Transforming To DevOps....

DevOps …. DevOps …. what is DevOps ? Was a jargon .. .. and  soon speedily became a BuZzzz word .. and today ………………………… It’s a R E A L I T Y …. ……………………………………………………………………and   matures as a field, increasingly people are asking about how to scale it into big company environments within organization’s which are not digital and not necessarily ‘born on the web’.The benefits associated with DevOps clearly hold appeal to enterprises. In todays technology driven world, reduced time to value, ability to iterate quickly, increased quality, and increased inability to innovate are key to winning in the market.

At the same time however, DevOps like transformation is complex in the enterprise. These companies are bigger, they transact more business, they have more legacy in terms of technology and incumbent working processes

DevOps = People + Process + Technology 

We solve this by taking a rigorous and systematic approach to DevOps transformation, breaking it down into chunks which we can measure and move forward independently. We embark on a DevOps transformation, we look at three areas, each of which are likely to need changes in order to shift them into line with a DevOps approach. These three areas are People, Process and Technology.

The most overused phrase  (People, Process and Technology) PPT in the consulting world, but one that is hugely relevant to DevOps. As we know DevOps ranges from very soft skills through to advanced automation.  It’s therefore a useful framework to work within.  

People : The most important part of any organisational transformation or modernisation is the people. 

Process : In terms of process, we view effective agile working as having a really good a basis for DevOps. More fundamentally, I think processes have to be rediesgned to reprioritise speed and agility. Over the last few decades, IT has moved from fast and collaborative to rigid, process driven, and biased towards rigour and predictably. We have to start adding some common sense back into this process and turning the dial back to speed and agility, without throwing the baby out of with the bathwater. 

Technology : Everyone says this but it’s true that there is an over focus on technology and a tooling to all of lifes problems. We put technology in place when a simple working practice or cultural change can achieve the same aim. Automation is generally a win/win, as it adds speed and frees up humans for more value creating activity. Agile infrastructure is a key aim here. We are also doing lots of work in the Microservices space, breaking up monolithic applications into small, independent, collaborating services, each of which can be independent developed, tested and deployed. This kind of rearchitecture takes work, but gives us a much better platform for rapid iteration. 

Moving towards DevOps can represent a tremendous effort. However, when the results of all of these come together, the difference can be more spectacular, as the collaborative culture, lean processes, automation and technology platforms all act as multipliers for each other. 

Few suggestions on CHANGES–

People :

• Cross functional teams
• Automation
• Innovation
• Moving testers into development to shift quality left
• Working with leaders to change incentives and performance management to common goals

Process :

• Being AGILE
• Adopting engineering best practices
• 'Leaning out’ processes by removing waste and handovers 
• Rebalancing change and release management towards speed and agility

Technology :

• CI CD
• Infra automation
• Cloud 
• Remove gaps in Monitoring coverage
• Microservices