The single biggest jump my team has ever seen in proficiency, knowledge, and productivity happened when we switched from developing on MAMP to using virtual machines that matched our production servers. At the time Vagrant had not yet been created and devops was not yet a word, all we knew was that we were collaborating in way that wasn’t possible before. Soon the whole team was solving problems and improving our stack rather than just the “ops” members of the team.

Devops is not about tooling; it is not about the freedom to innovate and the power to learn. When developers are empowered to learn the tools that will be used to launch and run their creations they have more flexibility and more permission to experiment with new technologies and to come up with innovative solutions. When operations people are empowered to build the tools they need, they can add the pieces they need to solve business problems.

In this session I will explain how my team shifted from being a team of developers using MAMP to a cross discipline team where every member has a deeper proficiency with the tools of our trade and how we are better for it. We’ll also look at how our clients and trainees have benefitted from this approach, both in working with us and in adopting these practices.