The devops handbook how to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, & Security in Technology Organizations By Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, and John Willis

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Creating large volumes of documentation of questionable detail 
which become obsolete shortly after they are written
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Pushing large batches of work to teams and special committees 
for approval and processing and then waiting for responses
Instead, we need everyone in our value stream to find and fix problems in 
their area of control as part of our daily work. By doing this, we push quality 
and safety responsibilities and decision-making to where the work is per-
formed, instead of relying on approvals from distant executives.
We use peer reviews of our proposed changes to gain whatever assurance is 
needed that our changes will operate as designed. We automate as much of 
the quality checking typically performed by a QA or Information Security 
department as possible. Instead of developers needing to request or schedule 
‡ 
In the 1700s, the British government engaged in a spectacular example of top-down, bureau-
cratic command and control, which proved remarkably ineffective. At the time, Georgia was 
still a colony, and despite the fact that the British government was three thousand miles away 
and lacked firsthand knowledge of local land chemistry, rockiness, topography, accessibility 
to water, and other conditions, it tried to plan Georgia’s entire agricultural economy. The results 
of the attempt were dismal and left Georgia with the lowest levels of prosperity and population 
in the thirteen colonies.
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34 • Part I
a test to be run, these tests can be performed on demand, enabling developers 
to quickly test their own code and even deploy those changes into production 
themselves.
By doing this, we truly make quality everyone’s responsibility as opposed to 
it being the sole responsibility of a separate department. Information security 
is not just Information Security’s job, just as availability isn’t merely the job 
of Operations.
Having developers share responsibility for the quality of the systems they 
build not only improves outcomes but also accelerates learning. This is espe-
cially important for developers as they are typically the team that is furthest 
removed from the customer. As Gary Gruver observes, “It’s impossible for a 
developer to learn anything when someone yells at them for something they 
broke six months ago—that’s why we need to provide feedback to everyone 
as quickly as possible, in minutes, not months.” 
ENABLE OPTIMIZING FOR DOWNSTREAM WORK CENTERS
In the 1980s, Designing for Manufacturability principles sought to design