Ella’s Treasure Map - About DevOps and Working Together

The sun was shining through the classroom windows when Teacher Lisa came in with a large rolled map under her arm. The children, who were sitting in a circle on the fluffy rug, looked curiously as she unrolled the map on the floor.

“What is that, Teacher Lisa?” asked Sofia, while all the children leaned forward to see better.

“This, my friends, is a treasure map!” said Teacher Lisa with a smile. “But not just any treasure map. It’s a treasure map of our new big project.”

The children had talked about treasure maps before. They had even drawn their own during last term’s art lessons, but none of them had seen such a large and detailed map before.

“Are we invited to a treasure hunt?” asked Johan enthusiastically.

“In a way,” replied Teacher Lisa. “But not an ordinary one. We’re going to do something called a DevOps project.”

“Dev… what?” asked Ella and laughed. It sounded like a funny word to her ears.

“DevOps,” repeated Teacher Lisa. “It’s a word that consists of two parts – Development and Operations – or in Swedish: Utveckling och Drift. It’s about how to build things together, as a team, where everyone helps each other all the way from idea to finished product.”

“Like when we did our ransomware play?” asked Ella.

“Exactly! But with DevOps, you work even more as a cohesive team and with even more focus on doing things quickly, smoothly, and well – and constantly improving.”

Teacher Lisa pointed at the treasure map. “The school turns 100 years old next month, and the principal has asked if our class would like to do a special project to celebrate that. I thought we would build a digital museum about the school’s history that everyone can visit on their computer or phone.”

“Cool!” exclaimed several children in unison.

“But how do we do that? None of us can build a website,” pointed out Li.

“That’s exactly why we’re going to use the DevOps principles,” said Teacher Lisa. “It’s not just about being able to program, but about how we work together. And I’ve prepared a little help for us…”

She reached for her phone and dialed a number. A few minutes later, three people walked into the classroom – a young woman with colorful hair, a man with glasses and a friendly smile, and another woman with a confident posture.

“This is Kim, Rami, and Maya. Kim works as a programmer, or developer, Rami works with something called IT operations, and Maya works with IT security. They will help us with our project – and explain what DevOps is along the way.”

Kim smiled at the children. “Hello everyone! As Teacher Lisa said, I work with development, which means I write code that becomes websites and apps.”

“And I,” said Rami, “make sure those websites and apps actually work and are available to everyone, around the clock. I work with operations.”

“And I,” said Maya with a friendly smile, “help Kim and Rami make sure everything we build is secure. I work with IT security, and I’m involved from the very beginning when we plan and build things – it’s called ‘shift left’ in security.”

“In the past,” continued Kim, “developers, operations staff, and security teams often worked completely separately from each other. The developers built something and then passed the result to the operations team, like a baton in a relay race, and the security team came in at the very end to check everything.”

“But that often led to problems,” said Rami. “The developers could build things that were hard for us to make work in reality, and when something went wrong, everyone just pointed fingers at each other.”

“And I, as a security expert, was often called ‘the No-person’,” added Maya with a laugh. “Because when I came in at the end of the project and found security problems, it was often too late to fix them properly, so I had to say ‘no, we can’t launch yet’. Nobody liked that.”

“So that’s when DevOps came,” said Kim. “The idea is that developers, operations staff, and security teams work much more closely together, just like a team where all the players collaborate.”

“But even more importantly,” said Rami, “DevOps is about certain principles for how to build things together. Would you like to hear them?”

The children nodded eagerly.

“The first principle is Automation,” said Kim. “It means that we let computers do as much as possible of the boring and repetitive work.”

“Like letting a robot do the dishes instead of doing them by hand?” asked Johan.

“Exactly!” said Kim. “We write programs that test our code automatically, so we don’t have to do it manually every time.”

“And my security team also uses automation,” said Maya. “We have tools that automatically scan the code for security problems while the developers are writing it, instead of waiting until the end. It’s called ‘shift left’, because we move the security work earlier in the process – to the left on the timeline.”

“The second principle is Continuous Integration,” said Rami. “It sounds advanced, but it really just means that we put everyone’s work together often – preferably every day – so we quickly discover if something doesn’t work together.”

“Like if we would practice our theater performance a little every day, instead of just one big rehearsal the day before the premiere?” asked Ella.

“Exactly!” said Rami. “And related to that is the principle of Small, frequent updates. Instead of making one huge change at once, we make many small changes, often.”

“Like building a puzzle, piece by piece, instead of trying to push all the pieces together at once?” asked Li.

“Perfect analogy!” said Kim. “And all these small pieces go through a Pipeline – which is like an assembly line in a factory, where each piece is tested and checked automatically before moving on.”

“But the most important principle of all,” said Teacher Lisa, “is Collaboration and Communication. In DevOps, everyone talks to each other all the time, shares information, and no one says ‘that’s not my job’.”

Ella raised her hand. “But what does all this have to do with the treasure map?”

Teacher Lisa smiled. “Good question, Ella! The map represents our plan for the project. Instead of just diving in and starting to build, we’ve drawn a map of the journey we’ll take together.”

She pointed to different parts of the map.

“Here is ‘Idea Island’, where we start by gathering ideas about what the museum should contain. Then we travel to ‘Planning Coast’, where we decide who does what. After that ‘Development Mountains’, where we actually build the things. Then ‘Testing Lake’, where we test that everything works, and finally ‘Launch Volcano’, where our museum becomes available for everyone to visit.”

“But look here,” said Rami and pointed to arrows on the map that went in circles. “The special thing about DevOps is that it’s not a straight line. It’s a circle, or rather an infinity symbol. We constantly improve.”

“Exactly!” said Kim. “When we’ve launched our museum, we collect feedback – what do the visitors think? What can be improved? Then we start the circle again, with new ideas and improvements.”

“It sounds like a lot of work,” said Johan.

“It can be,” admitted Teacher Lisa. “But there’s another important principle in DevOps – we should have fun together! And we should celebrate successes, even small ones.”

During the coming weeks, the class worked on their digital museum. Children were divided into different teams – history researchers who gathered facts, image creators who drew and took photos, storytellers who wrote texts, and testers who checked that everything was understandable. Kim and Rami helped with the technical part.

Every morning they had a short “stand-up meeting” where everyone told what they had worked on, what they would do next, and if they had encountered any problems.

“This is actually another DevOps principle,” explained Rami. “Daily, short meetings where everyone shares information.”

They also used a large virtual bulletin board on the classroom’s interactive screen, where everyone could see what needed to be done, what was in progress, and what was completed.

“This is a Kanban board,” explained Kim. “An important DevOps tool for visualizing the workflow.”

The work didn’t always go smoothly. When the history team and the image team didn’t communicate enough, they ended up with images that didn’t match the facts. But instead of getting frustrated, Teacher Lisa called for a “retrospective” – a meeting where everyone talked about what had gone well, what had gone less well, and how they could improve.

“In the DevOps world, we see problems as opportunities to learn and get better,” she explained.

Finally, a week before the school’s centenary, the museum was ready. It wasn’t perfect – there were still things that could be improved – but it was functional and informative.

“In the traditional world, we would have waited until everything was perfect,” said Rami. “But in DevOps, we launch something that is ‘good enough’ and then continuously improve.”

When the jubilee day came, the class proudly presented their digital museum to the whole school, parents, and even the local newspaper. Everyone was impressed.

“But we’re not done,” explained Ella to the newspaper reporter. “We’re now collecting feedback from the visitors, and next week we’ll start with the improvements. That’s how DevOps works – it never ends, it just gets better and better!”

After the presentation, the school principal came up to Teacher Lisa, Kim, Rami, and Maya.

“This was fantastic! But I’m even more impressed by how the children worked together. They really seemed to understand the different parts of the project and how everything was connected.”

“That’s the power of DevOps,” said Kim. “It’s not just about building things, but about building them together, in a smart way.”

On the way home from school, Ella eagerly told her mother about the project.

“Do you know what, mom? I think DevOps is almost more important than IT security!” she said.

“Why is that?” her mother asked curiously.

“Because in DevOps, it’s about building things right from the beginning. If we build things in a DevOps way, with all those principles like automatic testing, small updates, and ‘shift left’ that Maya talked about, then the things become safer from the start!”

Ella thought for a moment more. “Maya explained that in traditional projects, without DevOps, things often go wrong. The developers work by themselves for months without talking to the operations team. When they’re done, the product is thrown over to the operations team who have to make everything work, often with lots of problems. And the security team comes in at the very end and finds a bunch of errors that no one has time to fix properly. Everyone gets angry with each other, and no one wants to take responsibility.”

“That doesn’t sound very efficient,” said her mother.

“No, exactly! But the best thing about DevOps is that everyone is equally important and works together from the beginning. No one can say ‘that’s not my problem’. We own everything together – both the problems and the successes.”

When Ella went to bed that night, she thought about the map, the infinity symbol, and all the new words she had learned – pipeline, automation, continuous integration. But most of all, she thought about how good it felt when the whole class had found a treasure together. A treasure that was greater than gold and diamonds – a way to build amazing things, together.