Bridging the Ansible UX Gap: From Laptop Playbooks to Enterprise Automation
When developers first dive into Ansible, it’s often love at first playbook. Automating small tasks directly from a laptop feels empowering and accessible. But as the scope grows—introducing tools like VS Code, Execution Environments (EEs), Private Automation Hubs (PAH), and platforms like DevSpaces and DevHub—the user experience can quickly become overwhelming. The gap between writing a simple playbook and scaling to enterprise-level automation is vast, leaving many unsure of where to start.
To address this, we’re launching a Developer UX Series on the Ansible Forum. This series will leverage collective community and consulting experiences to guide users through the journey of creating automation solutions that scale. By publishing this as a written series rather than videos, we ensure the content remains flexible, up-to-date with feature enhancements, and easy for the community to engage with and contribute to, and that’s where you come in
What to Expect
The series will feature periodic articles designed to walk Ansible creators through the transition from laptop-based automation to enterprise-level workflows. Each article will:
- Present a common challenge in automation.
- Offer a practical solution based on real-world scenarios.
- Build towards a cohesive learning path.
The primary persona we’re targeting is a network or Windows administrator working on a Windows laptop with permissions to install WSL, RHEL, and Podman Desktop. The journey begins with local development and progresses to team-based workflows using a central RHEL “dev server” and a shared Git repository. From there, we’ll explore how to onboard new subject matter experts (SMEs) and integrate advanced tools like DevHub and DevSpaces.
By breaking down the journey into manageable steps and providing actionable solutions, we aim to simplify the path to enterprise-scale automation while fostering community collaboration and feedback.
Stay tuned for our first article in the series—and join us in bridging the UX gap for Ansible developers everywhere.
Call to action
- What would you like to see covered in the topics we’ve suggested
- What topics are we missing
- Have you solved this in your organization? We’d love to hear from you.
Useful links
[1] Deep dive on Ansible VScode extension | Ansible Collaborative
[2] Getting started with Execution Environments — Ansible Community Documentation
[3] How to get started with Ansible Private Automation Hub
[4] Boost Ansible developer experience with OpenShift Dev Spaces | Red Hat Developer