tools

Every dev knows the drill — you’re sitting down to get cracking on your new coding assignment and first things first, it’s time to build your toolchain. And this is where the headaches begin — selecting the tools and plugins, creating the integrations, piecing it all together. Not to mention the licensing and versioning headaches. After some fidgeting, manual setups, and bridgework, the toolchain is ready… for now. Meanwhile, a nearby dev on another team is building a similar toolchain with different tools and integrations, and only later will the lack of standardization and resulting roadblocks become apparent. The problems will be daunting and difficult to overcome, causing delays in code delivery, and delaying the product to market.

This story is so common in DevOps that this likely has happened in your organization and every dev can relate a similar story. The results extend far beyond missed milestones and delayed or failed launches. Burnout, leading to churn, plague organizations that fail to address the problems of poor toolchain management. Research shows that these organizations often perform poorly compared to their competitors that work to resolve these issues at the team and organization levels. Far and away, the best solution to toolchain management issues is automation. Lack of automation in the toolchain had a wide variety of ill effects impacting individual contributors, teams, the resulting product, and the organization at large.