I'm 100% in favor of your view of DevOps, and its devolution from movement to dubious agglomeration of vendors and consultants is something I've seen before.
Like DevOps, the Agile movement started out as a bunch of smart, dedicated people seeking a new way to work. But once the excitement spread out of that passionate early-adopter group, it changed radically for the worse. I think that's because once you get to mainstream adopters, they're not interested in deep change. They want to keep doing what they're doing, but 10% better. Vendors and consultants retool to serve that market, inevitably watering things down and frequently missing the point entirely.
This really frustrated me when it happened in the Agile movement. [1] But I've come to accept that as long as our industry is structured the way it is, it's going to keep happening. It's honestly kind of depressing, but the good news is that anybody willing to build a culture of excellence and put in marginally more work can get much, much better results than their competitors.
Like DevOps, the Agile movement started out as a bunch of smart, dedicated people seeking a new way to work. But once the excitement spread out of that passionate early-adopter group, it changed radically for the worse. I think that's because once you get to mainstream adopters, they're not interested in deep change. They want to keep doing what they're doing, but 10% better. Vendors and consultants retool to serve that market, inevitably watering things down and frequently missing the point entirely.
This really frustrated me when it happened in the Agile movement. [1] But I've come to accept that as long as our industry is structured the way it is, it's going to keep happening. It's honestly kind of depressing, but the good news is that anybody willing to build a culture of excellence and put in marginally more work can get much, much better results than their competitors.
[1] I wrote more about that here: http://williampietri.com/writing/2011/agiles-second-chasm-an...