Software development methodologies like DevOps and Continuous Delivery continue their rise to household name status. This is due in part to the increased mainstream media attention they get, but also from the diverse range of enterprise organizations like Target, who are announcing large investments in it, to GE who has shared one of their division’s success story with the world.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Daoist Chinese philosophy is probably not the first thing you would associate with improving software delivery at your organization. But in reality, it rings true as enterprise IT managers begin the daunting task of transforming the software delivery process. So why set out on this path?
One reason why IT organizations are moving to Continuous Delivery is to gain the ability to provide timely user feedback to the developers so software can better meet their demands. Gary Gruver, author of the enterprise IT best seller, A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware and the former Director of LaserJet Firmware at Hewlett Packard lead a DevOps transformation in 2008, back when this portmanteau was barely on anyone’s radar. Up until that point, the group—comprised of about 800 developers globally—was averaging two releases a year. The vast majority of the group’s resources was swallowed up by the porting of existing code to new firmware and the process of check- it was taking up to eight weeks for a developer to learn whether their code change worked or not! The lag time introduced in the process of fixing those bugs was obviously a big detriment to their productivity and it prevented the developers learning what mistakes they might be making.
Continuous Delivery is about continuous improvement—it’s taking one step at a time on this journey that ultimately gets you where you need to be. In an interview with Alan Shimel, editor of DevOps.com, earlier this year, he said “each organization is different. You really need to start where the most pain is. And one of the things that DevOps causes you to do is do things more frequently. And what you’ll find is your organization has been brute forcing its way through the same issues for years. And as you start to increase the frequency, you’ll have to start fixing that.”
Each organization is obviously different. For executives who have a better sense of the big picture and understand less of the day-to-day details, it’s important to have a clear picture of the existing development processes before beginning.
But, how do you translate these process details into something that improves at the scale necessary for the enterprise? Are there metrics that are important to focus on along the way? What type of team structure do you need in place? What’s the best process? Kicking off a DevOps transformation takes some effort but companies who embark upon this are seeing notable results. Fortunately, Gary and Tommy Mouser, Director of Test Automation at Macys.com can help make your journey easier. They have distilled their real-world knowledge of doing this in their new book, Leading the Transformation: Applying Agile and DevOps Principles at Scale.
On November 17th, my colleague Andrew Phillips, Vice President of Product and active developer/DevOps evangelist in his own right, along with Gary and Tommy will be sharing their experience and practical advice for kicking off your own DevOps/Continuous Delivery journey. It’s an interactive panel webinar so questions are strongly encouraged! As an added bonus, just for attending you will receive the first 2 chapters from Gary and Tommy’s new book. And for those with really interesting questions, we’ll send you the whole book! I look forward to you joining us for a lively discussion on the 17th!
About the Author/Heather Moses, Vice President of Marketing
Heather heads marketing for XebiaLabs. In this role, Heather drives global marketing strategy and operations for the Company. As part of the senior leadership team, Heather is responsible for market direction, brand evolution and market outreach best practices.
