Exploring various views and take on the Dev Ops and it is more often correlated to the ability to have faster deployments and reduced lead time for changes. Of course, it is highly assumed there is a sharp fall in the change failure rate in orchestrating the release, encompassing the infrastructure and application services.
It is certainly worth noting there is a multitude of data points and statistics suggesting there are value and improved business benefits in the ‘right’ adoption of the DevOps model. There are very few details and know-how to transform a traditional working team to transfer the experience and work culture to the Dev Ops. Well, for this article I would like to assume there are good practices in the team working in the DevOps model.
Why is the S stressed here?
DevOps — I like the term defined as ‘agile marriage’ of Development & Operations with a trimmed nickname — DevOps.
Let’s say if Op is the expression for Operations, I would like to use S …., for Success / Secure / Strategy, etc. or it can also be a Stress. Theoretical DevOps can be stodgy.
It’s more of let’s do it rather than ‘deliver this’…
With the choices available today for any enterprise to either build or buy IT services, the relevance of these DevOps practices is growing critical for service providers and client IT to exhibit value throughout the engagement. In essence, the objective of any IT service agreement is more tuned towards the value and speed, beyond the traditional cost savings. Early experiences suggest this needs considerable effort from both the clients IT organization and the service provider.
Operations Consulting (Op Con or Con Ops)
In my view, another key term in the DevOpS is Operations. More often it is felt that we wish the Operations could code and automate, and on the other hand, wish the Developer understand the specific instruction for an Operations team on implementation steps.
I would rather prefer to state that for a good functioning DevOps, we should introduce a concept of ‘Operations Consulting’, that constantly insert ideas and changes upstream instead of just looking at the documentation, lesson learned and checklist to exhibit operational maturity in reacting faster to known outcomes.
Success !
DevOps is a tightrope to be held by the creative developers and disciplined operations teams for an outcome to speed to respond to market demands. It is also an invisible thread connecting the multi-disciplines of an organization. With a performing DevOps team delivering improvements, the success of DevOps should result in the ability to experiment more, improved customer engagement, divert time of developers and operations to focus on data insights and analytics.
It is always appealing to suggest drive costs down, improve RoI, and faster time to market, but I would rather measure some internally focused outcomes for that is the key ingredient to keeping the team’s momentum to drive tangible outcomes like time to market and reduced cost of downtime.
Secure!
S... For Speed, with speed comes the unavertable vulnerabilities or break some working functions. It is either way an impact on security in translating to the system’s confidentiality or availability. Engaging security design and testing practices early in the cycle should help the sprints to achieve the desired results. More often it is left to the security teams and is ‘on the spot’ to review and underwrite the risks in such faster deployments.
It is often archaic to wait for the completion of the product, and subject the system to various automated testing and take pride in the success of just finding the vulnerabilities.
The direction towards container and microservices is posing an interesting challenge to security to engage early and be with the teams through the journey for a reliable system.
Strategy!
Is DevOps a direction, framework, work type definition, or best practice? I would rather go with Strategy underscoring the cultural change and adoption of continuous delivery. Further, it directly impacts the Line of Business, Development and Testing, Operations, and Suppliers in a more intrinsic way they collaborate and changes the outcomes from each other. A Strategy with the focus on the People, Tools, and Methods with a result of improving Cost, Quality, and Time.
I have attempted to fit the S in the DevOpS with 3 key dimensions of S, they are interdependent.
If rightly Sourced and Sincerely adopted, the results will be Sustaining!