DevOps for the Modern Enterprise

CHAPTER 8

Managing People, Not Resources

Managing teams would be easy if it wasn’t for the people you have to deal with.

—Anonymous (my first supervisor)

Some people react allergically when you call people resources and talk about managing resources. While not exactly allergic, I agree with the underlying sentiment. A resource is something you can manage without much tailoring; you can treat one bag of sand like the next bag of sand when it comes to making dikes. With people, that is never true. We have probably all been planning for projects and creating a plan that includes a certain amount of “anonymous full-time equivalents (FTEs).” Then a bit later, we start putting names to it and realize that we need more or less effort based on the actual ...