Skip to main content

DevOps - Measuring Success

Image
By
While you might not be able to get your head around how to measure DevOps when it is defined as a cultural and professional movement, there are some key factors to consider that will help us to measure the success of shifting to a collaborative and integrated team throughout the value stream that includes Dev and Ops.

It is clear that DevOps goes beyond the integration of the development and operation staff but includes breaking down those silos between all parties and stakeholders including the Business, external partners, and 3rd party suppliers and IT.  If you think it is difficult to get your own internal teams to play in the same sandbox consider the challenges when 3rd party vendors and suppliers are then thrown into the mix. Being able to demonstrate proof that DevOps practices benefit the organization requires examining factors that influence overall performance.  Practices that enable your organization to improve the flow of work between the Business and Operations enables improved IT performance.

Important Factors

IT Performance in measured in terms of throughput and stability.  
  • Throughput is measured by deployment frequency and lead time for change
  • Stability is measured by mean time to recover and the ability to preemptively detect and mitigate problems

Simply put, you cannot measure Development outcomes separately from Operational outcomes. 

Key Metrics

Showing proof that DevOps practices benefit the organization also requires baselining key metrics before and after making improvements and can include:
  • Deployment Frequency
  • Change Lead Time – Time from request to delivery
  • Cycle Time – Time from start of work to ready for delivery to customer
  • Change Failure Rate – Backed out, Rescheduled or unforeseen impact/incidents
  • MTTD – Mean time to detect incidents
  • MTTR - Mean Time to Recover or repair - Component
  • MTRS - Mean Time to Restore - Service

Change lead time is one of the most important metrics as it represents what the customer sees.  Cycle time is a more mechanical measure of process capability. Lead time depends on cycle time, but also depends on your willingness to keep a backlog, the customer’s patience, and the customer’s readiness for delivery.  MTTR is measured from when a component fails until it is repaired. MTTR does not include the time required to recover or restore service. e.g., data may need to be recovered before service is fully restored and delivering its normal functionality.

Sources:  https://www.itsmacademy.com/Page.bok?file=class_schedule.html#Agile


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Four Service Characteristics

By
Recently I came across several articles by researchers and experts that laid out definitions and characteristics of services. ITIL provides us with a definition that can help drive the creation of value-laden services: A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks. An area that ITIL is not so clear is in terms of service characteristics. Several researchers and experts put forth that services have four basic characteristics (IHIP): Intangibility—Services are the results of actions not things. They have no physical presence and represent a logical set of elements. One way to think of service is “work done for others.”  Heterogeneity—Also known as “variability”; services are unique items because of the mechanisms used to deliver services, which is people. Because the people element adds variability, the service is variable. This holds true, especially for the value proposition—not eve...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Is A Service Offering?

By
The ITIL 4 Best Practice Guidance defines a “Service Offering” as a description of one or more services designed to address the needs of a target customer or group.   As a service provider, we can’t stop there!   We must know what the contracts of our service offering are and be able to put them into context as required by the customer.     Let’s explore the three elements that comprise a Service Offering. A “Service Offering” may include:     Goods, Access to Resources, and Service Actions 1. Goods – When we think of “Goods” within a service offering these are the items where ownership is transferred to the consumer and the consumer takes responsibility for the future use of these goods.   Example of goods that are being provided in the offering – If this is a hotel service then toiletries or chocolates are yours to take with you.   You the consumer own these and they are yours to take with you.      ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The New Four Ps of Service Management

By
By Donna Knapp For years, people , process , and technology (PPT) was a widely recognized framework for balancing and integrating the components needed to achieve optimal performance and outcomes. In the ITIL v3 Service Design publication, this framework was expanded to the four Ps: people , processes , products , and partners . ITIL 4 has further expanded and evolved this framework to the four dimensions of service management. These four dimensions are collectively critical to the effective and efficient facilitation of value for customers and other stakeholders in the form of products and services. The four dimensions of service management are: Organizations and people Information and technology Partners and suppliers Value streams and processes. These four dimensions represent perspectives which are relevant to the whole service value system (SVS), including the entirety of the service value chain and all ITIL practices. Each ITIL practice is a set of organizational resources base...
Post a Comment
Read more