ChatOps: What is This Hype Word?

What is ChatOps?

Today email rules the IT world for notifications, data ingestion, failure notices, alarms, and communication.  Email is as old as the internet itself - is something this old and dated really the best way to communicate in 2016?  I don't think so. Email is hurting your operations and this article is me trying to push you to explore some type of chatops for yourself. ChatOps is the use of internet or intranet chat (IRC, Slack, Hipchat to name a few) to communicate in real time about development issues, real-time production problems, or just talking about your weekend. You can make your chat as rich as you like - you can send in graphs in real time from your alerting systems to give immediate visibility into an issue.  This not only resolves the issue quickly, it provides a way for others to learn about your infrastructure and processes. 

Here’s the 30,000-foot view: While in a chat room, team members type commands that the chat bot is configured to execute through custom scripts and plugins. These can range from code deployments to security event responses to team member notifications. The entire team collaborates in real time as commands are executed.

Why Me?

You're the one reading this, so it must interest you. I would advise that you speak to your project management and operations management teams to figure out if this would work for you. 

Also, since you most likely are an IT professional you have the skills and job title to erect a server and beginning a POC!  I suggest that you also spend time to get some basic bot functionality online for your users so they can begin to see why ChatOps is a valuable resource and why email is so dated.  (you cant interact in real time with a piece of email!) 

Automate manual tasks

Tasks that used to be done manually, and often involved human error, are now automated through the chat bot. You can reduce tedious and error-prone hand-typed SQL statements, or put in place proper tests around often-repeated commands. Once a task is in chat, it’s a fast and easy way for other teams to make requests. 

ChatOps can also improve your continuous-delivery process. By easily understanding where a deployment started, and who started it, you’re able to cut out extra tasks and manual follow up, and deploy code continuously throughout the day.  It also lets everyone in the company with access to know where a deployment is and what is next.  Am I affected by the next push?  Maybe!  If I am, its okay, the developer is also in the chat and I can ask them in real time what the effects will be on my modules. This simple action alone could defer an outage. 

Final Thoughts and Words

There are a lot of powerful ChatOps tools, plugins, and extras available, so it’s probably a good idea to start simple and get experience to find out what works best for your team. Try various bot integrations and scripts in your team chat room, and then stick with the ones you like best. There may be some trial and error, but that’s okay. it’s a part of the process.

The more you get used to coding and executing commands with your chat bot, the more efficient you’ll become. As your team reaps the benefits of employing ChatOps, other teams, like front end and mobile, will catch on and implement it, too. With the technical and non-technical folks participating, you’re developing not only efficient processes, but also a more development-focused culture in your company.