Culture Change: Where It Matters in DevOps
Lori and I were in Russia in the late ’90s. It was an interesting dichotomy of life in a changing country. While we were there, the government devalued the ruble—just cut three zeros off the end of everything—to bring it into historical line with other world currencies. It was odd, because there was a mass […]
Continuous Testing vs. Test Automation: 3 Key Differences
Testers have been wrestling with test automation for years, yet most teams are not satisfied with their current level of test automation or the overhead required to maintain it. Additionally, the past few years have brought a sea change in the way that applications are architected, developed and consumed—increasing both the complexity of testing and […]
DevOps Chat: Waterfall Will Not Disappear, with Flint Brenton, CEO Collabnet
One of the perks of being editor in chief of devopsy.kinsta.cloud is I get a chance to meet with so many leaders of the DevOps and IT industry. You can really learn a lot by listening to what these folks say. This DevOps Chat is a perfect example. I sat down with Flint Brenton, CEO […]
ShiftLeft & DevOps: A Narrative Within a Narrative?
I procrastinated watching the season finale of “Westworld” just because I ended up reading a day later how Dolores ended the episode! I don’t know who to blame: my inquisitiveness or that guy who couldn’t hold himself. It kind of feels stale when you know the ending. Finally, I finished weeding through the multiple narratives […]
How Much QA is Enough in Software Development?
People working in quality assurance as testers, managers or engineers know what it’s like having to justify their existence; it’s been part of the job for many years. QA experts have had to fight the perception that what they do is a bottleneck, overkill and it slows everyone down. Finally, however, QA is getting the […]
Test Driven Development, Continuous Test and Code Quality
We’ve gotten a lot of good out of agile development methodologies. I’m never a “One True Way” kind of person, but agile has a ton of benefits that development needed (and Ops increasingly needs). Extending that to the Dev side of DevOps is painless, since much of agile is wrapped in DevOps clothes these days. […]
It Is Not All Choice and Speed in DevOps
One of the stumbling blocks starting to show in the agile/DevOps world is that speed of delivery and developer choice are asserting themselves as the primary worthy goals. I’m a developer. I have that “look what I did” attitude when I tackle a particularly tough problem and I love it when an environment lets me […]
CD 101 Podcast: The What, How and Future of Continuous Delivery
Now that we’ve arrived at Episode 4 of our CD 101 Podcast, let’s address some basic concepts—like the what and how of it all and the future. Wait … perhaps we could—or should—have touched on these key topics earlier. Or not. At least not the future part? Anyway … While this (mostly) backwards-looking orientation may […]
The Postman Delivers More
Most of us use Postman during API development. The company claims 3 million users, and as one of them, that number doesn’t raise my eyebrows any. But if you are like me, you’ve figured out collections, how to back up your data and perhaps looked at tests, but not done much more. As a tool […]
Building a Bridge from Agile to DevOps, Scrum.org Partners with the DevOps Institute
Scrum.org, which is dedicated to improving the profession of software delivery, and the DevOps Institute, which is dedicated to fostering a community around emerging practices in Continuous Delivery and DevOps, today announced an alliance that seeks to build a bridge from agile to DevOps. It will include scrum teams, agile practices and DevOps. I think […]
Scaled Agile: Faster Feature Cycle Time, Improved Time to Value
Do you remember when the business imperative was improving feature cycle time? As if we just needed to deliver more stuff faster to win in the marketplace. I wouldn’t say that times have changed, but I would say we were just scratching the surface, and rightfully so. After all, we have to start somewhere. The […]
CD 101 Podcast: How to Build the Modern Software Factory with Agile Development and Continuous Delivery
And now, for Episode 3 … you decide if it beats “Star Wars – Revenge of the Sith.” I think we accidentally just set the bar pretty low, but … … here we go. Let’s begin with a prerequisite pithy quote from an objective industry observer: “If agile software development was the opening act to a […]
Why Financial Companies Love Continuous Delivery
The other day I was on the American Express website paying bills and browsing around the benefits and services afforded me when I ran across a “who we are” section. It read: “We’re a global services company that provides customers with access to products, insights and experiences that enrich lives and build business success.” Surprisingly, […]
Be Here Now – Agile and DevOps in the Current State of Synergy
If there’s one thing that our culture does not lack, it’s a litany of pithy catch-quotes meant to remind us to focus on the task at hand; yet, this often runs counter to our tendency to fixate on matters of the past and future. While we are so often encouraged to “live in the moment” […]
Using DevOps for Non-Code Artifacts
Figure: Linking various aspects for an article that can be connected through the “DevOps way of working” Innovation lies at the intersection of two or more otherwise-non-related areas. A very intriguing such instance I recently read was of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace setting up the foundation of the modern programmable computer by taking the […]
CD 101 Podcast Episode 2: The Agile Enterprise
And we’re back with another episode of the “Continuous Delivery 101 Podcast.” In Episode 1, we covered the three waves of IT disruption—and how these disruptions, combined with the move toward digital transformation, are drastically changing every industry. This, of course, underlined how accelerating speed-to-market is clearly more important than ever before. In this second […]
What Happens Post-Deployment: The Rotating Roster
DevOps has become that celebrity who’s always the talk of the town but is largely misunderstood. It’s even quoted in the wrong context. A few days back, while speaking at a conference, I was interacting with audience and one of the attendees said DevOps is like the backbone of Agile. I think that’s an excellent […]
Reality Check: Bringing Continuous Delivery Dreams to Life
Every developer shares the same dream: to write a piece of code or app that changes everything. Whether it makes your company do things more efficiently, attracts hordes of new customers, simply makes existing clients happier or maybe even changes the world a little bit, that code is what we strive for. Some of us […]
Security @ the Speed of DevOps Survey: Efforts Still Lag
Enterprises today are in a relentless race to digitize or die. If they don’t digitize business processes, services or internal workflows and their competitors do, they will be at a steep disadvantage—and perhaps soon an irrecoverable one. In more and more companies these efforts are being driven by DevOps. According to IDC, the vast majority […]
Culture Comes First in Bringing DevOps to the Mainframe
One of the most difficult challenges in engineering, oddly enough, isn’t technical: the challenge is culture transition management. In my 20-plus years of managing engineering teams worldwide, I’ve led teams through countless organizational adjustments and process improvements toward high-performance and quality, beginning with QA segregation to CMMI to ITIL, AGILE and SAFe. Today, mainframe organizations […]
5 Ways DevOps Can Help Improve IT Security
You already know DevOps can make software delivery faster and more efficient. But did you know it can help to keep software more secure, too? Here’s how. DevOps refers to a set of practices and cultural priorities related to the way software is designed, produced and deployed. It emphasizes collaboration between developers (the people who […]
Puppet Launches 2017 State of DevOps Survey
It’s that time of year again! We at Puppet have kicked off the 2017 annual State of DevOps. survey. Now in its sixth year, we have once again teamed up with DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA), founded by our dear friends Gene Kim, Jez Humble and Nicole Forsgren, to survey technology professionals worldwide in an […]
Predictable Progress: Tracking DevOps Maturity Metrics
As DevOps methodologies continue to evolve, we’re naturally seeing an increased emphasis on the cultivation of related maturity metrics. For instance, in the 2016 State of DevOps Report, researchers with DORA took an initial stab at creating relevant ROI measurements. Similarly, a new report issued by researchers Coleman Parkes, sponsored by CA Technologies, offers additional […]