Are Your Development Processes Truly Agile?
Many organizations are making a move to agile-powered environments, but agile development is more than a name. How do you determine if your organization is truly agile? The evaluation starts with the Agile Manifesto. If you’re following the principles laid out in the manifesto, that’s a good sign that you’re on an agile journey. For […]
5 DevOps Terms That We All Use, Yet No One Can Define
I’m all for DevOps. Sometimes, however, I have a hard time talking about DevOps. The reason is because many of the key terms related to DevOps lack clear and precise definitions. Let me explain … DevOps is such a big deal that it has bred its very own lexicon. Search Google for “DevOps terms,” and […]
Successful DevOps Initiatives Start With Company Culture
What initially drove the need for embarking on the DevOps journey in your team or at your company in the first place? Was it: Market shift? New leadership or an acquisition? New product or service idea? Cost savings or consolidation? All of the above? Whatever drove the need, my guess is there were pre-sales demos, […]
CTOs Should Embrace, Stick to a No-Meeting Day
You know the feeling: You open your calendar in the morning to find a completely booked day, back-to-back meetings and not even 15 minutes of time to complete any of the items on your to-do list. In fact, your day tomorrow and the day after look just as booked. An HBR study conducted last year […]
Technology: Isolation in the Age of Automation
Dependence on technology makes us more independent overall, but it also makes us more isolated. So, what happens if things come to the point where we depend on machines more than we depend on other human beings? Earlier this month I attended a presentation about machine learning on mobile phones at Google IO 2019. Right […]
The Terrain of DevOps is Strewn with Pitfalls
As Gene Kim, one of the leading thinkers in DevOps, once said, “DevOps is not about what you do, but what your outcomes are.” What he’s telling us is that DevOps is about enabling a rapid flow of work that transitions from development to testing to operations, but the bottom line is that it’s about […]
5 Guaranteed Ways to Kill DevOps Developer Productivity
“A developer is an organism that turns coffee into code.” I still laugh when I see that quote as it reminds me of my hardcore developer days, when my cube always seemed to be directly next to the coffee machine and caffeine was management’s way of ensuring we had the energy to develop well into […]
Promoting Purpose in Agile Environments
Agile environments increasingly are becoming a popular option for organizations large and small. Although initially created as a solution for small software development teams with short budgets and complex scopes, it’s been adopted (and refashioned) for all industries and team sizes. Agile Methodologies: Why They Work The agile approach seems obvious to us now, but […]
SREs: The Happiest – and Highest Paid – in the Industry
According to the 2019 StackOverflow survey completed by 90,000 developers around the world, whether you are already a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) or thinking about becoming one, looks like you are onto something. SREs, also called DevOps specialists, are a pretty unique type of talent; one that has knowledge in both software development and system […]
Different Organizations, Different DevOps Outcomes
The main motivation behind inventing DevOps platform was to help close collaboration between developers and IT operations. Basically, DevOps emerged as a great platform to bring closer together developers and beneficiaries of the app development process. DevOps initiates a cross-disciplinary practice spanning across development and operations. The ultimate benefit of the DevOps approach is removing […]
HybridOps: Driving Better Collaboration and Productivity in IT
Over the past 10 years, enterprise technology has experienced an enormous amount of upheaval. Developers started self-servicing, leading to “shadow IT.” The DevOps movement and alignment with Agile methods started gaining popularity, and thought leaders started making statements about how DevOps is the future and ITIL/ITSM and other traditional practices are the past. With all […]
Digital Transformation: Coming from Behind
For many years, enterprises have been in a race to digitally transform how they work through the digitization of all areas of their business, to reduce costs and business frictions through creating efficiencies and delivering increased value to their customers. While many organizations have attempted a transformation, few have been successful. Research from the consultancy […]
Using Product Experimentation for Continuous Improvement
Organizations are embracing product experimentation as a tool for continuous improvement Companies that embrace product experimentation are able to capture highly accurate data about markets and product ideas and gain intelligence about market trends. As a result, these companies are able to continuously deliver innovation and measure business outcomes. Industry leaders such as Netflix, Instagram […]
Modern Workers Demand Modern Technology
Companies today must think of their employees as customers and employ technology, including mobile apps, that employees want to use. I have always been a bit of a technophile. Many years ago, in another life, when I worked in technology sales, I was one of the first sales engineers on my team to buy a […]
7 Ways to Introduce DevOps in Your Work Culture
As many industries are going through a wave of digital transformation, a number of key technologies and principles are being deployed to business advantage. One such principle is DevOps. This collaborative principle is proving to be extremely helpful for businesses in their pursuit of customer satisfaction and beating their competition. The DevOps trend is growing, […]
DevOps: Assessing Behavior Flows Through an Organization
I’ll admit it, this article is a little strange. It is an experiment. But DevOps is all about experimentation, right? This article explores how information and behaviors in fact “flow” through an organization. It is based upon my observations with literally hundreds of DevOps teams. I have used the Three Ways of DevOps to show […]
5 Considerations to Get DevOps Right in Telco IT Systems
Implementing DevOps in telco IT systems, such as business support systems/operations support systems (BSS/OSS), is not easy. This is especially true with telcos that overly rely on third-party commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) vendors or systems integrators (SIs) to implement new capabilities, and to run operations. To effectively control the vendors, telcos extensively use traditional levers found […]
Dev and Ops: Not from Different Planets
At a conference, I heard a speaker remark that “Dev people are from Mars while Ops people are from Venus.” That’s catchy and captures what a fair number of managers believe instinctively. But is it really true? I’m not convinced. We all know that DevOps enables us to deliver software faster, with fewer bugs and […]
Got DevOps Skills? A Look at the Upskilling: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report
IT recruiting is at an all-time high and organizations want T-shaped professionals with cross-functional skill sets to join their teams. While “T” represents an individual’s core competency, and the top of the T represents a broad range of related knowledge, there has been little clarity on which skills are the most important across a wide […]
Report Identifies DevOps Skills in Highest Demand
When it comes to DevOps there’s general agreement that a skills shortage is holding back broader adoption. The real issue, of course, is identifying what specific DevOps skills are required most. With that goal in mind, the DevOps Institute this week published a report that finds the DevOps skills most in demand fall into three […]
Digital Transformation Technology and Process: More Similar Than You Think
Right around this time of the year, the gym starts to get a little less crowded. Throughout January, it’s packed to the gills with folks freshly motivated by their New Year’s resolutions to get in shape. But by mid-February, the commitment seems to have all but dissipated. Why is it so hard to just commit? […]
5 Questions to Ask Remote Web Developers
Great web developers are waiting to be hired. Your company could seize upon the opportunity—but only if you’re willing to be patient, dedicated and a little creative. Don’t scare away qualified remote web developers with a few poorly worded questions or a mistimed probe. Ask direct and concise questions that can help you understand the […]
Survey Finds Mixed Progress on DevSecOps
A survey of 5,558 IT professionals published today by Sonatype in collaboration with CloudBees, Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute, Signal Sciences, 9th Bit and Twistlock finds 27 percent of organizations have mature DevOps practices in place, while another 48 percent are still working on improving them. Despite the DevOps works that remains to be accomplished, […]