Beware False DevOps Metrics
Metrics are important for any manager seeking to continuously improve critical work processes and the resulting work-product. That’s why DevOps leaders need DevOps metrics. With the right ones, those leaders can guide their organization’s adoption of DevOps best practices—progressively optimizing staff productivity, business agility and customer experience. But, what are the right metrics for DevOps […]
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 […]
DevOps in Legacy Systems: A Mission Impossible?
The word “legacy” evokes mixed reactions from the IT and business crowds alike. For those who depend on legacy systems such as the zSeries and iSeries platforms, it is a way to deliver stable and reliable applications into production. Business stakeholders who may not know the intricacies of the technology often take a view of, “Why […]
Advancing DevOps with Diagrams
The Application model can be incredibly useful to map out application features, planned changes and current flaws, and even for roadmapping. The model takes organizational time and effort, and can only be created and maintained when a universal language has been developed by a modeling team. The effort is well worth the cost, however, since […]
Getting the Most Out of QA in Complex Environments
We live in a world in which software is increasingly dominant. Not only do we rely ever more on software, but its complexity is becoming even greater. And with increased complexity, bugs are more likely to be intermittent, making failures difficult to reproduce. Sometimes this non-determinism results in failures never getting fixed. Any unfixed bug […]
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 […]
Digital Transformation and the DevOps Chaos Theory
With the threat from agile startups disrupting markets across the globe, large enterprises are increasingly focused on moving to a more agile approach to business. Most organizations already have begun the digital transformation (DX) journey, but the fact that this transformation is still in its infancy and not completely finalized for many demonstrates the fluid […]
DevOps is Dead! Long Live DevOps!
Some are seekers on the quest for the one, true DevOps. They were misled. I’m here to say: Give it up. Whatever you find at the end of that journey isn’t it. That one true DevOps is dead. Dead and buried. The search is pointless or, kind of worse: The search misses the point altogether. DevOps began […]
Release Automation: Delivering the Big Quality Payoff
Have you ever gone down the path of testing the latest release of an application only to find out that you had the wrong version? Maybe you accidentally grabbed the wrong build or you didn’t have the correct configuration file for the environment you were testing against—or your database wasn’t updated correctly, or the script […]
The Leadership Suite DevOps and Business Alignment Success Guide
There’s not much point to DevOps if the business isn’t directly benefiting through increased efficiency, productivity and, hopefully, profitability. This is possible only when IT and DevOps teams are delivering the technology the business actually needs to succeed and compete. As IBM director in IBM Cloud writes in his post, “Putting the ‘Biz’ in DevOps“: […]
Boosting Time-to-Market by Improving Software Development
Today’s business environments require “agility” in terms of being able to quickly understand and adapt to information, trends and new developments. For example, a company might employ a business intelligence suite that provides them with real-time information on product sales, which allows them to dynamically adjust content or strategy. Set a Baseline You can’t measure […]
All Day DevOps: System Hardening with Ansible
The DevOps pipeline is constantly changing. Therefore, relevant security controls must be applied contextually. We want to be secure, but I think all of us would rather spend our time developing and deploying software. Keeping up with server updates and all of the other security tasks is like cleaning your home: you know it has […]
Dispelling the Myths Around Continuous Testing
You may have seen the term “continuous testing” and thought it was just the DevOps flavor of the month. Some might even think it isn’t part of DevOps or isn’t for cloud or hybrid cloud applications. Well, think again. As it turns out, there are a few more fallacies around the idea of continuous testing […]
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 […]
In DevOps, Speed Isn’t Always the Point
The high-tech industry has fallen into a rut and seems to be struggling to get out of it. This rut is most fervently seen when talking about DevOps, but it exists across the board. We’ve fallen in love with the idea that faster is always better. That idea is provably false, and the assumption that […]
The Elusive Definition of DevOps
How do you define DevOps? If you went out and asked IT professionals at other organizations, could you guarantee their answer would be the same? In most cases, the answer to this question is no. DevOps, despite its growing popularity, still lacks a widely agreed-upon definition. There are a few fundamental principles that appear consistently […]
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 […]
The State of DevOps Adoption and Trends in 2017
DevOps has come a long way, and we see a tremendous increase in adoption in the recent years. To outrank your competition and be ahead in the growth curve, it has become an essential element for software-powered organizations. DevOps has taken a center stage in the software development field with no signs of leaving. Below […]
Intelligent DevOps for New Age Digital Systems
Transforming DevOps by leveraging the power of analytics and autonomics In a previous blog, I have written about how Quality Assurance is getting transformed to Quality Intelligence using the power of big data analytics and autonomics. In this blog, we will discuss how DevOps solutions of the future can become more intelligent by taking advantage […]
DevOps Job Titles Emerging in Enterprise IT Organizations
IT job functions and, by extension, individual titles inside the classic enterprise have been relatively constant. Various hierarchies of developers labored separately alongside IT operations teams that focused mainly on infrastructure. However, the emphasis on continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD) within the context of a modern DevOps environment is starting to blur the lines […]