Q42 Techops - devops reinvented, or parallel evolution?

A foaf (actually, more the soaf - son-of-a-friend) just started his new job at q42, a young team of programmers building solutions focused more on the user than on the customer.

All employees (except the office manager and general manager) are interaction engineers, with a passion for all aspects of web development.

And q42 has no separate IT department or System Administrators...


That task is shared amongst the staff:  (paraphrasing from Dutch)

So what is included in Technical Operations? Everything. Think about managing servers, network, security, accounts, bugtrackers, our time tracking en planning tools, subversion, software, licencing, hardware, desktop installation, internet connectivity, WiFi, phone exchange, backups, office alarm, et cetera.

That is indeed a lot. Who's going to do it all?  All of us.  Yes, everyone indeed. But Q’ers don't have to worry, they won't be saddled with a task if they haven't got the time or know nothing about the subject.  From time to time it will happen that a Q'er will get a Techops job assigned, or get to answer a question. Most TechOps work is done in pairs.  It's more fun and and automatically ensures the sharing of knowledge.

Sounds like a nice application of devops principles.


How they deal with switching priorities may need some help in order to scale:

If a request has extreme urgency, in nine times out of ten, the requestor is a fool: he or she should have thought about it earlier.  If indeed the matter is urgent, one can always go to the work planner, who decides who's best suited to pick up the issue and won't let the same person fall prey to such interruption.

The shop looks pretty agile to me - without the buzzwords.  I'm interested in seeing how they develop.