DevOps stresses the importance of breaking down silos. The truth is that you can’t actually get rid of silos; you can only realign them. Much of the anxiety caused by controversial topics such as “Enterprise DevOps” and “DevOps teams” reflects an incomplete understanding of the nature of large, complex organizations.

In this talk, I will dig more deeply into the reality of silos and what to do with them. I will present a more sophisticated perspective on how to structure teams in a way that balances autonomy with alignment. I will revisit empathy as the essence of DevOps, and explain how empathy makes it possible to scale DevOps without reintroducing the friction and brittleness it was intended to remove.