Founded in 2004, Targetprocess provides an agile management platform that enables its customers to visualise work across the organisation, identify bottlenecks and make informed decisions about what to prioritize in the business.

Leavitt brings more than 20 years’ of experience building B2B software companies, including AlchemyAPI, which was acquired by IBM Watson; Rally Software, which had its IPO in 2013 on the NYSE and was later acquired by CA Technologies and Insightful Corporation, which was acquired by TIBCO.

In his prior roles, Leavitt has led product management and marketing, and driven sales organisations, partner networks and go-to-market efforts for a string of venture-backed software startups.

“Richard is an experienced leader in business management and a trusted expert in how companies build and manage software products,” comments Andrey Mihailenko, co-founder of Targetprocess.

“We look forward to his insights, and will lean on his knowledge in sales, marketing and technology as we continue to scale.”

Targetprocess also raised US$5million Series A in May 2018, in part to speed its growth of sales, marketing and customer support in North America.

Written from press release by Leah Alger

The post Targetprocess appoints former Rally Software executive appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

Another developer, Patrick Debois, did show up in the empty room, however. He was presenting a paper called “Agile Infrastructure and Operations” during the conference and Shafer’s session had caught his attention. The two later met up in a hallway and had a long talk. Three months later, they formed the Agile Systems Administration Group, whose goal was to foster greater collaboration between developers and systems administrators.

These events a decade ago are widely considered the “little bang” that gave birth to DevOps, the much-hyped movement that strives to unify development and operations through increased collaboration and automation in order to build, test and release software faster.

DevOps awareness and adoption clearly are on the rise. Nearly two-thirds of organizations were using DevOps to one degree or another by the end of last year, according to Gartner. Forrester labeled 2017 “the year of DevOps” and said its “questions and discussions with clients have shifted from ‘What is DevOps?’ to ‘How do I implement at scale?’ ”.

As more businesses that have been piloting DevOps in smaller teams and projects in contained environments expand these agile practices across the organisation, it’s a good time to ask what DevOps success looks, feels and smells like.

What are the telltale signs that DevOps has not only taken root in an organisation but has grown into a smooth machine powering a faster, better software development lifecycle?

I’d suggest that a company which has embedded the following four truths into its daily existence can say it is fulfilling DevOps’ promise. Here they are — the DevOps grand slam, if you will.

1. It’s the velocity, stupid.

Just as the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign simplified its winning formula with the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid,” DevOps is about one thing: shortening the software development lifecycle. If you measure the time it takes for a feature to be programmed, developed and deployed into production and that time is decreasing, you know your DevOps objectives are being met.

But how do you get there? This is where things often get complicated.

It’s important to remember DevOps’ true origins – a desire by developers to sidestep perceived obstacles on the operations side of the house in moving code into production faster.

Popular tools like Jenkins and Kubernetes were created by developers for developers to meet the excellent objective of faster release cycles, and they often work well in smaller teams executing one-off projects.

But these tools are not consistently battle-tested and production-ready. If a company is trying to manage DevOps at a larger scale the cookie-cutter templates with, say, Chef and Puppet aren’t going to cut it.

To make sure their DevOps strategy can successfully scale, companies need a smart tools approach. Which leads to #2…

2. DevOps doesn’t mean Dev and Ops must use the same tools.

While a telltale sign for a good working DevOps environment is a healthy collaboration between developers and operations, it’s a myth that each must use the same tools to achieve their mutual goal of delivering high-quality new services faster.

DevOps should not be the combining of developer and operations responsibilities, but rather a complementary relationship of equals. Operations should not be told to use tools that weren’t built for them. Operations should be able to use tools that were built for operations.

A healthy, mature DevOps culture doesn’t force tools made for developers down the operations staff’s throats and recognises that operations should be able to use the technology they feel is best for assuring the deployment of resilient, secure applications.

3. It’s not just DevOps, it’s DevSecOps.

More and more organisations are adopting the next level of DevOps – DevSecOps, which requires development, operations and security teams to work collaboratively throughout the application lifecycle to detect security vulnerabilities.

This “everybody is responsible for security” approach differs from traditional models where the security team gets involved only after code is nearly final and “hardens” it in a process that can take weeks or even months to complete.

If a company is moving to the DevSecOps model, chances are it successfully mastered DevOps principles first and is applying lessons learned.

4. Orchestration is crucial.

The DevOps world is strewn with moving parts – the aforementioned tools and others like Mesos… PaaS… Docker container managers… and on and on. This hodgepodge is difficult to wrangle into a coherent, consolidated workflow.

So if you’re not running scalable, automated orchestration (which is the responsibility of the operations team, by the way), you’re not properly prepared to run container clusters, and that means you’re not really doing DevOps right.

Organizations that want to succeed with DevOps must understand that orchestration tools have become essential as part of the DevOps process.

As DevOps enters its second decade and adoption continues to grow, it’s important that organisations know what success looks like.

Written by Scott Willson, Product Marketing Director for Continuous at CA Technologies

The post As DevOps turns 10, how do you know if it’s working for your company? appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

I recently was introduced to the concept of ‘ba’ by a colleague during a discussion of SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) practices. And while the concept of ba is typically applied to agile planning, I found it profoundly speaking to the key challenge of DevOps today.

The concept of ba, originally proposed by Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida, describes the importance of establishing an environment that enables knowledge creation and sharing, trust, and cross-pollination – the ba.

Applied to DevOps, it’s a merging of cross-functional expertise, mindshare and best practices across the application lifecycle, enabling teams to be more focused, energised and high-performing.

5 culture traits to find your ba

1. Culture that embraces a “systems thinking” mindset

A DevOps organisation must look at the “system” as the business itself. Establishing DevOps practices should not be siloed and centered around specific disciplines, teams or departments.

Systems thinking means that each team should be aware of the actions of every team in the application lifecycle and the outcomes of every action internally and externally. The system works toward common goals and is measured holistically.

A continuous delivery pipeline brings together many different practices, processes and procedures with a common goal – deliver high-quality software with reduced risk and increased velocity.

2. Culture that aligns business requirements with technology

A successful DevOps strategy is about delivering value to end customers. Teams must come together at the outset to identify what processes and procedures are impeding progress, clearly identify what to do differently, and how to leverage technology and automation to optimise.

“Value stream mapping” can help you map your requirements from planning through production, identifying all the steps and stakeholders involved in delivering value to your customers. And then you assess where technology can aid the efficiency and effectiveness of value delivery.

Embracing technology when building your continuous delivery pipeline allows your team to provide real-time traceability of business value and create transparency across cross-functional stakeholders – improving collaboration and trust.

3. Culture that believes quality is a shared responsibility

Quality being solely owned by a QA team is a clear DevOps anti-pattern. In today’s modern paradigms of application delivery, quality must become job one of the continuous delivery pipeline, and thus a shared responsibility across development, testing, release and operations teams.

Merely focusing on the acceleration of application delivery often misses the mark. You must get to the point of engineering quality into your software through continuous testing.

The objective of continuous testing is to instrument quality into your delivery pipeline by shifting left to fix problems as soon as they are introduced and eliminating issues before they become a level one emergency at production. This helps the pipeline move more efficiently and maintains harmony.

4. Culture that encourages experimentation

The ability to experiment– to learn, fail-fast, repeat – is crucial to implementing a successful DevOps methodology.

Experimentation starts with trust, which can be established by getting everyone on the same page with common practices and criteria for moving a candidate release through the pipeline.

Teams must acknowledge, share and celebrate your fail-fast learnings much like we celebrate successes. It is equally important to share your knowledge with other teams within the organisation so they can evolve their processes along the way.

5. Culture that continually makes data-driven decisions

Finally, it’s essential to measure and monitor progress at each stage of the application lifecycle, just as you would with any other business initiative. Too often there is no data, or the data is too inconsistent across teams to be able to understand what’s working or what needs work.

All teams must leverage the same data sources and believe in the data. DevOps analytics allow teams to demonstrate tangible evidence of progress, focus on areas that need improvement and take steps in the right direction together.

Find your ba and tune your culture

As you refine your DevOps strategy, reaching a state of ba should be an early priority – a culmination of teams working together with shared goals, processes and knowledge.

High performers embrace proven practices for collaboration, testing and rapid experimentation. They set a precedent of continual improvement based on transparency among teams and rely on data-driven decisions for setting the course toward long-term success for the business and their customers.

Be sure to build your continuous delivery pipeline with visibility, collaboration and measurement in mind to facilitate a high-performing DevOps culture.

Written by Mike Adcock, Digital Transformation Specialist, Continuous Test/Delivery & DevOps at CA Technologies

The post 5 ways to create a high performance DevOps culture appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

The study found that, while 75% of respondents recognise that agile and DevOps approaches drive significant business success when implemented together, only a relatively small proportion consider the consistency, depth and breadth of usage of these practices to be high.

The study showcases characteristics of ‘agility masters’, with 18% of respondents saying they are farthest along in the full adoption and doing most of the correct things to make agile and DevOps an essential part of how they function day by day.

These ‘agility masters’ are also more likely to use agile practices across other company functions, so it is unlikely a coincidence that these organisations are seeing a 60% higher rate of revenue and profit growth, and are 2.4 times more likely than their mainstream counterparts to be growing their businesses at a rate of over 20%, according to the study.

Changing customer demands

Ayman Sayed, president and chief product officer at CA Technologies, commented: “The pressure is on to make all parts of an organisation as flexible as possible when responding to changing customer demands, user expectations, regulatory changes and – most important of all – market opportunities.

“Business leaders need to be aggressive and intentional about driving the adoption of agile and DevOps within their organisations. The success of their business depends on it.”

The study also found that organisations are plagued by similar challenges, including culture, skills, programme investment and leadership alignment.

The research highlights a widespread recognition that implementing agile and DevOps practices across the software lifecycle are not just a matter of new skills and working patterns.

For some, it also requires a significant shift in mindset and behavior and making those changes is very much a people issue – even at the executive level.

‘Encourages and rewards collaboration’

Top priorities to improve effectiveness identified by respondents include:

• 83% have improved the culture of the organisation, as it encourages and rewards collaboration
• 82% have supported commitment from management at all levels
• 78% are training for IT teams on how to collaborate and incorporate best practices into their day-to-day jobs, with 75% implementing additional resources to help implement agile and DevOps practices
• 74% relieve time pressures so teams can implement effective agile and DevOps practices.

More than half of the respondents also found it very difficult or challenging to find professionals that were familiar with agile methods, with a further 77% having experience using DevOps.

The global online survey was conducted by 1,279 senior IT and business executives who are sponsored by CA Technologies and conducted by the industry analyst firm Freeform Dynamics.

Written from press release by Leah Alger

The post CA Technologies: Firms struggle implementing agile and DevOps appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

The Modern Software Factory is where agility, automation, insights, and security “work together for business” – “creating an agile business, building better apps, maximising app performance and making security a competitive advantage,” said CA Technologies in a blog post.

“In The Modern Software Factory, the key to becoming agile is trying software to business initiatives.”

According to CA, only 6% of organisations have scaled agile across their entire company. The big part of becoming agile is having a solid plan, and the ability to rapidly change.

“With full visibility of projects underway, we can plan and budget much more accurately and have greater control,” said Roger Kayes, manager for portfolio services at Qantas.

‘AI can be good, or evil’

Furthermore, Otto Berkes, CTO of CA Technologies, spoke in-depth about the above factors in his keynote at CA World, while touching on other modern interfaces.

Berkes revealed: “The Modern Software Factory is the most important enabler for your company to help customers needs.”

“We help you build better software – creating new value to drive businesses forward.”

“Continuous Delivery becomes real, because of agile creating value, and software investments can be measured more than ever before because automation will run smoothly with the DevOps toolchain.”

According to CA, nearly two-thirds of senior business and IT executives noticed 45% to 60% better alignment between strategy and execution using agile technologies.

Furthermore, Berkes touched upon how artificial intelligence (AI) can be good, or evil, depending on how you use it.

‘A tidal wave of change’

Berkes added: “AI is algorithms expressed as code, created into data, which we use for responsibility.”

“With machine learning gives critical outcomes. AI adds tremendous value to user behavior.”

“We are never going to have skilled people to finish jobs that need to be done. Code helps business realities.”

Berkes also noted that we must all get ready for this tidal wave of change, by automating every manual process.

Written by Leah Alger

The post CA World ’17 touches upon The Modern Software Factory appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

The glittering awards gala was launched for the first year, and what a success it was, recognising exceptional efforts of individuals and teams when undergoing digital transformation projects.

The famous British voice-over for the X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and Family Fortunes, Peter Dickson, fantastically hosted the event, before being accompanied on stage by members from the Judging Panel: Paula Cope, Global Head of QA at TRICAP; Shamim Marzai, CTO at Mumsnet; Keith Watson, Director of DevOps iHCM ADP; James Betteley, Consultant at Contino; Sudeep Chatterjee, Global Head of QA and Testing at Lombard Risk and Amparo Marin de la Barcena, Certification Governance Director at Banco Santander.

2017 Winners

The first award of the evening was for the Best DevOps Automation Project, which was awarded to Barclays.

Cognizant were then awarded for having the Best DevOps Cloud Project.

The Best DevOps Manager of the Year winner was Mark Howell from Lloyds Banking Group.

The team at Lloyds Banking Group were honored with the DevOps Team of the Year award.

The next award on the night recognised Lloyds Banking Group as having the Automic Best Use of DevOps Technology.

The sixth award was awarded to Banco Santander, who took home Best Overall DevOps Project (Finance Sector).

NHS Digital took home the award for Best Overall DevOps Project (Public Sector). 

Infosys was awarded Best Overall DevOps Project (Entertainment/Media Sector).

Judges felt that Accenture was deserving of the Best Overall DevOps Project (Communication Sector).

The Best Overall DevOps Project (Retail Sector) was awarded to Infosys.

Barclays was happily awarded for Most Successful Cultural Transformation.

DevOps Industry Awards sponsor, CA Technologies, was awarded Leading DevOps Vendor.

Last but not least, Automic took to the stage to present the final, overall award, which was awarded to the well deserved team, Barclays, for Most Successful Cultural Innovation.

About The DevOps Industry Awards

The DevOps Industry Awards celebrates the very best professionals and outstanding achievements in the DevOps community.

A full list of the finalists in each category can be found here.

31 Media, organisers of The DevOps Industry Awards, The European Software Testing Awards, The National Software Testing Conference, The Software Testing Conference NORTH and publishers of TEST Magazine, DevOps Online and Software Testing News would like to thank all attendees, their sponsors (CA Technologies and Automic) and Event Partner, Puppet, for their on-going support.

Click here to register your interest for Awards 2018

Written by Leah Alger

The post Winners announced at the DevOps Industry Awards 2017 appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

The latest release addresses a rapidly growing market that has the potential to reach over US$6Billion by 2020, growing in the cloud, big data and DevOps.

Ayman Sayed, president and chief product officer at CA Technologies, said: “Enterprises continue to leverage well-defined, highly automated processes to enable software to be developed in shorter cycles and deployed into production at higher-velocity.”

The CA Automic One Automation Platform uniquely runs on a single, unified, common platform delivering a comprehensive business-driven solution for:

• IT Operations leaders who need to keep pace with the speed of modern Dev teams and the business: CA Automic V12.1 provides a unique intelligent automation offering to simplify processes and deliver zero-touch self-service capabilities within the Modern Software Factory.
• Development leaders who must free up their development teams to focus on innovation within the Modern Software Factory: CA Automic V12.1 provides new shift-left capabilities to remove scripts and manual efforts, and helps to enable the dev teams to automate within and orchestrate across the DevOps tool chain in a remarkable zero-touch self-service manner.
• Business owners who require Dev & IT to shift to agile and modern application delivery: CA Automic V12.1 helps to enable the business to drive top line growth and customer experience by providing a fully automated agile enterprise with unique intelligent automation and the capabilities to automate within and orchestrate across the DevOps tool chain.

“Intelligent Automation offers the path to enhancing a more agile enterprise. By enabling enterprises to move from traditional process automation to intelligent business automation, CA Automic delivers on the promise of the Modern Software Factory,” added Sayed.

Written from press release by Leah Alger

The post CA Technologies delivers intelligence for greater speed appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

It is something of an achievement to make the final list in a competitive and growing field and the number of big hitting companies listed is a strong testament to their fine work.

The list has leading financial service companies Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, Allianz Insurance and Banco Santander all included.

The Leading Vendor category is packed full on major firms: Aqua Security, CA Technologies, OpsGenie, Plutora, Puppet and Redgate Software.

The Best Use of DevOps Technology, sponsored by Automic, has an impressive array of companies, with data software company Actifio, two banks in Barclays and Lloyds, energy company Centrica, digital and technological specialists Cognizant, investment bank Nomura, software outsourcing company Qarea, and software testing specialists Tricentis all in the category final list.

Devops Online is looking forward to an amazing awards evening on 18 October at Marriot Grosvenor Square, London, and hope to see you there.

Book your table here: http://www.devopsindustryawards.com/attend/book-your-table/

The post Exclusive: DevOps Industry Awards finalists announced appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

The European Software Testing Awards is an annual event held in Central London celebrating the very best in the software testing and QA industry. A total of 18 awards were handed out for diverse categories such as Best Agile Testing Project, Best Mobile Testing Project and Leading Vendor. Two special awards were also handed out on the night – Micro Focus European Software Testing Award and an Outstanding Achievement Award.

A full list of the winners can be found here.

Raising money and awareness at The European Software Testing Awards 2016

During the evening, Senior Fundraising Executive, Catherine Sykes from GOSH took the stage for a moment to spread awareness of the charity and their work.

Members of the 31 Media team then collected donations and sold prize draw tickets. After the Awards Ceremony concluded, Ms Sykes was able to hand over a brand new Amazon Echo to the lucky winner.

All proceeds from the prize draw were donated to the charity.

Supporting Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH)

31 Media, organisers of The European Software Testing Awards and the publishers of TEST Magazine are really proud to have worked with some great charities to make a positive difference over the years.

“Using our events, publications, and platforms to donate to incredible causes such as Great Ormond Street Hospitals Children’s Charity is crucial to us as a company. We constantly want to be building awareness around extremely important causes such as this one, and we’re just so thankful to everyone who donated at this year’s awards,” says Cecilia Rehn, General Manager and Editor at TEST Magazine. “We’re incredibly proud of the amount we all, collectively, managed to raise on the night!”

About GOSH

GOSH is one of the top five paediatric research hospitals in the world, treating children from all over the UK and abroad who are diagnosed with the most complex, life-threatening conditions. GOSH has over 50 specialities under one roof and receives over 240,000 patient visits every year from children all over the UK and abroad, who are suffering from the most complex, life-threatening conditions.

The charity exists to assist the hospital in delivering world-class care for its young patients and their families and to pioneer new treatments and cures for childhood illness. Support for the charity will help the hospital to save more lives, develop new treatments, build new facilities and provide outstanding care to children and their families.

About The European Software Testing Awards

The Headline Sponsor for The European Software Testing Awards 2016 is MICRO FOCUS, and category sponsors are AMDOCS and WORKSOFT. The sponsors for The European Software Testing Summit 2016 include AMDOCS, CA TECHNOLOGIES and PERFECTO, supported by TEST Magazine, Software Testing News and DevOps Online.

31 Media, organisers of The European Software Testing Awards and publishers of TEST Magazine would like to thank its sponsors for their support.

The post Over £3000 raised for GOSH at The European Software Testing Awards 2016 appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

With the tech industry growing exponentially day by day and new IT tools being regularly introduced to people, it is not unusual to see these buzzwords being thrown around by everyone without them knowing what they mean in their true sense. You might have encountered people who use words like ‘cloud,’ ‘big data’ and ‘scrum,’ and left to wonder whether they were used in the correct context or not. Amongst these buzzwords is ‘DevOps,’ a name that has found its way onto several technicians’ mouths.

However, do they understand the true essence of what DevOps stands for? According to a survey conducted by CA Technologies, nearly half the participants did not know what DevOps meant!

DevOps is much more than just a buzzword. It is not just a tool, or a method, or a professional. DevOps is a culture; a culture that inclines towards growth, communication, and fast response, subsequently transforming the work environment into a much more productive one.

What exactly is DevOps?

Let us understand using a simple example: Imagine that there is a company that provides online services to its customers. To stay ahead of its competitors, it must deliver new and innovative products at a quicker rate and with increased frequency, so its customers remain satisfied and happy at all times.

There are basically two groups or teams working to accomplish this common goal: the development team or ‘Dev’, consisting of all people involved in developing the product like developers, product managers, and QAs, and the operations team or ‘Ops’, comprised of system engineers, administrators, security and other disciplines.

The job of the development team is to write and create new and innovative code and wait for it to enter the production cycle. The task of the operations team is to look after the product after it has been given delivered by Dev team and to enter it into the production cycle. Since the company keeps growing day by day, the environment and process of the operations sector changes as well, which requires the incoming code to be modified and massaged a bit before it is entered into the production cycle. This poses problems as the changes can produce technical issues in the actual code itself. Unfortunately, a wall exists between the two departments and hence the process of rectifying these issues in record time becomes next to impossible, subsequently damaging the relationship of the company with their customers. I am sure our developers and testers, along with Project and Configuration managers may relate to it instantly recalling their endless evenings and cold pizzas on their desk just before the release date for customers.

What DevOps does is that it demolishes this metaphorical wall between the operations and development teams and creates an environment in which constant communication holds the primary status. Both developers and system administrators work together to run tests, identify and rectify problems in the product step by step instead of doing so at the end of the product development.

How to reap the benefits?

With proper implementation of DevOps, a company can completely transform and upgrade the value that the employees and the customers of a business receive. What DevOps does is that it gradually automates the working environment- the processes that used to require tons of painstaking manual work now easily be performed through code. Let us look at some of the other incredible advantages that are brought about through a DevOps system.

• Double the velocity: As there will be no barrier between the two development and production departments, the time taken to execute and put forth a product will inevitably decrease exponentially. There will be increased collaboration between workers, which will lead to quicker responses and actions as engineering and production goes on side by side, neither sides having to wait for the other to understand a problem. Ultimately, this short and quick development cycle leads to even faster deployment. The frequency of new and innovative code being produced increases which in turn keeps the customers happy and satisfied. Such agility gives a company a much needed competitive edge in the current digital era.
• Savings Galore: Not only does this save time and energy of the workers, but it also contributes to savings and budget reduction. DevOps, much like Agile, is based upon principles that incline towards lean usage of resources. Continuous improvement techniques and quick responses save time which has a positive impact on the cost of the operations taking place in the process. Not only does it reduce operation costs, but also increases the revenue generated due to increased customer engagement and interaction as they receive better products in quicker bursts of time.
• Easier and quicker code testing: Built off on Agile methodology, DevOps divides the testing throughout the production process instead of having to test a huge chunk of code at the end. Through this continuous testing system, any defects in the code can be easily detected and rectified in a manner that takes much lesser time, effort and resources. As deployment failures decrease in number and frequency, the need to make massive readjustments decreases as well.
• Reduced Recovery Time: Despite the risks of facing failure in operation at a minimum with the implementation of DevOps, in the case that an issue does lead to those above, the recovery time of the operational and developmental system is significantly short. Since both the Dev and Ops teams understand the environments and jobs of each other, recovering from a problem in either of those departments becomes a collaborative process. More hands on deck mean quicker rollbacks. No more (or seldom, should I say) “Tiger Teams” at the nick of time.
• Innovation at its peak: Collaboration and communication amongst team members allow them to be open to present new ideas and innovate more often. This experimentation can lead to several new projects that may prove to be a hit with the customers.
• A Wider Customer Base: Through DevOps, the product can be provided to the customers at half the regular time and twice the efficacy and quality. This increased market responsiveness allows a company to expand their audience and attract a wider market.

The Effect of DevOps on Traditional Development & Testing Methods

When it comes to traditional (ahem, Waterfall!) development and testing methods, many challenges arise when executing them.

In traditional software development life cycle, testing is something that is taken care of by a particular group of people called Quality Assurance Testers or Quality Testers. Developers develop and write the code for new features and products, and after this special group of people for any defects and faults has tested it, it enters the production cycle. So basically, the work is done in steps: the entire code is written, tested and then produced. DevOps aims to improve on this out-dated methodology of testing.

People now want their products and services fast but not at the expense of quality. So how do you speed up the entire development, operational and testing process without compromising the quality of your service? You integrate the roles in a way that everyone works collaboratively with the word ‘Start.’ What DevOps does is that it instead of going the traditional path of testing at the end of the cycle, the testing part was carried out from the first line of code written. Hence, the software is tested as it is developed and deployed, resulting in faster recovery from defects and keeping the quality of the material top notch simultaneously. All teams and departments are involved in maintaining and assuring the quality of the product through every phase.

One of the other most common problems that surface is that the development and operations environment are very different from each other. Whatever code or feature was working flawlessly in the development environment may not working the same way in the production environment after it has been tossed over the wall dividing the two departments. This results in failure of a process due to lack of synchronization and understanding or communication. With DevOps, no such wall or difference in working environments exist. Operators and developers work side by side to ensure utmost quality and constant experimentation with the product, making the process much more successful and popular in the customers. The most beautiful thing about DevOps, in my opinion, is the continuous feedback loop. It just makes things so powerful, collaborative and efficient.

DevOps and The Cloud

DevOps and cloud strategy seem very much alike in what they aim to do – fast and continuous updates, development, delivery and deployment of product and infrastructure. Which is why at often many companies and franchise look to link the both together and create an efficient system.

Our economy has transformed from being product based to being service based. Gone are the days when you bought those neatly boxed packs with a DVD inside of product installer and documentation – Office 365, Adobe Creative Cloud, Intuit, you name it. Major players have shifted the focus to SaaS or PaaS, of course, handling never-ending piracy issues at the same time. People require agility more than they do stability in the services they receive. Which is why companies have to change their approach and turn to cloud-based services. Companies like Amazon and Azure have users that experience functionality and operation as a single dimension. Hence they need to push out an enormous amount of code every day. It all flows smoothly as a unified being for them, along with additional and constant upgrades. Within a DevOps environment, developers and operators work together at the same pace, with similar goals and views in mind, which allow the service that is provided to the customer to be as quick and as efficient as possible.

Everything about DevOps is continuous: be it continuous service integration, continuous delivery, continuous deployment, continuous testing, etc. Moreover, this exactly why it is suitable to be used along with the cloud where the code runs everything. Since cloud services are substantially dependent upon IT, it is only understandable that DevOps practices be used for their purpose as they are highly automated. Instead of doing the work in large batches for a longer period, it is done in shorter batches that require lesser time and are ‘continuous’ with one another. This gave birth to terminologies such as continuous integration, delivery, and deployment that have revolutionized modern testing and development practices.

With continuous integration, each line of code that a developer writes and checks in goes through a compilation process or into the mainline where it is checked and tested for quality and defect related purposes. This may also be called continuous testing. The software is unit-tested with each line of code entered in an automated system and in return, rapid feedback is received, making the process of development much quicker and responsive.

Continuous delivery, to put into simple words, is when the software or code is always ready to be released for production. Meaning the software goes through continuous integration and automated testing and is rapidly developed and is now prepared to be pushed into the production phase but only upon the decision of the business or through a manual trigger. This process also ensures a fall-back net (safety net) availability most of the time.

Continuous deployment goes one step ahead of this and automates the manual part of continuous delivery: each updated code is automatically released into the production phase after it has gone through automated quality assurance testing. Now this is when it gets tricky at times when vendors do not have access to the customers directly, so this may very well be integrated with a staging environment hosted at customer proxy. This can all be handled beautifully with an excellent collaboration and implemented safety checks and Kaizen practices.

Several tools have been introduced to make possible the aforementioned processes and subsequently incorporate DevOps into the cloud. Some include:

• CHEF: Chef is an automation platform that allows people to configure, build and manage large scale applications easily. It allows the user to use code as infrastructure. Developers build infrastructure by writing and entering code that is automatically tested and put into production.
• PUPPET: Puppet is said to be relatively easier than Chef regarding usability. That being said, Chef is allegedly more loved by developers as they say, but I am no expert in that so feel free to google a vs. story, I am sure you will be surprised. Puppet has its config specific language (easy-to-read apparently) for user specific requirement definition. It turns infrastructure into code and allows the user to set up data centres in the cloud using it as a platform.
• JENKINS: Jenkins is an open source automation server that can be used as a Continuous Integration server or a Continuous Delivery hub as well. You can manage and control dev processes like builds, tests, setup packages, deployment; you name it.
• GITHUB: Github offers a flexible open source repo hosting and integrative platform where you can host and manage your code or infrastructure.

How to Adopt DevOps Practices

Once you have realized the incredible benefits DevOps can bring to your workplace, it is time to adopt and implement it. Remember, DevOps is no magic soap; it needs time and culture shift. Since DevOps, at its core, is all about communication and collaboration, the team members should have freedom to discuss their responsibilities within the environment and be open to change. It is important to involve your workers and developers in this process as they may be resistant to change.

It is salient to have a clear objective in mind when you move to adopt a DevOps practice. You must know where precisely it is that you intend to improve upon and then choose the right tools to help you implement a DevOps strategy in that particular area. Don’t be afraid to run trials with a combination of tool offerings in a small-scale experimental lab to ensure it fits all sizes your company offers to customers. Keep in mind that this is precisely why software companies offer trial licenses, so make use of them. If you are serious towards making a shift, feel free to contact their sales team, discuss your problems, and let them explain how their solution offering can help you do wonders, you never know, but sometimes it just takes a phone call.

The most important thing when adopting DevOps is that you must experiment. Analyse the results you receive and build your series of change upon them. The transition is not an easy one to make, but when done the right way, it can prove to be just the improvement that your company needed.

Read the original article on LinkedIn.

Edited for web by Jordan Platt

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