Saturday, January 12, 2013

Every Job is a Custom Job

No matter how much we standardize, how repeatable or automated our processes are, we will never be able to deliver the exact same product/datacenter/service twice.

This isn't a problem experienced by many other domains (not to such a degree, anyway). I can order a pair of speakers from a manufacturer and they will be the exact same speakers that my neighbor orders. Likewise with most food at the store, even at restaurants. Sure, you can ask them to hold the onions on your burger but that level of customization is not what's experienced by developers/deployers/devops/what-have-you.

The customer will always have some indigenous nuance about their particular system - legacy software/hardware, limited budget, upper management has already decided on a particular product before you arrived - that will preclude you from delivering the *exact* same product every time.

The challenge, then (and what makes the work interesting), is working this reality into your automation processes.

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