Powerful Solved: Why Curiosity Beats Coding In Devops.

Posted on Dec 27

• Originally published at wp.me

TL;DR: A lack of curiosity in DevOps leads to inefficiencies, repetitive incidents, and resistance to innovation, often more detrimental than a lack of coding skills. The solution involves fostering a curious mindset through practices like the ‘5 Whys’ for root cause analysis, hands-on system tool exploration, structured learning, living documentation, and blameless post-mortems.

Cultivating a curious mindset is paramount for success in DevOps, often outweighing specific coding proficiency. This post explores practical strategies to foster an environment where continuous learning and proactive problem-solving thrive, ensuring teams remain agile and effective.

A lack of curiosity in a DevOps team can manifest in several detrimental ways, impeding progress and fostering inefficiency. Recognizing these symptoms is the first step towards addressing the underlying issue:

Fostering a culture of curiosity starts with individual habits and extends to team-wide practices that encourage exploration and questioning.

The “5 Whys” technique is a simple yet powerful tool for root cause analysis. Encourage team members to consistently ask “why?” when encountering issues, configurations, or even successful outcomes, pushing beyond superficial answers.

Example Scenario: A deployment failed because a service couldn’t start.

Why did the service fail to start? Because port 8080 was already in use.

Why was port 8080 already in use? Because a previous instance of the service didn’t shut down gracefully.

Why didn’t the previous instance shut down gracefully? Because the shutdown script timed out during resource cleanup.

Source: Dev.to