Tag: Modernizing IT Operations & Infrastructure

  • Why the Cultural Element of DevOps Is Crucial

    The core of the DevOps culture is the emphasis on service. The following figure shows how this mindset helps to deliver a high-quality product. The focus on service is not just limited to ensuring a product is available for use by the customer. A service mindset ensures that a high-quality product is not only available…

  • Competing in the Digital Age With Lean Startup, Agile Software Development, and DevOps

    To compete in the digital age, it is becoming increasingly important to move away from an activity based functional teams to multidisciplinary product teams consisting of business ( product owners, designers, UX, business analysts… ) and IT (developers, testers, security, operations …. ) folks. However, for the newly created product based teams to become successful…

  • Story Maps and Business Value

    The two approaches to developing products or services are incremental and iterative. The following figures depict the difference between the two approaches. In an Agile DevOps environment, both approaches are used to develop a product. You might need to build upon the existing parts or functionality (iterative). There can also be a situation where you…

  • Multitasking Impact on Productivity in a DevOps Environment

    Multitasking makes each and every task to take a longer time to complete than required. The cause of delay is due to the time lost when switching between multiple tasks, as shown in the following figure. According to Gerald Weinberg (Quality Software Management: Systems Thinking), there is a loss of around 20% of the total…

  • Succeeding With DevOps: Google’s DevOps Survey Findings Mapped to DASA’s Team Competence Model

    First, the expected good news, “Harvard Business Review Analytic Services Study Competitive advantage through DevOps” – a survey sponsored by Google Cloud, confirmed that DevOps delivers key business results. Survey respondents who adopted the DevOps approach say that it has improved speed to market ( named by 70%), productivity (67%), innovation (66%), and product/service quality…

  • The Business Case for DevOps (Fully Realize the Business Benefits of Agile Software Development)

    The thinking that Agile software development and DevOps are different and separate frameworks, and hence need to be adopted separately seems to be taking hold. This is obviously, incorrect and has insidious long term consequence as it will perpetuate the divide between Dev and Ops. Although, Agile software development preceded DevOps – Agile software development…

  • Kaizen Event and Value Stream Mapping as Continuous Improvement Tools

    Continuous improvement tools can support the Kaizen or radical change mindset. Kaizen EventA Kaizen event is a structured problem-solving approach that contributes to purposeful continuous improvement within any organization. DMAIC is a problem-solving approach to facilitate continuous improvement, as shown in the following figure. The primary tasks of the various steps of the DMAIC cycle are:…

  • SRVISION 2019

    It’s time for organizations to become more resilient to get ready for the digital age! The annual SRVISION event took place in the Netherlands discussing Flying Datacenters, Pando – the largest single living organism on earth, and Edith from All in the Family looking to put more Ops into DevOps. The line-up for the event…

  • Why Taking DevOps “Literally” is No Solution

    To create independent and autonomous teams around services, you might be tempted to build teams with full-stack expertise as depicted in the following figure. Although this might be a better setup, it takes the DevOps approach too literally. Each team, now, needs all knowledge and skills, and reuse is almost zero. DevOps is often misunderstood…

  • Culture Follows Structure

    On January 17, 2019. Transavia hosted a highly interactive event “Fit for the Future,” enabled by CIO Platform Nederland and the DevOps Agile Skills Association (DASA). After several valuable lessons from Transavia and ABN AMRO Bank on their Agile and DevOps journeys, I had the privilege to facilitate one of the break-out sessions on Organizational…