DevOps is the next step in the evolution of agile by integrating the development and operations team to enhance value delivery for end users. DevOps is an integration of development and operations. It is the union of people, process and products to enable continuous delivery of value to our end users. Where the Development team
is responsible for adding new features in the software, the Operations team is responsible for keeping the system stable and running.
But is the faster time to market realistic in relation to the pace with which the development team can deliver new features?
From prior experiences at financial institutions, we’ve noticed that the real speed of deployment of new features into production, is not as fast as the development of the Dev-teams. This delay has different reasons:
- Formal processes, rules, approvals, signoffs and schedules (CISO, risk, compliance)
- Difficult access to production environments
- Out- and offshoring development and/or IT Services
- Slow takeover of DevOps tools (e.g. Jenkins, GIT, Junit, Puppet, Chef)
- Limited move to the cloud (due to regulatory & compliance restrictions), making infrastructure on-demand (environment) provisioning still impossible
- Lots of shared services teams (e.g. DBA, WebSphere engineers etc.) where communication is done via change/incident tickets with little to no ownership.
- DevOps tooling is difficult (or impossible) to apply on mainframe systems
- Closed (secured) development environments, making it very difficult to install and try new tools
Implementing DevOps is not a black or white story and is definitely not the holy grail
Agile/Scrum leads to higher collaboration and shift of culture towards agility (shorter timelines/sprints). DevOps is more than that. It requires automating as much as possible which supports the continuous business planning, development, testing, release and deployment, customer feedback, optimisation and monitoring. This eventually leads to a faster time to market of new features, increased capacity to innovate and improved customer experience.
It’s not as easy as it looks
However, the road to this outcome is not so easy. Firstly, it is necessary to understand the level of DevOps maturity for an organisation. Then it is important to know which systems and applications are key for realising a quicker time to market. It is important to note, that not all systems require a frequent release of new features to have an improved customer experience.
Better cooperation and understanding between the Development teams (DEV) and the IT Operations teams (OPS) is key. Security, compliance and risk must also be taken into account. Be sure to not setting up a way of working which is contrary to rules, regulations and the confidentiality of (client) information.
What should one remember after reading this blog
- Automate as much as possible
- Measure the time spent on coding
- Become better in coding
- Measure the use of the different supporting tools.
- It is all about the mindset of becoming really agile as an organisation.
Implementing DevOps is a journey that will require effort and will definitely have challenges.
Projective has a wealth of experience in guiding large scale optimising programmes. Our approach is different than most consultancy firms because we follow the philosophy to accelerate the DevOps transition by training employees with dedicated DevOps specialists. The entire organisation must be made DevOps ready. With a small team of Projective resources we prepare the organisation to become a real Agile DevOps organisation.
Interested in our teams’ capabilities in
Operational Excellence, Regulatory & Compliance, Digital & Innovation and Delivery Excellence ? Don’t hesitate to drop us a message.