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In DevOps S-Pillar of "CALMS" says that it is also about sharing knowledge.

At a present project I am working on, I am sitting at the interface between two organizations together with another "DevOps"-guy. A lot of our time is wasted because we have partly redundant meetings (with the organization on the left side) and we wait partially longer times until somebody from the right side can assist us in solving some issue.

Sometimes I also spend hours to find out who is reponsible for getting some information for me that I need.

What would you try to address to make more sharing possible although it is different organizations that are working on that project?

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    hi @marc - this is an important point to discuss, but an impossible question to answer. If you could narrow it down that would help a lot. what knowledge sharing are you talking about? Where are you currently experiencing this pain? Give us some context to work with :) Oct 6, 2020 at 6:58

2 Answers 2

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  1. Establish a wiki (such as Confluence, DokuWiki, etc).
  2. Establish a chat/communications channel (such as through Slack or Mattermost).
  3. Share some code repositories (such as through GitLab, Bitbucket, GitHub).
  4. Share some binary repositories (such as through Artifactory, Nexus, Pulp).
  5. Occasionally send out a "newsletter" email that showcases what your team are trying to accomplish.
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  • my 5 cts: 1. find out who are your key stakeholders and identify whether they can help somehow (sponsorship/leadership). 2. agree on standards and introduce automatic acceptance tests -> that is the team and also project management can see a high-level dashboard of your X assets showing how are they doing in terms of deliverability.
    – Ta Mu
    Oct 6, 2020 at 20:30
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As Peter noted in his comment to the previous answer, getting stakeholders involved is key. It sounds like your parent organization is viewing DevOps as an interface between the teams, rather than an umbrella of reform.

IMO, the ultimate goal of DevOps is delivering value to clients faster, and communication is a key part of that. Here's some thoughts:

  1. In Team of Teams McChrystal talked about the value of getting key players from multiple organizations to be within physical proximity of each other. If you're still going into the office, suggest that members of the organizations be moved to be near each other. IF that's not possible, implement a "buddy system"; have people from one org pair up with another remotely, and commit to checking in with each other daily (even if it's just 5 minutes).

  2. Are the two organizations using the same work tracking system (or at least one that integrates with the other one)? Flow can often be improved if everyone's using the same tool set. It becomes easier to hand off items, as well as building that centralized repo.

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