DevOps Distilled - Back to Basics
The question of "What really is DevOps?" is one that I still get asked regularly. We were at Velocity in Silicon Valley in 2008, when the movement started, so here's my view...
Waterfall Delivery
Previously IT delivery was shaped around infrequent change that was delivered by large waterfall projects. Typically IT moved as fast as they needed to, sometimes slower. Testing was manual, environment creation was manual and releases were manual, but we all got by somehow.
Along comes agile
With the introduction of frequent, iterative change meant that the previous ways of working became bottlenecks to the new agile projects.
Development was simply running faster than the organisation around them could deliver the change.
DevOps is born
DevOps is how the entire IT delivery capability steps-up to unlock the value of agile. DevOps removes bottlenecks from the delivery process, which in turn unlocks the real value in agile development.
This typically includes automation of previously manual tasks such as build, deployment, testing and environment provisioning.
Since 2008 a whole new set of software tools has been created to service the needs of the DevOps industry ....
... but DevOps is more than tools and software.
Breaking down the barriers and silos between development, operations and other teams is a key element to successfully speeding up your delivery.
Another cultural consideration is measurement of success. It is important to measure not just uptime and system metrics, but also deployment rate. I've said it before, uptime with no change deployed is potential failure for your business.
One last point is that at the heart of DevOps is continual enhancement. It is important to continually measure how well your delivery pipeline is working and look to improve where possible. Be sure to demonstrate the improvements to keep your teams motivated and stakeholders happy.
Fundamentally, when implemented well, DevOps can really reduce your delivery costs, improve quality and increase delivery speed.
If you would like to grab a coffee to talk further, then drop me a line.
I believe it is important that everyone is doing devops. Product owners, architects, infosec, UX/DX, developers, network teams, operations, etc. Devops is for the organisation as a whole. Everyone needs to be aligned and focussed so that everything they do facilitates the rapid delivery of quality products and services whose value is immediately measurable and incorporated into fast feedback loops.