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 […]
Digital Transformation with Agile and DevOps – Something “Wicked” This Way Comes
Our world is full of wicked problems, like climate change, urban planning and social injustice. They’re called wicked because they’re hard to recognize, define and solve. Furthermore, complex interdependencies mean solving one aspect will just expose or create other problems. Today’s digital transformation imperatives are creating wicked problems for IT. So wicked in fact, they […]
DevOps Perspectives from Pink15
I recently had the privilege of covering the Pink15 conference on behalf of devopsy.kinsta.cloud. Pink Elephant is a renowned leader in ITIL and ITSM education, consulting and conferences. Now in its 19th year, the Pink conference brings together attendees from a wide range of vertical markets to learn and share about IT service management and […]
DevOps & Continuous Change
A remark by a colleague while waiting for the coffee machine to complete its cycle started my train of thought. “Should we have multiple minor releases or just do a few major ones in a year?” In large organizations, due to many factors, the turnaround time for a single successful release is quite extensive; but […]
Why are we still asking, “Can DevOps work here?”
It’s easy to get tired of buzzwords, especially in the software development and testing world where they’re so prevalent. But while it’s easy to blame the thought leaders and evangelists for creating them, and publishers and powerful marketing teams for inserting them into every content channel imaginable, the buzzwords that truly stick around do so […]
Healthcare information provider streamlines deployment with DevOps
Streaming music and online shopping are just two of the ways technology and the Internet have changed our way of life. One of the other major shifts in culture has been the ability to research symptoms and self-diagnose medical conditions. One online healthcare information provider recently teamed up with IBM and embraced DevOps to streamline […]
DevOps: Where are we with that?
There’s a great scene in the Kids in the Hall movie Brain Candy, where the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company informs his executive team that the board has recommended a massive restructuring plan that will cut their research outlay by 60%. Only seconds after first mentioning this undertaking, the CEO turns to his yes […]
Five essential Ops strategies that help make DevOps the real deal
With its roots in Agile and Lean thinking it’s not surprising that DevOps is often looked at through a development lens. After all, it’s proving absolutely essential to support accelerated delivery times; providing a much needed jolt of velocity to protracted development cycles. But of course with the increased need for speed there’s always the […]
Awkward questions for those getting started with automation
This blog asking awkward questions for folks jumping on the microservices bandwagon was enlightening from the perspective that many of the same questions are applicable to operations as they begin to tackle operationalizing all the things in an application lifecycle. For example: “What is your deployable unit?” Great question, isn’t it? What is your deployable […]
Clearing through the app backlog clutter
Development and operations teams today are under more pressure than ever to develop apps the business needs to make its workforce productive, its partners connected to the resources they need, and to deliver the apps to the marketplace that will make it competitive. The number of production hours for development is at a precious premium […]
Organic engineering team a must for long term DevOps success
Last month I was out in Las Vegas at CA World. While there I had a chance for a one-on-one meeting with CA CEO, Michael Gregoire. In our discussion Gregoire told me that one of the things he is most proud of in his time at CA is the fact that he has instilled a […]
Detours Ahead: Overcoming DevOps Challenges
Saying that you’re interested in DevOps is another way of saying you’re interested in change. That’s what DevOps promises any organization. No matter the problems a company is trying to solve or the goals it’s trying to reach, DevOps depends on a willingness to embrace some big changes. Sure, it can help you streamline software […]
Nationwide banks on DevOps to drive towards Continuous Delivery
The Financial Services industry is fast moving, highly regulated and customer-centric. The general perception in our industry is that any change in processes implies risk and delay, neither of which we can afford. But at the same time, we are faced by the mammoth task of needing to continually introduce new products and services to […]
DevOps with purpose: ACT-ing with greater agility
This is Part Four in a four-part series. In Part One, I focused on the critical first step of defining DevOps with a purpose by thinking about DevOps in the context of your organization’s applications. In Part Two, I provided four tips to fostering a DevOps culture in your organization. In Part Three, I discussed […]
Waterfall to Agile to DevOps: The State of Stagnant Evolution
DevOps is all the rage. The hot IT buzzword intended to heal the expanding divide between development and IT operations is being used to sell a range of services and solutions to struggling development shops and enterprises, even though DevOps can’t be sold – it’s a cultural shift that nurtures under a strong leadership. Prior […]
The DevOps Culture Cocktail
As I have written in previous posts, I believe that IT has accumulated decades of cultural debt that is now due. We are a young industry that grew up in silo neighborhoods, each with it’s proprietary practices, language and population of like-skilled specialists. Left unchecked, the resulting “framework culture” contributed to IT’s cultural debt and […]
Right-Picking the First Project to Go DevOps On
One of the hardest things to do when starting a new initiative is picking the right project to work on. Should I start with App A? App B? Does it really matter as long as I get started on this DevOps thing and prove its value to management? Yes, actually, it might. If you think about […]
My Little Operations: DevOps is Magic
Bear with me, it will all make sense in the end. If you aren’t familiar with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (because you don’t have a child who watches it over and over and … well, over) let me sum up for you: There’s a pony who knows something horrible is coming. She […]
Collaboration in Progress: Making DevOps a Reality
Everything on your company’s DevOps checklist is accounted for. It’s got the vision and the talent. It’s identified the problems and mapped out a solution. It’s got a culture that allows the flexibility that such a plan requires. Now’s the time to put the plan into action and let the benefits begin. The truth is […]
Three essential elements to maximize business value with DevOps
DevOps is fast becoming the winning strategy needed to accelerate the continuous delivery of exceptional software without sacrificing quality and cost efficiency. With its focus on better communication, collaboration and feedback within and across development and IT operations, DevOps is gaining many fans – even in the business, where performance is seen as being directly […]
The DevOps Litmus Test: Is Your Company’s Culture Ready to Get Agile?
New ideas don’t come to those who are afraid of breaking the rules. Improving something usually means you’ll have to push the status quo aside and try something that hasn’t been done before. What may be a standard operating procedure will have to make way for a brand-new approach with its own set of rules […]
Keep Calm and Refactor Operations
Developers have been refactoring forever to gain efficiencies and avoid mistakes. Let’s apply more than just theory to ops to do the same. There’s about a million articles, blogs, tweets and infographics available today that bespeak of DevOps as this or that or the other thing. But one core truth remains: DevOps in part attempts […]
The DevOps Diet (Getting Lean)
IT has gotten fat – fat silos, fat processes, fat procedures. Adopting DevOps is a great opportunity to look at some of our unhealthy habits and identify where we can eliminate unproductive waste from our process diets. DevOps will ultimately teach IT how to exercise more with less effort, trim the fat and get lean. According to […]