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Are you having trouble launching new features because of friction between development and operations? At CustomInk, we've reduced this friction by making changes to our teams, processes, and tools. Come find out what we've been up to and learn how you can implement similar changes in your own environment.

There's always a bit of tension when getting features from idea to production. In this talk, we'll look at some of the changes CustomInk has made to reduce this friction and keep the new features coming. Gone are the days of bi-monthly deploys, office pools dedicated to guessing when this deploy will be rolled back, and the ceremony surrounding the deploy-rollback-fix-deploy cycle. Today, ideas flow from product managers to developers to production with ease thanks to a number of changes that we've made to our teams, processes and tools.

During this talk, we'll look at:

How product managers drive the release cycle

Ideas and customer feedback
Prioritizing development requests
Managing branch merges and deployments (yes, product managers can help here!)
How operations enables developer productivity

Spinning up development environments - Vagrant, Chef
Infrastructure Automation - Chef
Enabling Continuous Deployment - Capistrano and caphub
Failing gracefully - Fault-tolerant load balancing with ldirectord
How developers get their code running in production

Staging environments
Continuous Integration - Jenkins, Green Screen
Staying on topic: Deploying changes when they're ready
Getting rid of the over-the-wall mentality - Dev & Ops working together

Enabling developers to do it themselves
Pair programing infrastructure automation
Keeping the process light and the communication flowing

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In this presentation titled "Taming the Kraken - How Operations Enables Developer Productivity" by Nathen Harvey at Rails Conf 2012, the focus is on reducing friction between development and operations at CustomInk, allowing for smoother processes in deploying software. CustomInk, known for facilitating custom t-shirt design, has transformed its software deployment strategies to address the challenges it faced in the past, such as lengthy deployment cycles and frequent rollbacks.

**Key Points Discussed:**
- **Process Redefinition:**  The team moved from bi-weekly sprints to a continuous model where code deployment occurs as soon as the code is ready. The definition of "done" was modified to mean that code is not just written, but also deployed and running in production.

- **Staging Environments:** To support frequent deployments, CustomInk established disposable staging environments. They ensured each topic branch had its staging setup which enabled rapid verification and easy transitions to production.

- **Infrastructure Automation:** The use of tools such as Chef and Vagrant was highlighted to automate server provisioning and manage development environments efficiently. Vagrant allows developers to spin up local environments quickly, ensuring consistency across development and production.

- **Continuous Integration and Testing:** The integration of Jenkins with Capistrano facilitates testing for every code branch, minimizing integration errors. Green Screen, a visual monitoring tool, is also used to keep the team informed about the status of builds.

- **Empowering Developers:** Developers are encouraged to take ownership of their code. This includes deploying their changes, which reduces reliance on the operations team and fosters a culture of accountability.

- **Communication and Culture:** Establishing a culture that encourages communication between development and operations teams is vital. Transparency about deployment statuses and automated notifications helps keep all stakeholders informed and reduces the stress associated with deployments.

**Examples and Anecdotes:**  Nathen shares stories about past deployment anxieties, likening them to high school proms due to the buildup and tension. With improvements, deploys became less fearful occurrences, leading to efficient software releases.

The conclusion of Nathen's talk emphasizes the importance of minimizing work in progress, deploying frequently, and automating processes to create a developer-friendly environment where features can be released with confidence and agility.

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