How to sell GitOps to your leadership and get buy-in
GitOps is an amazing way to transform your software delivery process and achieve better outcomes. Here's how to make a persuasive pitch for it.
Sep 28, 2023 • 5 Minute Read
In today's fast-paced technology landscape, organizations are constantly seeking ways to improve their software development and deployment processes. GitOps has emerged as a way to do just that, helping them achieve continuous delivery and ensure efficient, reliable operations.
If you're a DevOps engineer, K8s admin, cloud admin, or developer who loves GitOps, you might be wondering “How do I convince my boss or my team to adopt this great way of managing software delivery?” In this article, we’re going to cover how to do exactly that.
1. Start with the pain points that GitOps would solve
Before you dive into the technical details of GitOps, you need to understand the challenges and frustrations your leadership is facing with the current software delivery process. Are they unhappy with the slow speed of releases, or the frequent errors and downtime? Perhaps they don’t like the current lack of visibility and feedback, or they’re concerned about security and compliance issues.
No matter what their pain points are, you need to empathize with them and explain how GitOps is the solution to their problems. For example, you could explain how GitOps can:
reduce deployment time from hours to minutes
prevent configuration drift and human errors
provide real-time monitoring and alerts
enforce security policies and audit trails
2. Cover the benefits of GitOps
GitOps doesn’t just solve what isn’t working, but can also improve things across the board when it comes to productivity, quality, security, and compliance. You can also highlight how using Git as a common language and platform helps improve collaboration and communication among developers, operations, and other stakeholders.
Here’s a bit more information on the benefits of GitOps for businesses:
Faster Time-to-Market: GitOps enables faster and more efficient software delivery, reducing time spent on manual processes and ensuring consistent deployments across environments.
Increased Stability and Reliability: By maintaining a desired state and using automated processes for updates, GitOps minimizes configuration drift and reduces the risk of errors, leading to more stable and reliable applications.
Enhanced Security and Compliance: GitOps promotes security best practices by managing infrastructure and configurations as code, facilitating version control, code reviews, and ensuring compliance through auditable changes.
Seamless Rollbacks: With GitOps, rolling back to a previously known state becomes straightforward, allowing organizations to quickly recover from issues or failures.
Improved Collaboration and Visibility: GitOps promotes collaboration among teams by centralizing and version-controlling configurations and deployment manifests. It provides better visibility into the application lifecycle, enabling effective troubleshooting and reducing time-to-resolution.
3. Show them the value of GitOps
Once you have identified the pain points and benefits, you need to demonstrate how GitOps can deliver value to your organization. Use metrics, testimonials, or demos to show how GitOps can improve the speed, quality, reliability, and security of your software delivery process. You might want to share data on how GitOps can reduce deployment time, error rates, downtime, and recovery time.
One approach is to show them a live demo of how GitOps works in action, and how it simplifies the workflow and improves the feedback loop.
It helps to share case studies and success stories from other companies that have adopted GitOps and achieved impressive results, such as Netflix, Shopify, or GitHub. Here are a few that you can use as you build your argument for GitOps:
4. Address any objections to GitOps
Of course, not everyone will be convinced by your arguments right away. You might encounter some resistance or skepticism from your leadership, who might have some objections or concerns about GitOps. They might be worried about things like the learning curve, the cultural change, the upfront investment, or the vendor lock-in. Here’s how to deal with these:
Make sure to anticipate potential objections and prepare your responses in advance.
Use facts, data, examples, or analogies to address their doubts, and reassure them that GitOps is worth it. For example, you can explain that GitOps is not a new technology but a natural extension of what they already know and use: Git.
Show them GitOps is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a flexible approach that can be adapted to their specific needs and preferences.
Assure them that GitOps is not a costly or risky endeavor, but a smart investment that will pay off in the long run.
5. Ask for a GitOps pilot project
Finally, you need to ask for concrete action from your leadership. You don't want to leave them with a vague impression of GitOps, but rather with a clear next step to move forward. A good way to do this is to propose a pilot project where you can implement GitOps on a small scale and showcase its benefits in practice.
Start small, scale up
You don’t have to go all-in on GitOps from day one. Choose a low-risk, high-impact project and iterate. Starting with a pilot enables you to get feedback and learnings from this experience to refine your approach and scale it up gradually.
Use the pilot to showcase results
A pilot is the perfect opportunity to highlight the results to get more buy-in for GitOps adoption from your leadership and other teams. Be sure to set some measurable goals and metrics to track the progress and impact of GitOps on your software delivery performance.
Be patient and persistent, expect obstacles
GitOps is not a one-time project or a quick fix. It's a journey that requires continuous improvement and adaptation. You might face some challenges or setbacks along the way, but don't give up.
The journey is worth it
Keep communicating the value and benefits of GitOps to your leadership and your peers, keep learning from your successes and failures, and keep iterating on your process and tools. Eventually, you'll be able to reap the rewards of GitOps and enjoy a more efficient, reliable, and enjoyable software delivery experience.
Conclusion
GitOps is an amazing way to transform your software delivery process and achieve better outcomes for your organization. But it's not always easy to convince your leadership to embrace it. By following these tips, you can craft a persuasive pitch that will help you sell GitOps to your bosses and get their buy-in.
Thanks for reading, and good luck on selling the idea of GitOps to your leadership!
Want to learn more about GitOps?
For further learning, check out these GitOps courses on Pluralsight, where you can sign up for a 10-day free trial with no commitments:
