DevOps.com

  • Latest
    • Articles
    • Features
    • Most Read
    • News
    • News Releases
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Testing
    • Cloud
    • Culture
    • DevSecOps
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • Leadership Suite
    • DevOps Practice
    • ROELBOB
    • DevOps Toolbox
    • IT as Code
  • Videos/Podcasts
    • DevOps Chats
    • DevOps Unbound
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming
    • On-Demand Webinars
  • Library
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • On-Demand Events
  • Sponsored Communities
    • AWS Community Hub
    • CloudBees
    • IT as Code
    • Rocket on DevOps.com
    • Traceable on DevOps.com
    • Quali on DevOps.com
  • Related Sites
    • Techstrong Group
    • Container Journal
    • Security Boulevard
    • Techstrong Research
    • DevOps Chat
    • DevOps Dozen
    • DevOps TV
    • Digital Anarchist
  • Media Kit
  • About
  • AI
  • Cloud
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Continuous Testing
  • DevSecOps
  • DevOps Onramp
  • Practices
  • ROELBOB
  • Low-Code/No-Code
  • IT as Code
  • More
    • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
    • Culture
    • Enterprise DevOps

Home » Blogs » Release Automation: Bigger than DevOps

Release Automation: Bigger than DevOps

By: Michael Schmidt on April 13, 2016 1 Comment

Why DevOps is not for everyone and how release automation helps in bimodal world

Recent Posts By Michael Schmidt
  • 5 Prerequisites for a Successful DevOps Initiative
  • Does the Future of DevOps Lie in NoOps?
  • DevOps and Continuous Delivery: Not the Same
More from Michael Schmidt
Related Posts
  • Release Automation: Bigger than DevOps
  • DevOps Chat: Rosalind Radcliffe and Bimodal IT
  • DevOps Unbound EP 21 Leading a DevOps Transformation – Lessons Learned – TechStrong TV
    Related Categories
  • Blogs
  • Enterprise DevOps
    Related Topics
  • bimodal
  • development
  • devops
  • lifeycle
  • Release Automation
  • testers
Show more
Show less

So am I really going to write a blog calling DevOps a big hoax?

Well, not exactly, but as a follow-up to my previous blog on the difference between DevOps and Continuous Delivery, I want to alert you to a few key facts:

  1. DevOps is not always the right methodology for developing and delivering software.
  2. Agility and speed can be achieved even in a waterfall method if the right tools are in place.
  3. Release automation is bigger than DevOps (yeah, I said it!).

Say No to DevOps?

Okay, so here goes: Why is DevOps not always the right way to go? Simply because not all systems are born equal. For a back-end master customer data system, stability trumps iteration. Fail fast and roll forward simply aren’t sustainable in many of today’s most core business applications such as banking, retail, media, manufacturing or other industry vertical. Clearly, these enterprises still need to innovate and provide new and exciting ways for their customers to engage through web and mobile, but not at the risk of a terminal business failure at the back end.

Delivery capabilities for these back-end systems need speeding so they don’t become the bottleneck for the entire business. However, restructuring teams and changing development along with test and release into tens and hundreds of small/tiny parallel updates cannot be supported by a legacy technology stack (say Siebel or SAP at the back end). It is likely not even advisable at all.

This doesn’t mean we should accept the realities of the last century, resort to the status quo and leave our release cycles to once or twice a year for key applications. Slowly and surely we would lose any competitive edge.

Luckily there is a middle ground, and this is why I believe release automation is bigger then DevOps. That middle ground is release automation. I will explain why, but I need to start by examining DevOps a little more first.

What is DevOps?

At its core, DevOps aims to get new ideas and functionality into the hands of users quickly and iterate fast. It achieves this by fixing two traditional weaknesses in the software delivery life cycle, namely “overhead” and “rework.”

Overhead is anything that developers do that isn’t directly related to developing new features or improving existing ones (manual deployments would be a big item in the overhead column for sure, as would debugging production deployment issues or handling configuration problems).

Rework occurs anytime developers have to go back over a piece of code they already have worked on. However, this does not include bug fixing, so rework occurs when test cycles take a long time and developers already have been working on new functionality, which now needs to be reworked to address a newly found problem.

DevOps tackles these challenges by attempting to shorten the cycles—for example, by adding smaller changes that developers and testers can test in real time or by using tools such as Puppet or Chef for provisioning quickly to test while ensuring consistency across systems.

This relies on Devs owning updates and rollouts across the life cycle, including production, which challenges everything in the way enterprise teams are traditionally organized. It calls for completely new processes, which often are a great fit for newly developed applications and modern architectures, but can be a complete misfit (and regulatory obstacle) for so many other core systems.

I’m sure you can see where I am going with this. Much like the story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” DevOps isn’t what people believe it is.

Why Release Automation is Bigger Than DevOps

The goals of DevOps are sound, however, which leads me to my last point: Release automation is bigger than DevOps. Done right, release automation can accommodate diverse organizational needs and different types of applications in this new, bimodal world. It improves the software delivery process and its final product by rooting out manual work, improving cycle times, reducing overhead and rework.

Crucially, release automation enables incumbent businesses to stay competitive and ensure survival without forcing them to completely abandon their DNA across the board in a “big bang” fashion. Such a process could put the very existence of a large enterprise at risk.

Before signing off on this blog entry I want to make one last thing clear: The argument I am raising here isn’t trying to downplay the benefits of DevOps as a valid methodology. Nor am I denouncing any of the DevOps tool chain technologies out there, which are all welcome advances, of course. This year, 2016, is (according to most industry experts) the year in which DevOps adoption goes mainstream, and I fundamentally believe that it is release automation that drives this adoption, not just pure DevOps conversions.

Stay tuned!

Filed Under: Blogs, Enterprise DevOps Tagged With: bimodal, development, devops, lifeycle, Release Automation, testers

Sponsored Content
Featured eBook
DevOps: Mastering the Human Element

DevOps: Mastering the Human Element

While building constructive culture, engaging workers individually and helping staff avoid burnout have always been organizationally demanding, they are intensified by the continuous, always-on notion of DevOps.  When we think of work burnout, we often think of grueling workloads and deadline pressures. But it also has to do with mismatched ... Read More
« News of Tech: WSL
To Be Continuous Podcast: Open Source Economics »

TechStrong TV – Live

Click full-screen to enable volume control
Watch latest episodes and shows

Upcoming Webinars

10 steps to continuous performance testing in DevOps
Thursday, August 11, 2022 - 3:00 pm EDT
Bring Your Mission-Critical Data to Your Cloud Apps and Analytics
Tuesday, August 16, 2022 - 11:00 am EDT
Mistakes You Are Probably Making in Kubernetes
Tuesday, August 16, 2022 - 1:00 pm EDT

Latest from DevOps.com

Four Secure Coding Best Practices for Mobile Apps
August 11, 2022 | Jorge Damian
CloudNativeDay: WASM to Drive Next IT Epoch
August 10, 2022 | Mike Vizard
MLOps Vs. DevOps: What’s the Difference?
August 10, 2022 | Gilad David Maayan
GitHub Brings 2FA to JavaScript Package Manager
August 9, 2022 | Mike Vizard
CREST Defines Quality Verification Standard for AppSec Testing
August 9, 2022 | Mike Vizard

Get The Top Stories of the Week

  • View DevOps.com Privacy Policy
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Download Free eBook

DevOps: Mastering the Human Element
DevOps: Mastering the Human Element

Most Read on DevOps.com

Recession! DevOps Hiring Freeze | Data Centers Suck (Power) ...
August 4, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Orgs Struggle to Get App Modernization Right
August 4, 2022 | Mike Vizard
GitHub Adds Tools to Simplify Management of Software Develop...
August 4, 2022 | Mike Vizard
The Everything-As-Code Revolution and the OWASP Top 10
August 4, 2022 | Aakash Shah
Putting the Security Into DevSecOps
August 5, 2022 | Ross Moore

On-Demand Webinars

DevOps.com Webinar ReplaysDevOps.com Webinar Replays
  • Home
  • About DevOps.com
  • Meet our Authors
  • Write for DevOps.com
  • Media Kit
  • Sponsor Info
  • Copyright
  • TOS
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Techstrong Group, Inc.

© 2022 ·Techstrong Group, Inc.All rights reserved.