DevOps Is for Product Engineers, Too

"As the name suggests, sociotechnical refers to the ways in which social and technical aspects of an organization relate to one another. In the context of technology companies, you can think of the organization itself as a sociotechnical system. Something that's important to note is that sociotechnical theory doesn't just acknowledge these two aspects, it emphasizes that they're inherently interconnected."

"My name is Lesley Cordero. Welcome to my talk on how DevOps fits into the landscape of product engineering, namely through using it as a practice of driving sociotechnical excellence. I'm currently a staff engineer at the New York Times, specifically focusing on reliability platforms within our wider platform engineering organization. While this talk is about DevOps, as my title indicates, the reason it's applicable to product engineers is because we're all ultimately operating within sociotechnical systems."

DevOps functions as a practice to drive sociotechnical excellence by aligning social and technical elements of engineering organizations. Sociotechnical systems describe how social and technical aspects interrelate, requiring joint optimization rather than isolated changes. Platform and product engineers must consider how individual work impacts broader product and service landscapes. Sociotechnical theory emphasizes inherent interconnectedness, so cultural change demands simultaneous attention to team dynamics, tools, and processes. Common organizational failures include over-investing in tools and processes at the expense of team dynamics, and promoting value misalignments that fracture system coherence. Effective reliability and platform engineering prioritize coordinated design and improvement across social and technical domains.

Read at InfoQ