The Art of DevOps
This is the third in a series of posts on DevOps. The first written by my colleague Lee Reid was titled The Simple Math of DevOps. The second The Calculus of DevOps was written by IBM client, and my friend Carmen DeArdo of Nationwide. Lee introduced mathematically improving delivery throughput by leveraging DevOps to improve […]
The Calculus of DevOps
This is the second in a series of blogs, partnering with Lee Reid, who wrote the first installment “The Simple Math of DevOps” and Sanjeev Sharma both of who are outstanding DevOps Thought Leaders from IBM. I am picking up on Lee’s mathematical DevOps model to apply a calculus perspective, a “calculus of DevOps” if […]
“Show Me The Money!” – Delivering DevOps Value
HM Heath Solutions delivers new business applications in the healthcare industry to 35 million customers. In order to embark on their DevOps journey to improve software delivery, Valerie Scott, their Manager of Shared Services Division, had to show senior management an ROI on a successful project, before they would invest fully. On June 2, Val Scott […]
Bimodal IT and Remodeling Traditional IT for Greater Agility
Bimodal IT is a Gartner concept created to help CIO’s understand that IT organizations need to support both traditional and agile modes of IT solution delivery and operation in order to make wise choices about infrastructure, process, people, and tools. Much attention has been given and rightfully so to the disruptive and innovative “Mode 2” […]
The Simple Math of DevOps
We are living in an information- infused society, much dependent on various technological innovations taking place all around us. In such conditions, as consumers become more connected, they are empowered with more information and choices. They expect quick and consistent information available at all times. Likewise, our business leaders expect their IT teams to build […]
Follow the Unicorn: Transform your Enterprise Applications
For those of us that work on Enterprise Systems such as the mainframe, the claims that the Unicorns (1) make, can be pretty astounding. Dozens and sometimes hundreds of releases a day from big companies like Netflix (2) and Etsy (3) are hard to comprehend. But look a little closer and you can see that […]
Webinar: Build, test and deploy mobile apps with back-end mainframe services securely in a hybrid cloud
You may already have a good understanding of the hybrid cloud and its benefits. But how do you get the value of the last three decades of investment in your backend infrastructure into the hands of your end users faster? In this webcast we will demonstrate how you can take advantage of the latest IBM […]
Budgeting for DevOps Success
One concept that seems to be universal across all IT departments is the admins lament of “how do I convince my boss that we should spend the money.” Whether it is security, QA or development tools, technical professionals have a difficult time talking the language of the business to justify the expenditure of always scarce […]
Webinar: Show Me Success Before I’ll Invest in DevOps – A HM Health Solutions Case Study
Whatever your conviction, the reluctance by senior management to justify new investments and sponsor major change in existing software delivery practices and technologies, while theoretically understandable, often leaves application development executives and managers lobbying for additional budget and resources putting them and their teams between a rock and a hard place. So the question is […]
What lane do you travel on the DevOps highway?
Last week we kicked off our webinar series on Variable Speed DevOps. The discussion was lively and informative. For myself as moderator the webcast was as comfortable as an old pair of slippers. Two of the three panelists, Carme DeArdo of Nationwide and Sanjeev Sharma of IBM are both friends and people I have had […]
Webinar: Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation breaks down IT silos and speeds up mainframe development
DevOps encourages adoption of lean and agile development practices irrespective of platforms. However in most organizations mainframe and mobile/web development teams are functioning in siloes, resulting in a plethora of technology platforms and tools, fragmented or manual processes, skills shortage causing unnecessary delays, rework and friction among teams, impacting organizations ability to respond to the […]
Variable Speed DevOps: A Deep Dive
About 2 months ago I wrote an article on “Variable Speed DevOps“. To be clear I first heard the term used by Carmen DeArdo, Director of Application Development at Nationwide. It was a response or play on the 2 Speed IT dilemma. In 2 Speed IT, emerging digital processes coexist with traditional ones. The implication […]
Webinar: How Nationwide Insurance is Adopting DevOps for Variable Speed IT Systems
To drive towards faster innovation, and also ensure the stability of the core business, the need arises for what is being termed as “two-speed or variable speed IT.” While innovative Systems of Engagement demand speed, agility and experimentation, legacy Systems of Record need governance and predictability. Two-speed IT enables adoption of DevOps capabilities by adapting […]
Shift Left: Can you be left out?
One of the most popular terms bandied about in DevOps is “shift left”. I was at a workshop last month at IBM InterConnect conducted by Sanjeev Sharma and Mustafa Kapadia. They put on a great workshop which was a preview of an exercise they perform in the field for clients. A central theme of their […]
IBM’s DevOps Journey
Companies that want to better address market demand and more efficiently deliver value through speed, quality, and agility are embracing DevOps. This includes retailers, insurers, defense contractors, and most certainly software makers. Consider the DevOps journey within the IBM Software Group, which is unarguably larger than most enterprise software groups: currently 519 major software product […]
Reverse Executive Sponsorship: Gaining grassroots DevOps momentum
As IT practitioners investigate the possibilities around DevOps and Agile transformations, one of the things they’re likely to hear over and over again is that these type of organizational tectonic shifts require executive sponsorship to truly succeed. But in the real world, garnering that support is hardly as easy as just picking up a phone […]
DevOps is Agile for the Rest of the Company
IBM held its InterConnect 2015 conference last week in Las Vegas. The event covered on a range of topics including hybrid cloud, mobile apps, and DevOps. One session I attended focused on Agile development and the parallels to DevOps were apparent. The session I attended at the Mandalay Bay Hotel was titled “How a Major […]
Avoiding Common Executive DevOps Mistakes
A seasoned DevOps practitioner with experience leading both HP and Macy’s on continuous delivery transformations, Gary Gruver has learned the ins and outs of implementing Agile and DevOps at enterprise scale through the “school of hard knocks.” Now the president of Practical Large Scale Agile, a consulting business designed to help other enterprises navigate similar […]
7 Great Thoughts on Real-world DevOps Transformations
Last week, IBM InterConnect brought together quite the gathering of IT pros engaged in DevOps, continuous delivery and digital transformations of their core businesses. Throughout the week, speakers from the Fortune 500 brought forth stories of real world experimentation, success and lessons learned from their DevOps journeys. Here are some of the best chestnuts to […]
Q and A with Carmen DeArdo: DevOps at Nationwide
Just before the IBM Interconnect show in Las Vegas last week, we had a chance to speak with Nationwide’s Carmen DeArdo and talk about some of the challenges he has faced at Nationwide as DeArdo and his team work to bring DevOps and Agile principles to their delivery value stream. DeArdo is no stranger here […]
IBM InterConnect: HM Health Solutions shows how continuous delivery helps cure healthcare IT headaches
As a spin off business unit of health insurer Highmark, HM Health Solutions is tasked with helping not only that insurer but also other third-party insurers across the industry to optimize systems that run core functions like benefits design, member enrollment, claims processing and customer service. And according to key members who opened up about […]
Streamlining no matter how many speeds your IT operates at
IBM InterConnect 2015 took over the Mandalay Bay and MGM Grand conference centers this week with an estimated audience of more than 20,000 attendees. The event is filled with DevOps evangelists, hybrid cloud experts, and IBM customers converging to share information in presentations and panel discussions. On Monday I had an opportunity to attend one […]
InterConnecting the Internet of Things
In every direction one turns in the so-called Internet of Things there is fragmentation. There are many programing languages, devices and, more recently, a disparate set of IoT development and management platforms that are all vying for the market and developer’s attention. They hope, to become the standard in IoT in the months and years ahead. […]