This is "ChatOps". ChatOps is a collaboration model that connects people, tools, processes, and automation into a transparent workflow. It's the bridge that connects the work that is needed, what is currently running, as well as what has been done - utilising real time communication channels to keep you updated every step of the way. It started life at GitHub, where they created Hubot and found it brought them huge efficiency benefits.

Collaboration is critical in DevOps. According to Gartner [1], 75% of DevOps initiatives fail "due to issues around organisational learning and change". ChatOps addresses that through a focus on collaboration and information sharing. This is why we have it as a key practice in our Garage Methodology [2]. It's also why we see many other businesses turning to ChatOps as a more collaborative and efficient way to perform operations. Instead of just using a traditional help ticket tool, DevOps experts use instant messaging collaboration tools like Slack to communicate - not only with each other, but also with the tools they use to do their jobs.

In this session, we want to get you thinking about whether adopting elements of ChatOps could improve your DevOps workflow and give you practical tips to get started.

To help give you some ideas for what you can do with your own application, we'll show you a demo using Apache Kafka - it's a nice simple example of a microservices application, plus it already has instrumentation and monitoring hooks. We'll show how to get a Kafka cluster to post messages to your team Slack channel when there is something that a dev-ops person should be be looking at. And we'll give an example of how to perform simple Kafka admin tasks from Slack.

[1] - https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/the-secret-to-devops-success

[2] - https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/manage/chatops