DevOps: Making the Boring Things Stay Boring
“I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Overlords,” is the title of Mykel Alvis’ (@mykelalvis) session at the 2016 All Day DevOps Conference. He wasn’t trying to curry favor with the new robot rulers, a lá Kent Brockman, but, instead, was evangelizing on the importance of precision in DevOps. Mykel is the DevOps Coach at Cotiviti Labs, the […]
Automation, ChatBots Can Improve DevOps
At its heart, the goal of DevOps is to foster better communication between the development team and operations team at an organization. When these two teams are systematically connected, they can easily stay in sync on most issues and there is strong coordination in building and delivering the product to customers. Automation and ChatBots can […]
DevOps for Small Organizations: Lessons from Ed
Ed was demoralized. He had just heard a speaker who would change his life. He knew he needed to change, and he knew what the end goal was. He just didn’t know how to get there. He needed fresh air. He needed endorphins. What better way to do that than go on a six-hour run […]
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 […]
Welcome to the Continuous Delivery 101 Podcast
No matter what industry you’re in or how old your business is, your software often determines your success in today’s application economy. Applications are the face of your business—both the way it performs and the speed with which you can incorporate new ideas and innovations, driven by the efficiency of your software development life cycle—determines […]
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 […]
DevOps is More Than Just Automation
DevOps is a lot of things. What DevOps is, what DevOps does and how an organization adopts and implements DevOps tools and practices are largely subjective, but there are some foundational elements that are fairly ubiquitous. One of which is automation. As pervasive as it is, though, DevOps is not automation and automation is not […]
DevOps by the Book in 2017: Where we Really Stand
Now that the year-end prediction season is over, it’s time to focus squarely on the actual here and now—where the DevOps movement actually stands at the start of 2017. As we’ll need to wait another six months or so for the annual State of DevOps Report to emerge from the good folks over at DORA […]
Automation: Achieving Faster Rollouts with Better Accuracy
A changing landscape requires new processes At the recent Symposium/ITxpo, Gartner shared a list of technologies and trends that will be important for organizations to embrace and prepare for in 2017. These trends, which are listed in the report, “Top Strategic Predictions for 2017 and Beyond: Surviving the Storm Winds of Digital Disruption,” reinforce the […]
Rethinking Unemployment in the Age of Automation
In my last article concerning the impact of automation and robotics on human employment, I asserted that commercial job loss is more a result of automation than outsourcing. Also, I asserted that this trend was going to continue at an accelerated rate. I said we need to address three areas of concern to mitigate the […]
DevOps Chat: Huw Price, Smart Automation Is Key
Before the new year, I had a chance to sit down and chat with Huw Price, Vice President, Application Delivery, CA Technologies. Given Huw’s title what do you think we spoke about? You guessed it, automation. Actually there is more to it than that. Automation for automation’s sake alone is not necessarily a good thing. […]
A Holiday Tradition: 2017 Continuous Delivery Predictions
It’s that time of year. As the calendar year comes to a close, many of us are following time-honored traditions: making preparations for the holidays, planning some much-deserved time off and enjoying time with friends and family. In the business world, the year-end also brings its own traditions, and first among those is making predictions […]
What Do We Do When Everything is Automated?
Recently, I came across a study the caused me to think beyond the day-to-day world of code-slinging in which I live. According to the study conducted by Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University in Indiana: “Almost 88 percent of job losses in manufacturing in recent years can be attributable to productivity […]
Assembling the Key Components of Continuous Delivery
As agile methodology was popularized at the start of last decade, engineering teams gained the opportunity to begin producing software in shorter cycles, while releasing it reliably at more frequent intervals. This concept garnered greater attention in 2009, when Tim Fitz published his thoughts on continuous deployment. By the time Jez Humble authored his seminal book, […]
You’re Not Doing DevOps if You Can’t Pull the Cord
There are many concepts in Lean manufacturing that have applicability with software development “factories.” One example is the Andon Cord. The Andon Cord concept involves using signals and alerts to indicate that a station on the assembly line has a problem. Alarms are activated manually by workers pulling a physical cord or automatically by the […]
An IT Practitioner’s Guide To DevOps
Two technology innovations of the past decade have fundamentally changed how IT works and given rise to the “DevOps” phenomenon. Before we dive into what DevOps is and how IT organizations should adopt this culture, let’s review what gave rise to it in the first place. Pull from Agile Development The last decade has seen […]
So Long to Configuration Management Systems?
When I was an operations architect at Ning way back in 2009, we were struggling to manage our deployments and configurations of more than 50 different application servers, or what the cool kids today call microservices. Applications were deployed across three distinct environments: development, staging and production. None of these environments were exactly the same […]
Keep Applications Running by Testing Early, Continuously
Almost every product we buy or use today goes through some form of extensive testing before it’s released on the market; typically, these tests are designed to replicate the worst-case scenarios that a product may encounter under real-world conditions. Automobiles, for example, go through extensive hot and cold weather testing in remote locations, and are […]
Q&A: BDO’s Coffman on Change Management, Security and DevOps, Part 1
DevOps’s best asset is swift and valuable change, which also may be its biggest risk factor. DevOps certainly challenges change management and security. We recently discussed these challenges and the solutions with Deena Coffman, managing director at BDO Consulting’s Technology Advisory Services practice. Here is part one of that exchange. David Geer: What kinds of […]
DevOps Storytime: The Line, The Loop and The Cube
In a time not so long ago, but long enough to be before the mainstreaming of magical ideas such as “configuration as code” or “platform as a service (PaaS),” in a period where the enterprise IT shops were ruled by the one-two punch of Six Sigma and ITIL, there were three magical artifacts sought by […]
DevOpsQA NJ Meetup – Test Automation Tech Talk
DevOpsQA NJ just held our August Meetup on Test Automation Tools and Processes with Polina Rodov and Kamlesh from Medidata, Anil Jaising from JP Morgan Chase and myself, Tanya Kravtsov, from Audible. The venue, food and refreshments were provided by Audible at a state-of-the-art, vast office space in Jersey City with amazing views of the NYC skyline. The […]
How DevOps Can Help Improve Security
Automation and standardization along with development-inspired reviews can address the three top risks to IT security. The term “DevOps” these days tends to evoke images of automation and push-button application deployments whenever app dev wants. It’s anarchy, it’s chaos, and it’s a frightening notion to those for whom stability and security of the core business […]
Electric Cloud Announces Industry’s First End-to-End DevOps Release Automation Platform with Native, Push-Button Rolling Deployments
Easy access to rolling and other advanced deployment patterns makes large-scale, mission-critical application releases safe, reliable and repeatable throughout the entire lifecycle SAN JOSE, Calif., July 19, 2016 – Electric Cloud (http://electric-cloud.com), the leader in DevOps Release Automation, today announced its latest version of ElectricFlow, now the industry’s first and only end-to-end DevOps platform to […]