DevOps mastery with the Borg

"I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service us."– Locutus of Borg, ("The Best of Both Worlds")

DevOps, with its emphasis on continuous feedback cycles for improving customer outcomes, looks across Development, Operations, Security, Finance etc., treating them as one integrated whole. In other words, it's Systems Thinking. So who better to study for tips than one of the universe's most fearsome practitioners?

For relaxation I may wallow in the shallow end of the Phoenix Project, Google SRE site, or All Day DevOps, but when I really want a masterclass I study the Borg. Why? Because the Borg Collective have taken DevOps, Agile, Cell Structure Design, Descaling, Sociocracy, Teal, and therefore organisational evolution to the next level.

The Borg are Star Trek Next Generation's unstoppable villains, who menace the galaxy assimilating whatever species and technology they encounter along the way. This is probably why Google named their Cloud and Kubernetes precursor after this most adaptable of alien races. Amazon, Microsoft and Tesla are also fans.

Some have speculated the Borg are an apt description of the ultimate social network, the Blockchain and even our evolving human condition (though disappointingly my own dental implant, while colour-matched, did not come with the death ray upgrade). The Borg are a great example of a modern adaptive enterprise.

Within the collective, the Drones communicate point-to-point in a Hive Mind using Subspace Transceivers. This allows information, knowledge and experience to be pooled.

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The Borg Queen hangs from the centre, a servant leader and living embodiment of the Hive Mind. She is also a plot device, useful for when an avatar or antagonist is needed. And she serves the Collective, not the other way round, issuing hormone-style directives much like a Queen Bee, to keep everyone aligned with the mission.

In this manner, the Borg operate a flat, distributed, packet-switching network, somewhat similar to the Internet:

Why we're not like the Borg

The reason why we might struggle against the Borg is that we lack their flat organisational structure allowing the natural flow of information, learning and adaptation. And the root cause is often our notion of the hierarchy. When we should be fighting fearsome enemies or just delivering for the customer, some of us anxiously jockey to be the President of Synaptic Pathways, others protect their place in the management chain, while most are probably just stuck as information conduits in a system not of their own making.

Tom Wujec discusses this phenomenon in his Ted Talk:

Hierarchical communications and Groupthink

Restricting and/or suppressing the free flow of ideas and information as a result of hierarchical modes of communication is not just an evolutionary challenge. It can lead to Groupthink, a distorted reasoning that imperils the organisation, its customers, shareholders and employees. The symptoms of Groupthink are laid out below in this quote from a University of Washington article on the NASA Challenger Disaster:

1. Illusion of Invulnerability.  Despite the launchpad fire that killed three astronauts in 1967 and the close call of Apollo 13, the American space program had never experienced an in-flight fatality. When engineers raised the possibility of catastrophic O-ring blow-by, NASA manager George Hardy nonchalantly pointed out that this risk was ‘‘true of every other flight we have had." Janis summarizes this attitude as ‘‘everything is going to work out all right because we are a special group."

2. Belief in Inherent Morality of the Group.  Under the sway of groupthink, members automatically assume the rightness of their cause. At the hearing, engineer Brian Russell noted that NASA managers had shifted the moral rules under which they operated: ‘‘I had the distinct feeling that we were in the position of having to prove that it was unsafe instead of the other way around."

3. Collective Rationalization.  Despite the written policy that the O-ring seal was a critical failure point without backup, NASA manager George Hardy testified that ‘‘we were counting on the secondary O-ring to be the sealing O-ring under the worst case conditions." Apparently this was a shared misconception. NASA manager Lawrence Mulloy confirmed that ‘‘no one in the meeting questioned the fact that the secondary seal was capable and in position to seal during the early part of the ignition transient." This collective rationalization supported a mindset of ‘‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil."

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4. Out-group Stereotypes.  Although there is no direct evidence that NASA officials looked down on Thiokol engineers, Mulloy was caustic about their recommendation to postpone the launch until the temperature rose to 53 degrees. He reportedly asked whether they expected NASA to wait until April to launch the shuttle.

5. Self-Censorship.  We now know that Thiokol engineer George McDonald wanted to postpone the flight. But instead of clearly stating ‘‘I recommend we don’t launch below 53 degrees," he offered an equivocal opinion. He suggested that ‘‘lower temperatures are in the direction of badness for both O-rings. . . ." What did he think they should do? From his tempered words, it’s hard to tell.

6. Illusion of Unanimity.  NASA managers perpetuated the fiction that everyone was fully in accord on the launch recommendation. They admitted to the presidential commission that they didn’t report Thiokol’s on-again/off-again hesitancy with their superiors. As often happens in such cases, the flight readiness review team interpreted silence as agreement.

7. Direct Pressure on Dissenters.  Thiokol engineers felt pressure from two directions to reverse their ‘‘no-go" recommendation. NASA managers had already postponed the launch three times and were fearful the American public would regard the agency as inept. Undoubtedly that strain triggered Hardy’s retort that he was ‘‘appalled" at Thiokol’s recommendation. Similarly, the company’s management was fearful of losing future NASA contracts. When they went off-line for their caucus, Thiokol’s senior vice president urged Roger Lund, vice president of engineering, to ‘‘take off his engineering hat and put on his management hat."

8. Self-Appointed Mindguards.  ‘‘Mindguards" protect a leader from assault by troublesome ideas. NASA managers insulated Jesse Moore from the debate over the integrity of the rocket booster seals. Even though Roger Boisjoly was Thiokol’s expert on O-rings, he later bemoaned that he ‘‘was not even asked to participate in giving input to the final decision charts."

As well as promoting Groupthink, hierarchical information structures can also miss what every music and fashion industry exec knows, that true innovation comes from the grassroots, the street. And, yes, the drones. To believe otherwise is just creatively limiting. And if we constrain our creativity we constrain our adaptability.

Borg version one

With his his principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Winslow Taylor made a number of insightful observations about the nature of work that still resonate today:

• Empiricism (evidence-based decision-making)
• Elimination of waste
• Standardisation of best practice
• Knowledge transfer between workers
• Disdain for tradition preserved merely for its own sake or to protect social status

Taylorism was Borg v. 1.0. Perhaps it played out as follows:

Drone: 'I am Taylortus of Borg, Resistance is futile.'

Star Fleet Officer: 'Not so fast, metal face, take that!' (phaser hits him in the arm)

Drone (via neural transceiver): 'I've ... been hit ...

(stemming the blood with his wrist). 'Don't have much time ... Phasers. If we reprogram our genetic hyperplex with these simple codes I think we can resist them.'

Head of Sector Seven: 'I'm busy right now, Drone 6bf9-0437, ask my secretary to book some time next week and we'll discuss it then.'

A leadership meeting some weeks later ...

Director of Universe Subjugation: 'Stats this month show a large number of drones destroyed in sector seven. Something about tasers?'

Head of Sector Seven: 'Higher casualties than normal, but we got a great NPS score. Up on last year. And it was razors actually.'

Director of Universe Subjugation (feeling his stubble): 'Razors ... couldn't we do something about that?'

Head of Sector Seven: 'We'll send them on a training course, I'll put in a budget submission for better foam. Or maybe try beards.'

Borg version two

Sadly Taylortus of Borg didn't make it; but thankfully for the Collective they eventually learnt the importance of:

1. Flat networks over hierarchies allowing high individual autonomy, fast decision-making and collective action
2. A uniform culture and set of operating principles
3. Transparency, bidirectionally and free flow of information and ideas
4. Short iterations and plenty of tight feedback loops
5. The whole learning from its parts, particularly outposts encountering innovation and hostilities, continually adapting to new conditions
6. And most importantly, roaming round the galaxy in an awesome-looking cube

The American military made a similar Prigoginic leap when they published the Counterinsurgency Field Manual in 2006:

The Borg being the perfect example of a networked insurgency that tends 'to heal, adapt and learn rapidly.' And notice the similarity between iterative counterinsurgency campaign design and this version of the DevOps cycle:

This quote from Gamespot sums it up nicely:

Because they are a single hive mind, the Borg simply act; They do not need to confer with anyone or debate a course of action.

And most importantly, the Borg adjust and adapt to any and all methods of war.

It is no wonder that with such advantages, the Borg's most infamous quote is, "Resistance is futile."

Powered by a flat organisational structure and instantaneous information exchange, I think you'll agree the Borg Collective are the ultimate adaptive organisation. Taking systems thinking to the extreme, they really are DevOps masters.