The DevOps/Agile Community is Fearless

One of the undeniably best things about our industry (and even if you flinched at the title and the wide brush of “DevOps/Agile” the community’s existence irrespective of the label is undeniable) is the elevated discourse. No matter what we think of LinkedIn and no matter how much we do or do not participate, if we follow people in Technology and in particular those in the DevOps community (which reasonably should be nearly everyone now) then we are privy to the level of the dialogue and it is genuinely very high.

There’s constructive dialogue and disagreement, there’s robust argumentation, there’s alternative-thought-ignition, there’s intellectual quality, there’s openness, there’s emotional investment, there’s academic proof and discussion of emotions and there’s open, collaborative intellectual exploration. Most of all, beautifully, there’s no evidence of fear.

We have many a thought instigators and that’s stupendously lucky. The courage it takes them to bring up things that they know can be seen as controversial is immense when it’s displayed in such a public forum and the fact that the DevOps community finds it possible to eschew impression management and have no fear of appearing ignorant, negative, intrusive or incompetent to those who read them is absolutely remarkable and a testament to the openness of the industry.

It’s rare and we’re fortunate. There’s much less of this in say the medical community or the accounting/finance one and so on. Ours is a corner of the world that’s unaffected by the sanctimony of corporate language and its honesty acumen is what powers the thoughts and emotions we read about and what a treat that is.

Just one of hundreds of examples, last week I loved this debate from Bryan Finster on the terminology and concept fit of the term “mindset” when it comes to agility. Irrespective if you agree or disagree with his stance he has bravely simply put it out there and he passionately believes in it and is courageous and open enough to enunciate how he feels and invite debate.