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Traditionally, CFOs love developers because they create product. We tend to invest in developers, and expect efficiency from sysadmins. That’s because CFOs often see IT as a cost center, and sysadmins as the people who keep the lights on. Devs are seen as creating innovation, while sysadmins are there to make sure that innovation runs, and runs efficiently. Often, the CFO’s view of technology comes down to this: Invest in innovation, and cut your infrastructure costs.
I’ve been as guilty of that as anyone. I used to say to my ops managers, “Thanks for doing a great job last year. Now do it this year for 10 percent less.”
This point of view can extend to IT innovations like virtualization or cloud: They’re often regarded as means to reducing infrastructure costs. Cloud services can also be seen as a way for devs to bypass sysadmins and their processes, and get software developed and tested faster.
I think that’s the wrong way to look at cloud and other IT innovations. You can’t actually realize the efficiencies and cost savings of new IT technologies without your sysadmins. It’s the sysadmins who understand how these innovations can enhance your company’s IT capabilities, and who can incorporate them to make your infrastructure more efficient — and get your product to market faster.
Your entire organization will benefit from developers (and QA testers) actively collaborating with the sysadmins to improve your company’s software deployment process. This shift from siloed technical teams to ongoing collaboration is at the heart of the DevOps movement. Like the continuous improvement movement in manufacturing a few decades ago, DevOps advocates talk about the importance of cultivating open communication between teammates, free sharing of ideas from everyone involved in the software creation and delivery process, and continual learning. It’s an approach that helps everyone orient themselves around the business purpose of their work, while helping you get products to market faster. That’s only going to matter more as IT innovation becomes an increasingly critical differentiator in every industry.
Automation is the area of IT innovation that’s key to moving faster. Automation lets sysadmins manage infrastructure efficiently, and it’s most effective when it manages all environments: different operating systems, virtualized data centers, and cloud infrastructure, whether public or private. With automation, your sysadmins spend much less time on repetitive tasks (which are better handled by a computer, anyway), so they can spend more time working with your other technical teams. You can be confident that developers are writing code, and testers are putting code through its paces, in production-like environments. Your team can release smaller code changes more frequently, and identify issues much earlier in the development cycle, leading to higher-quality software and a better customer experience.
Truly, every member of your technical team plays a critical role in getting things right, so there’s every reason to invest in sysadmins just as much as you invest in developers. And don’t forget about celebrating success — that too is an investment in your team’s ability to work together. It’s just as important to applaud the sysadmins along with the devs when you release a great new product or improvement. Celebrating success together helps the technical groups develop the camaraderie that is vital to operating as one team.
Your devs certainly have great ideas — but they don’t have all the great ideas. Innovation in software can really move the needle for your business, but only if you also invest in the IT innovation that lets your company get software out quickly, at high quality levels. It’s your sysadmins who hold those keys.
Bill Koefoed is CFO of Puppet Labs.
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