In some areas of IT, we utilize the idea of shift right quite a bit. Testing and security are two areas where it comes up often. The idea is that tracking late in the process–usually while the application is in production–leads us to find more insidious issues that might have remained hidden, and gives us a kind of quick reaction force to mitigate issues.
All true, and it works relatively well. Some shops use this concept to push off necessary testing, but for the most part it allows us to keep moving while assuring the system is essentially correct. But the idea of catching issues late in this iteration might be misguided. It does do just that, but in the world of cyclical iterations, shift right is also shift left for a future iteration. The idea being that we’re catching something today that will be resolved for the next iteration. And presumably for every iteration after that.
We often put a temporary fix to resolve the in-production issue, then list it as something to be more permanently resolved in a future iteration. Adding to a future iteration’s to-do list is the ultimate shift left. And that matters. We’re catching it late for this iteration, but early for the next one. And as a result, overall quality increases.
Standardizing this process would be the next step. If it’s an easy fix–a minor change to code or config–it’s shifted right. If it’s a larger issue that will need to be considered in a future iteration, it is considered shifted left for that iteration. It’s an input, not just a fix. And an input that deserves a high priority if it reflects a negative impact upon the running system.
In the daily grind, this is pretty much irrelevant. We have a problem and say, “there, that’ll keep it going. Put in an issue to make a better fix and move on.” But in the next iteration’s prioritization, it is far more relevant, “we have this massive pile of things to do, what makes this iteration?” Should include a heavy weighting for things that are limping along on a manual fix. Often, the existence of a workaround reduces the weighting, and these things don’t make the cut. But permanent fixes mean you don’t have to hustle around fixing the same old problem each time the app is deployed, and that’s greatly what DevOps is all about.
There is an interesting dichotomy between shops/groups with a high iteration rate and those with a much slower cadence. The cost of not permanently fixing these issues is too high when you’re deploying frequently, so they tend to be handled this way already. But slower iteration shops/groups often will let these fixes slide in favor of new functionality. The burden this creates is not worth a shiny new bit on the UI. Start slating permanent fixes for production issues as highest priority, don’t add steps to deployment because you failed to resolve the more fundamental issue.
DevOps requires speedy resolution, but long-term, any type of development effort requires adequate resolution. With iteration after iteration, you are paying a price for putting off fixes, so don’t. Shift them left in the next iteration, and spend that time of each release on something more productive.
