ChatOps! Bless you!

I know we’re all afraid of hearing an achoo close to us nowadays, but that’s not the case here. Actually, this almost onomatopoeia word is a proven collaboration model that can help ease the complexities and uncertainties of today’s IT managed services world.

A lot has been written about ChatOps and how it will change the way we operate entire IT environments, either traditional or cloud-native. I want to start a journey to explore how this simple composed word can revolutionize your IT service management and improve collaboration. So, let’s get it started!

What’s ChatOps?

The best definition I’ve seen around is “a collaboration model that connects people, processes, tools, and automation into a transparent and seamless workplace by using a chat platform and bots.”

However, what does that mean to newbies on ChatOps? Let’s take a look at this definition in detail.

First, it talks about collaboration as its core value, and that happily aligns to DevOps and site reliability engineering (SRE) approaches where break the silos is the rule. It also means the ultimate goal is to facilitate synergy and teamwork among distinct technical and business roles during a service management event, say an incident ticket.

The second part is about connecting key standalone components: people, process, and technology (the famous PPT framework). It emphasizes on the technology pillar by breaking it into 2 parts as tools and automation. ChatOps is not feasible without them. The PPT framework helps to balance and to keep good relationships among those 3 elements which translated into organizational efficiency.

“a transparent and seamless workplace” is something most, if not all, companies are trying to achieve where you can see and feel what’s happening to the company systems through information radiators on-the-fly; work without any or with a tiny number of obstacles. Imagine a place where you can deliver your services with a minimum quantity of collateral work.

The last piece of this definition says clearly that we need a chat platform formerly known as instant messaging systems. There are several installments in the market including Slack, Microsoft Teams, MatterMost, etc. They are an evolution to simple instant messaging tools because they have application programming interfaces (APIs) to extend their functionalities and behaviors through chatbots (specialized bots).

This was a brief introduction to ChatOps by understanding its definition with propriety. I hope you liked this very first post of a ChatOps series that I planned to do. Next time I’ll be talking about chatbots and bots. 

I’ve been written and posted about my ChatOps, stay tuned by following me on Twitter @ranami and LinkedIn profile.

As the time demands, stay safe, protect your loved ones, and help others!

Rod.