift AI
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI
      Linux icon inside of a brain
    • Image mode for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
      RHEL image mode
    • Red Hat OpenShift
      Openshift icon
    • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
      Ansible icon
    • Red Hat Developer Hub
      Developer Hub
    • View All Red Hat Products
    • Linux

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
      • Image mode for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
      • Red Hat Universal Base Images (UBI)
    • Java runtimes & frameworks

      • JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
      • Red Hat build of OpenJDK
    • Kubernetes

      • Red Hat OpenShift
      • Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift
      • Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
      • Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed
    • Integration & App Connectivity

      • Red Hat Build of Apache Camel
      • Red Hat Service Interconnect
      • Red Hat Connectivity Link
    • AI/ML

      • Red Hat OpenShift AI
      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI
    • Automation

      • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
      • Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed
    • Developer tools

      • Red Hat Trusted Software Supply Chain
      • Podman Desktop
      • Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces
    • Developer Sandbox

      Developer Sandbox
      Try Red Hat products and technologies without setup or configuration fees for 30 days with this shared Openshift and Kubernetes cluster.
    • Try at no cost
  • Technologies

    Featured

    • AI/ML
      AI/ML Icon
    • Linux
      Linux Icon
    • Kubernetes
      Cloud icon
    • Automation
      Automation Icon showing arrows moving in a circle around a gear
    • View All Technologies
    • Programming Languages & Frameworks

      • Java
      • Python
      • JavaScript
    • System Design & Architecture

      • Red Hat architecture and design patterns
      • Microservices
      • Event-Driven Architecture
      • Databases
    • Developer Productivity

      • Developer productivity
      • Developer Tools
      • GitOps
    • Secure Development & Architectures

      • Security
      • Secure coding
    • Platform Engineering

      • DevOps
      • DevSecOps
      • Ansible automation for applications and services
    • Automated Data Processing

      • AI/ML
      • Data Science
      • Apache Kafka on Kubernetes
      • View All Technologies
    • Start exploring in the Developer Sandbox for free

      sandbox graphic
      Try Red Hat's products and technologies without setup or configuration.
    • Try at no cost
  • Learn

    Featured

    • Kubernetes & Cloud Native
      Openshift icon
    • Linux
      Rhel icon
    • Automation
      Ansible cloud icon
    • Java
      Java icon
    • AI/ML
      AI/ML Icon
    • View All Learning Resources

    E-Books

    • GitOps Cookbook
    • Podman in Action
    • Kubernetes Operators
    • The Path to GitOps
    • View All E-books

    Cheat Sheets

    • Linux Commands
    • Bash Commands
    • Git
    • systemd Commands
    • View All Cheat Sheets

    Documentation

    • API Catalog
    • Product Documentation
    • Legacy Documentation
    • Red Hat Learning

      Learning image
      Boost your technical skills to expert-level with the help of interactive lessons offered by various Red Hat Learning programs.
    • Explore Red Hat Learning
  • Developer Sandbox

    Developer Sandbox

    • Access Red Hat’s products and technologies without setup or configuration, and start developing quicker than ever before with our new, no-cost sandbox environments.
    • Explore Developer Sandbox

    Featured Developer Sandbox activities

    • Get started with your Developer Sandbox
    • OpenShift virtualization and application modernization using the Developer Sandbox
    • Explore all Developer Sandbox activities

    Ready to start developing apps?

    • Try at no cost
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Videos

Gene Kim and Red Hat IT Part 4: DevOps Successes and Failures

July 2, 2014
Gene Kim, Bill Montgomery
Related topics:
DevOps
Related products:
Red Hat OpenShift

Share:

    Part four of a four-part series on DevOps with Gene Kim and Red Hat IT.

    • Part 1: Getting DevOps Off the Ground
    • Part 2: The Importance of Partnership in DevOps
    • Part 3: A DevOps Implementation Strategy
    • Part 4: DevOps Successes and Failures

    Panelists:

    • Bill Montgomery: Manager, Red Hat IT
    • Steve Milner: Engineer, Red Hat IT
    • Jen Krieger: Product Owner, Red Hat IT
    • Tim Bielawa: Engineer, Red Hat IT
    • Chris Murphy: Engineer, Red Hat IT

    Introduction: Gene Kim, award-winning CTO and co-author of “The Phoenix Project,” recently sat down with Red Hat IT’s Inception team to discuss their DevOps mission. Here are the highlights from the conversation.

    On early successes and failures for Red Hat IT’s DevOps Enablement team:

    Gene: What are you framing as your first couple wins?

    Jen: While we were gathering information on what our long-term focus should be, the team also wanted to work on something that would give us a few early wins. We wanted to build confidence and put something out there that people could use as soon as possible.

    Tim: I'm the former release engineering guy here. In my old job, every single day, somebody would ask, "Hey man, you got a minute? Can you tell me how much memory is running on this machine?" Hold on, let me look. "Can you tell me what the secondary IP is on this host?" Give me a minute. “Can you tell me what the value of this puppet fact is?” Et cetera, and so on, and so on. It was a huge time sink for developers and ops folks.

    So, we wrote a modular tool, jsonstats. It's pluggable, you throw whatever you want in. As long as your plugin can return a hash data structure, then there's a REST endpoint that's listening and returns that data. We deployed it across our environments. Steve put together a web front-end, talook--you just type in the hostname, and boom. There's the information you need. It saves people tons of time now.

    Gene:  Can you tell me a little bit more about the value you've created? Some more concrete examples of ways you've saved people time?

    Tim:  With jsonstats and talook? Reduced context switching. In any given day, you’re saving a few hours, at least, across the release engineering and sysadmin teams by not having to constantly refocus. The time it takes to look up a fact is trivial. But enabling people to find the data themselves through a web interface, yes, that’s saving hours per week.

    Gene:  I'm guessing that this has also led to increased consistency of environments as well, just the fact that you can actually answer those questions.

    Chris:  It's shining the light on where and how the environments are not consistent because we suddenly have hundreds of more people able to access the information. By giving the developers this access, they can now very quickly and easily find the disparities between environments and collaborate with our system administrators to bring the environments in line with each other. So while it isn't an overnight fix, it's starting that movement.

    Gene:  Awesome. What has been people’s reaction when suddenly they are getting answers to questions that they've always been asking?

    Steve:  It's been positive. We even had somebody in a dev team basically ask us to hurry up and put out some enhancements to jsonstats and talook. That was cool, to have somebody on our tail going, "Hey, guys. Just take the time to do this."

    Bill: The biggest risk for this team is irrelevancy and lack of demand. We don't have any authority to push changes top‑down. All we can do is use a carrot approach for people to buy what we're selling. And today, we've got people knocking on the door, asking for more. That's a great indication.

    Gene: What has your biggest challenge or setback been to date?

    Jen: People in general? [laughs] Seriously though, rapid prototyping and building things that might get tossed out in a matter of weeks/months can be uncomfortable for everyone involved. For example, we quickly built jsonstats & talook to expose production server configurations to developers with the knowledge that our systems engineering team was going to implement MCollective in the not-too-distant future. That did create conflict inside and outside our team. The idea of prioritizing “done” over “perfect” is a challenging new idea for us as a team and a department.

    We are also a new agile team, which comes with all of the challenges that agile teams have while forming. It took us awhile to become comfortable to speak up about technical concerns; it’s a constant balance between needing to speak about technical refactoring vs. how many meetings can people tolerate. I believe we have found the right balance and I also believe the team has figured out that clearing up defects, technical debt and focusing on refactoring are as important to me as a Product Owner as feature development.

    Gene:  What’s your next big win and what's the time frame for that?

    Jen:  That would be Release Engine. We are targeting automated code deployment for our SOA & ESB team to our QA environment next week. That date is specifically to assist with two significant projects running in IT right now. We expect Release Engine to start decreasing change lead time and identifying our environmental inconsistencies that bite us over and over again.

    Bill: After July, we expect to expand adoption of Release Engine to more teams over the following 2-3 quarters. Once we get it right, other dev teams will be chomping at the bit, and we’ll actually be relieving pressure on our operations folks. That’s when we’ll start to see a department-wide impact and broader use of CI/CD practices.

    Gene: Thank you so much, guys. I will catch up with you soon.

    This concludes this four-part interview series with Gene Kim and the Red Hat Inception team. Stay tuned to Red Hat Developer Blog for more updates on DevOps in Red Hat IT.

    Gene Kim is hosting the DevOps Enterprise Summit on October 21-23, where more stories will be told about DevOps transformations in large, complex organizations. Learn more about the summit and submit your own talk here!

    Read more blogs from the Inception Team and follow us on Twitter.

    Last updated: June 20, 2023

    Recent Posts

    • How to build a Model-as-a-Service platform

    • How Quarkus works with OpenTelemetry on OpenShift

    • Our top 10 articles of 2025 (so far)

    • The benefits of auto-merging GitHub and GitLab repositories

    • Supercharging AI isolation: microVMs with RamaLama & libkrun

    What’s up next?

     

    Red Hat Developers logo LinkedIn YouTube Twitter Facebook

    Products

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    • Red Hat OpenShift
    • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

    Build

    • Developer Sandbox
    • Developer Tools
    • Interactive Tutorials
    • API Catalog

    Quicklinks

    • Learning Resources
    • E-books
    • Cheat Sheets
    • Blog
    • Events
    • Newsletter

    Communicate

    • About us
    • Contact sales
    • Find a partner
    • Report a website issue
    • Site Status Dashboard
    • Report a security problem

    RED HAT DEVELOPER

    Build here. Go anywhere.

    We serve the builders. The problem solvers who create careers with code.

    Join us if you’re a developer, software engineer, web designer, front-end designer, UX designer, computer scientist, architect, tester, product manager, project manager or team lead.

    Sign me up

    Red Hat legal and privacy links

    • About Red Hat
    • Jobs
    • Events
    • Locations
    • Contact Red Hat
    • Red Hat Blog
    • Inclusion at Red Hat
    • Cool Stuff Store
    • Red Hat Summit
    © 2025 Red Hat

    Red Hat legal and privacy links

    • Privacy statement
    • Terms of use
    • All policies and guidelines
    • Digital accessibility

    Report a website issue