Keep C.A.L.M.S. and Be Agile

From Chris Donahue

Since Futron introduced our ‘Keep C.A.L.M.S. and Be Agile” icon, we have received abundant feedback from other industry professionals and friends ranging from “I like the Black One” and “Cool” to “What is it?” and “I don’t understand”.

One behalf of an organization that values feedback, I want to say thank you to everyone that has commented.

Additionally, while it is easy to concentrate on those that provided positive feedback, I wanted to spend a few minutes focusing on those that are asking “What is it?” or stating “I don’t understand”.

In short, C.A.L.M.S. is an acronym originally developed by John Willis and Damon Edwards in 2010 and later further refined by Jez Humble as a means to describe DevOps. As Chris Jackson, Chief Technologist, at Rackspace, explains in his blog, C.A.L.M.S. is:

• Culture – Own the change to drive collaboration and communication
• Automation – Take manual steps out of your value chain
• Lean – Use lean principles to enable higher cycle frequency
• Metrics – Measure everything and use data to refine cycles
• Sharing – Share experiences, successful or not, to enable others to learn

At Futron, we are active in building on the success of others and moving the conversation(s) forward. Within this context, we endorse the notions of Culture, Automation, Lean, Metrics, and Sharing as fundamental elements of DevOps.

Additionally, as Agile Enthusiasts, we agree with IBM’s Eric Minick who links DevOps to foundations found within both Lean and Agile. Specifically, Eric states in his blog that:

“While everyone supplies slightly different words, the same working understanding of DevOps is nearly universal. Analysts, authors, industry, and community leaders all agree. The ideas are big and mutually supportive. In short:

• DevOps exists to help the business win
• The scope is broad, but centered on IT
• The foundations are found in Agile and Lean
• Culture is very important
• Feedback is fuel for innovation
• Automation helps”

Building on the Agile lineage, we have adopted the saying: “Keep C.A.L.M.S. and Stay Agile”. To us, the addition of Agile makes sense as we see a high percentage of DevOps transformations occurring in concert with Agile transformations and/or within Agile oriented practices.

As stated earlier, we welcome all feedback. As such, I would encourage you to use the hashtag #FutronCALMS on Facebook or Twitter so that we can further the discussion.