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Showing posts with the label ITSM for DevOps

Filling the Process and Framework Skills Gap

By Donna Knapp For many organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed one of two ends of a spectrum: poorly defined processes, or overly-rigorous processes. At either end of the spectrum, these organizations likely struggled to adapt as the pandemic impacted our lives. For those with poorly defined processes, things were probably pretty chaotic. For those with overly-rigorous processes, things were most certainly taking way too long. Even organizations with well-defined processes felt, and continue to feel, pressure to speed up the flow of work, minimize toil, and automate processes where possible. To do this, they must develop a culture of continuous improvement and learning. Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve all aspects of an organization; its people, processes, tools, products, services, and experiences… all of which are tightly integrated. Whether improvements are large or small, what matters most is that they are constant. The highest performing organizations a

Integrating ITSM and DevOps

As the pace of technological innovation increases and digital disruption becomes the norm, the need to adapt and accelerate IT service management (ITSM) processes is more critical than ever. It’s no longer a debate about whether ITSM and DevOps should interface; it’s time now for ITSM professionals to understand how the practices they use to co-create value can underpin (or undermine) the flow of work and pervasive use of automation in a DevOps environment. It’s easy to understand why ITSM professionals are skeptical about DevOps. ITSM performance metrics and service level agreements (SLAs) often revolve around the IT organization’s ability to mitigate risks, minimize impact, and “guarantee” availability. On the surface, these measures aren’t bad. It’s when we sacrifice speed, agility, and innovation in the process that the business starts to suffer. Even with the evolution to ITIL 4 , the what and why of ITSM haven’t changed. A customer-focused culture in which everyone understands

DevOps and ITSM… Are They Compatible?

Many are surprised to learn that ITSM practices ARE compatible with their DevOps pipelines and even more important that they are a critical element in order to ensure the effectiveness, efficiency and the value that is expected. Those that are struggling with silos us vs. them blame games, or roadblocks and impediments for change and test, are shocked to learn how accelerated, modernized ITSM practices can enable their outcomes!  Topics and discussion from a recent ITSM for DevOps class were exciting as practitioners, managers, and leaders discovered together how It is possible to streamline and even automate their ITSM processes and practices so that people don’t even realize that they are executing ITSM processes. We don’t need to change “what” needs to be accomplished. Policy, Governance, and Compliance are a reality. In order to achieve true value and business outcomes service providers must change the way that they think. A change in thinking provokes a change in h

DevOps and ITSM Required

Organizations adopting DevOps culture and practices are able to deliver high-quality products faster and therefore the business can deliver value to customers faster. You sometimes hear that DevOps and ITSM aren’t compatible . An IT professional attending the ITSM for DevOps course said “Everything would be OK if we could get change and compliance people out of the way!” Sound familiar? The reality is that high-performing organizations aren’t achieving success without ITSM processes. In today’s digital world organizations are performing ITSM processes Understanding Agile Service Management is key to ensure agility across the entire lifecycle. These high performers streamline, integrate and automate the process into the DevOps pipeline so that people don’t even realize that they are executing ITSM processes. We can not optimize DevOps without them and we can not accelerate our ITSM processes without DevOps. In an enterprise, DevOps doesn’t eliminate the need for controls and data. Re

ITSM for DevOps - Development “Divas”

What is your biggest challenge when trying to increase the flow of work through your DevOps or Continuous Delivery Pipeline?   In a recent conversation an IT Director laughingly said that his greatest challenge was that they can not get the development “Divas” to recognize that change approval and compliance requirements are necessary and that it takes time. I chuckled as I thought to myself what those development “Divas” were thinking.   Maybe their thoughts were that those paranoid risk adverse Change and Compliance process people do not understand that we need to get this work to the finish line and we need to go fast.  Sound familiar? This is not an uncommon issue.   The us-vs-them environment, if not corrected, will continue to disrupt IT service delivery and therefore, business performance. We must recognize that DevOps and Continuous Delivery (CD) do not stand alone.   It is not just the tools and automation and, although it is more about culture, it is not just cu