One of the most frequently stated key takeaways from DevOps Foundation Certification Candidates is the big AAH-HAA moment when they realize the difference between Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment. Terms matter and the context in which we use them can make or break the success of any DevOps pipeline for digital transformation . Which one of these you select for your organization will have a significant impact on the way you orchestrate ­­­­your DevOps Pipeline and your Continuous Delivery Architecture. It will most definitely help to define the appropriate tool pipeline, determine how you will utilize and program those tools for automation and will have an impact on the context of your communication plans to your stakeholders. How will you approach integrated testing? There is not one element of development and delivery that Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment will NOT impact. Therefore; It is critical to understand what they are, how they are the same, how they

A Continuous Delivery Architect (CDA) is a tool-agnostic individual engaged in the design, implementation and management of DevOps deployment pipelines and tool chains that support Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Testing and, potentially, Continuous Deployment. A continuous delivery architect is also involved in defining or integrating underpinning processes, metrics, APIs and cultural considerations. Getting CDA certified prepares any IT professional engaged in the Continuous Delivery value stream . Not only will they know what to expect but could save a lot of time, money and effort to expedite the systems required to deliver. While earning a CDA Certification is a great compliment to the DevOps Foundation Certification , you might also find that it can help boost your career or prepare you for very needed positions coming up. The information and perspectives that one gains from shared experiences and class discussions is invaluable. Sometimes it is just a

Continuous Delivery is a software development practice where software is always in a releasable state.   Teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time.  By relying on automated testing and deployment, as well as ensuring collaboration and communication between development and operational teams (DevOps), the goal of building, testing, and releasing software faster and more frequently can be achieved. This approach can help to reduce the cost, time and risk of delivering changes by allowing for more incremental updates to applications and configuration items (CIs) into production.  A straightforward and repeatable deployment process is important for continuous delivery and will be critical for operational processes such as Change Management and Release and Deployment Management to be agile and robust in the DevOps environments where continuous delivery will be part of best practices.   Continuous Delivery is sometimes co

Is your organization transforming with AGILE, ITSM, DevOps or LEAN and looking forward to optimizing a Continuous Delivery Pipeline?  Do you want to be a Continuous Delivery Architect? This is an amazing and exciting time where you can dream and build upon what you have and develop the “COMB” shaped skills that will shape your future! The “2019 Upskilling Report for Enterprise DevOps Skills” reinforces that organizations not only need “T” shaped skilled practitioners or even “PI” shaped skillsets. Many high-performing organizations are looking for individuals that have “COMB” shaped skillsets. An individual with “COMB” skills would have a broad base of knowledge forming the top of the comb and then also have multiple expertise areas which gives the shape of a comb. You can start developing your skillsets or those of your team to shape individual career opportunities and also to shape the future of your organization. Expanding your skills is particularly needed for those involv

The Age  of Architecture   Architecture is one of those universal roles that no matter the job, it's critical you have a good understanding of the architecture to be successful in both development and operations. As with any architectural role, there are so many moving parts that if you can’t see the machine for the cog you’ll never be able to master your craft. The problem seems that because of the siloed nature of the business, no one but those in architecture gets the lay of the land, it is in this challenge that continuous Delivery Architecture was created to help ALL practitioners understand not only the big picture but the why and how every component is vital to success. What’s In The Toolbox To help you get an idea of the sheer quantity of tools that will be at your disposal I’ll give you the highlights reel. It starts with what we call a collective body of knowledge. This is a collection of materials (books, blogs, websites, etc.) to help you on your journey to lear

Continuous Delivery Architects are engaged in the design, implementation, and management of DevOps deployment pipelines. This infers the inclusion of all tools and tech to support Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Testing, and even Continuous Deployment.  Subjective viewpoints and misunderstandings of what is involved and how to orchestrate a pipeline can lead an entire organization in the wrong direction. Every “Continuous Delivery Architect” should consider formal education and certification to ensure that they do not proceed in error. I see in practice that the emphasis is on the tooling and although that is a key element, even more critical is the process flow, the APIs, and the inclusion of practices to ensure things like security, compliance, and resilience are built into the orchestrated automated pipeline. Let us not forget the importance of CULTURE and the role that plays. There are three primary ingredients for continuous delivery: Au

The Practice Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a discipline that incorporates aspects of software engineering and applies that to operations with the goal of creating ultra-scalable and highly reliable software systems. It is an Explosion!  If you have taken any classes including ITIL4, DevOps, Agile, or Lean , you have probably heard how critical Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is to the Value Streams and Pipelines that deliver products and services to this world. New concepts like understanding “Error Budgets” and the creation of anti-fragile environments are explored. You only need to visit one of the job sites and do a search on “Site Reliability Engineering” to see that there is a huge uplift in demand for Site Reliability Engineers. Try it! T he Role As a Site Reliability Engineer, you'll build solutions to enhance availability, performance, and stability for the resilience of services. You will also work towards a Continuous Delivery Pipeline by automati

As a noun, the official definition of the word inclusion is defined as the state of being included or being made a part of something. When a book covers many different ideas and subjects, it is an example of the inclusion of many ideas. When multiple people are all invited to be part of a group, this is an example of the inclusion of many different people. There are many certification classes available for DevOps, Agile, and ITSM. All of them will speak of Inclusion. When considering inclusion in a DevOps Continuous Delivery Pipeline, service providers frequently miss the inclusion of some very necessary elements. In order to ensure real value, and cost-effective solutions fast, it is back to basics. Consider the inclusion of the following: Best Practices and Methodologies: These are the answers for how to. It is not just one best practice, methodology, or standard that will get you there. “There” is where you are trying to go. Consider methods such as DevOps, ITSM, Agile, Lean, an

Rugged DevOps is a method that includes security practices as early in the continuous delivery pipeline as possible to increase cybersecurity, speed and quality of releases beyond what current DevOps practices can yield alone. (1) “Rugged “describes software development organizations which have a culture of rapidly evolving their ability to create available, survivable, defensible, secure and resilient software. (2) As business increasingly relies on agile software development, the absence of matching fast-moving security methodologies in the delivery pipeline will essentially increase the risk of a security breach or a cyberattack. Security staff must be imbedded into cross functional teams to ensure a more sustainable and less risky continuous deployment value chain (continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous testing). The bad guys have already acquired these skills and the use of automation to engage in a continuous attack on our defenses. Security was named

(DevOps VALUES revisited) We used to talk about the rate of demand for change and how that was forcing service providers to change course.  Service Providers are the current Titanic.  Many believe that they are invincible.  The iceberg today is multifaceted. It is not only speed and quality but the challenge of dynamic business requirements, complexity of new services and rigid silo’s. These all add to the depth and potential threat of this new iceberg.  To avoid sinking, Service Providers must consider the DevOps values and stay C A L M and Share!  There are five DevOps values that will help us avoid the iceberg.  These values include: C - Culture A rigid, “We have always done it this way” culture will break your capability to steer the ship in the direction that you must go to avoid the iceberg.  A Cultural shift will steer your ship in the right direction.  Those shifts include Shift Left Culture – Getting representation for change, compliance, security and operations

Every organization that delivers products or services will need to shift their ideas for how they plan, build, test and deploy a service that is resilient and for one that truly delivers value for both customers and the internal business.  Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous deployment are all supported by Continuous testing.    Continuous anything will not be assured of success without Continuous Testing.   Continuous testing is the process of executing automated tests as part of the software delivery pipeline to obtain immediate feedback on the business risks associated with a software release candidate. Shifting left ensures that the test takes place early, up front in the pipeline of delivery, NOT after the development.  Testing after development is too late because then we do not have the time, money or resources available to re-engineer, re-design or to re-develop appropriately.   When we test after the development of an application the best we can do wit

With the onset of practices such as DevOps, Continuous Delivery, Rugged Code, and Value stream mapping, is ITIL / ITSM Best Practice still relevant? The short and emphatic answer is YES! Let’s look at how ITSM Best Practices are relevant and enable some of the initiatives that are in the foreground of Service Management for many contemporary IT organizations today. DevOps – DevOps is a cultural and professional movement that focuses on communication and collaboration to ensure a balance between responsiveness to dynamic business requirements and stability.   Therefore, things like Lean and Value Stream Mapping, practices like Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment, all become a subset or a building block to a successful DevOps initiative.  DevOps is frequently an organic approach toward automating workflow and getting products to market more efficiently. Ok, if we can accept that then the next question is … What are you going to automate?    ITSM Best Practice

Although Agile, DevOps and automation for Continuous Delivery (CD) techniques are on the rise, service providers are still at risk for not having the necessary velocity to meet demand.  In the same way that we recognize that we can NOT silo our IT teams, we must also recognize that as providers of services we must not silo our processes. ITSM processes, including Event Monitoring, Problem Management, Release and Deployment Management, Test and more, are not going away. The integration of ITSM process must be considered throughout the entire value stream and CD pipeline.  None more so than “Change Management”.  Certainly the need for Change Management is increasing not decreasing. What must go away are over engineered, bureaucratic and outdated process activities.  We must begin to radically rethink the way we incorporate change into the CD pipeline.  Our mission overall is to deliver a “Quality” product or service. Ok then, what is “Quality”?  Quality not only infers that the

Agile Software Development is very well known and practiced in most organizations today in order to respond quickly to the ever increase in demand for IT Services.  Many of these organizations, while making some improvement, are not seeing the outcomes they had expected.  Why is this?   We are applying Lean methods, cycle time is increasing and yet, unplanned work, delays in deployment and unstable production environments remain. Consider the time from idea to delivery as the “ Value Stream ”.  Through this Value Stream, we want to increase the “Flow of Work”.   We will never see the type of optimization that is required unless we look at this Value Stream as a whole.  Applying Agile, Lean, and even tools in development without integrating Change, Security and Operations will break down and decrease the Flow of Work. DevOps helps with this idea.  Many companies, both large and small, are attempting to integrate the development and operations teams.  We have cloud services an

Recently, I am hearing things like  “We are the World Leader for Value Stream Mapping”   from vendors and managed service providers alike.  Why? I thought. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) was originally introduced in 1996.  Why is this becoming such a hot item again now?   Other tag lines and mantras that you are likely to hear are things like:      Experience Management is an Evolution Speed to Value not Time to Market Without continuous flow, continuous integration               Continuous Delivery are just an aspire! From Milestones To a Continuous Quality Assurance Flow Shift Left, and    Green to Green Every IT executive, manager, or practitioner can surely add to this list. I thought about these and other new ways of thinking and realized we are moving beyond Digital Transformations and understood that true success for any delivery cycle will require Flow Engineering. Without continuous flow service providers are likely not going to be able to meet business and customer requirements

Taking action is one of the most necessary steps in effectuating life changes. However, as most of us know, sometimes it is very difficult to take that first step and commit to a desired achievement. When delivering DevOps/Agile/ITSM certification classes, I like to stress that as leaders we must inspire. And this is true because Inspiration leads to motivation and motivation triggers ACTION! Although this is true, a recent Forbes article opened my mind to another way of looking at this. In this article Svetlana Whitener states that: “You don’t need to wait to feel inspired before you implement a new behavior. You can immediately begin by gathering your willpower (a strong self-control determination that allows you to do something difficult) and stop procrastinating.” So whether you dig deep into your inner self and use will power or you are inspired by others, take action! Both motivation and will power are necessary. The bottom line is this: Digital Transformation is real and IT

Communication and Education before Collaboration  An engineer attending a recent DevOps FND class for certification said “OMGosh! I have been trying to do DevOps and I really did not understand what it really was!” He knew that a self-organizing team was defined as a group of motivated individuals who work together toward a goal, have the authority to take decisions and readily adapt to changing demands. Solutions are derived from inter team collaboration. Innovation is the name of the game for digital transformations. All true but … “authority” without ability is dangerous.  Let’s not forget that before these teams are able to recommend innovative ideas for improvement that we must communicate the strategy and outcomes that deliver value. Also true is the fact that we must educate teams to continuously enhance their skills.  Challenge: During your next virtual or face to face meeting with staff, ask a few questions to validate that all are on the same page. You could as

To say that digital technology has changed the world is an understatement. Digital transformations are revolutionizing entire industries and reshaping every aspect of business. To stay competitive, businesses must accelerate the delivery of digital products and services. To meet business demand, IT organizations must accelerate the delivery of secure, high-quality and reliable software features and functionality ( DevOps ). The thing about any transformation, whether it’s the digital transformation affecting the world, or the DevOps transformation affecting IT organizations and their business partners, is that it’s never only about the technology. A successful transformation requires shifts in peoples’ behaviors, mindsets, vocabulary, roles and reporting relationships. It requires changes to processes and to day-to-day operating procedures. Perhaps most importantly, the ability to undertake and achieve any transformation is determined by whether, or not, the company’s leaders

It is important to understand the difference between orchestration and automation for any DevOps continuous delivery pipeline initiative. We orchestrate processes and we automate the activities within the process. In a recent DevOps Test Engineer (DTE) certification class I learned how to deconstruct the DevOps pipeline. Understanding the constructs of the pipeline and what your test strategies are will prove helpful for both the orchestration and automation of your delivery pipeline. Benefits of that knowledge generate better alignment and cadence with the business demand and greater deployment velocity. Orchestration and automation take advantage of standardization throughout the DevOps pipeline for integrated tools, integrated code, integrated build and integrated test all the way through. The results? Not only can we deliver product faster but that product or service is now delivered into an anti-fragile, secure and stable environment.  Confirmation that the process is repeat

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