Firmly entrenched silos and a combative relationship between Dev and Ops is an example of:
Cultural debt---not just low trust or poor leadership---best describes the scenario of entrenched silos and combative Dev/Ops relations.
Cultural debt leads to resistance to new ways of working, lack of cooperation, and a focus on individual rather than collective success.
Why not the others?
Low trust and poor leadership are symptoms of cultural debt.
Change fatigue occurs after repeated failed initiatives; here, the core issue is cultural stasis.
Reference/Extract: ''DevOps transformation often fails without addressing cultural debt. Breaking down silos, building shared understanding, and changing incentives are essential for sustainable change.'' --- DevOps Handbook, State of DevOps Report, PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6 Section 3.4
Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of DevOps?
A fast flow of unplanned work into production is not a characteristic of DevOps. In fact, DevOps practices strive to minimize unplanned work (like emergency changes or outages) through automation, testing, collaboration, and rigorous change control. The other options---ensuring organizational success, working toward a common goal, and world-class stability/reliability---are all key DevOps characteristics. Reference: DevOps Foundation v3.6 syllabus section 1.4; State of DevOps Report.
The IT department of a very large insurance company is trying to improve the collaboration and communication between development and operational teams without much success. The department has many silos that are organized by expertise and led by a different manager. The managers of each team do not seem to be particularly interested in DevOps since they have been operating this way for many years and like their silo culture.
What is this organization suffering from?
The scenario describes entrenched silos and resistance to change---managers are protective of their domains and don't see the value of DevOps.
This is a textbook example of cultural debt: the gap between the organization's current culture and the adaptive, collaborative culture needed for DevOps success.
Cultural debt, like technical debt, accumulates over time and ''must be paid back'' for transformation to succeed. It creates friction, slows delivery, and blocks cross-team collaboration.
Why not the others?
Organizational change is what's needed, not what they're suffering from.
Change fatigue arises when people are burned out by too much change, not resistance.
Low trust is a symptom, but the core problem here is ingrained culture.
Reference/Extract: ''Cultural debt is accrued when organizations fail to evolve their culture to match new ways of working, like DevOps. It manifests in resistance to collaboration, entrenched silos, and leadership unwilling to change.'' --- DevOps Handbook, Ch. 2, and PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6 Syllabus Section 3.4
Which of the following is NOT a crucial ingredient when leading a digital transformation?
Command (authoritarianism) is not a crucial ingredient for leading digital transformation. The key ingredients:
Collaboration
Curiosity
Courage
DevOps leadership is about empowering teams, experimenting, and driving change, not command-and-control.
Extract-style reference: ''Digital transformation leaders embrace collaboration, curiosity, and courage, fostering an environment where experimentation and learning drive change.'' --- Accelerate, DevOps Handbook PeopleCert DevOps Foundation v3.6: Advocates servant and transformational leadership, not command/control.
An organization is finding that defects found in production had frequently already been identified and recorded in testing and staging and sometimes, although they optimized performance locally, they caused global degradation. Upon further inspection, it was found that this was happening because the testing phase was often delayed due to constraints around resource availability, impacting the flow of work from left to right.
Which of The Three Ways should they took to for direction on how to resolve the situation?
When work is delayed due to resource availability or local optimizations causing global degradation, the issue relates to The First Way---maximizing flow from left to right. Organizations should analyze and remove bottlenecks in the delivery pipeline (e.g., in testing).
Extract-style reference: ''Optimizing the flow of work requires eliminating bottlenecks, delays, and handoffs that slow the movement of changes from development to operations.'' --- The Phoenix Project DevOps Foundation courseware discusses value stream mapping and the First Way as critical tools for diagnosing and correcting such issues.
Carla