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DevOps Patterns

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In his recent blog ‘Devops Areas - Codifying devops practices’ Patrick Debois explains that DevOps activities typically fall into four patterns or areas.  

DevOps activities typically fall into four patterns or areas. In each of these areas best practice dictates that there will be a bi-directional interaction between Dev and Ops, which will result in a fluid knowledge exchange and feedback from each of the major stakeholders, including Development, Test, Product Management and IT Operations.  

In the 1st area we extend delivery to production. This is where Dev and Ops will collaborate to improve anything on delivering a project to production by creating or extending the continuous integration, deployment and release processes from Dev into Ops. Activities here include making sure environments are available to Dev as early as possible. That Dev & Ops build the code and environments at the same time. Create a common Dev and production environment process while ensuring to integrate Q&A and information security into the work stream. This ensures consistent Dev, test and production environments are built before deployment begins. 

In area 2, all of the information from IT operations (remember we are delivering in small increments) is channeled into the feedback loop to Dev and the rest of the organization, which is then synthesized into knowledge which we utilize to make good wise decisions about how to move forward with our services, applications, systems, processes and workflows. This allows us to create quality at the source and reduce waste. The result should be decreased cycle time and a faster release cadence.  

Area 3 is where Dev takes co-ownership of everything that happens in production. No more throwing it over the wall, since that wall has been taken down. In this way Dev will be initially responsible for their own services. Issues and underlying problems get returned back to Dev by having them integrated into our incident and problem management processes. (Wish I could have done that when I was in Ops). This can lead to Dev cross training Ops and creating a single repository of knowledge for both groups. (SKMS).  

Area 4 is the reciprocal of area 3. Ops is engaged at the beginning of the project lifecycle, so defects and issues get reported faster and escalated correctly to the appropriate teams which results in greater communication and cooperation of efforts. Everyone is getting more work done and the result should be decreased cycle time and a faster release cadence.

For more information:  http://www.itsmacademy.com/agile/
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