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 culture either. There are many good practices that can be leveraged from Agile, Lean, DevOps and yes, even ITSM. What worked five years ago does not work for today’s enterprise.

High performing IT providers must be able to integrate the ITSM processes including event management, problem and incident management and configuration management. It does not stop there. Some of the biggest show stoppers come from the lack of understanding that “Change”, Compliance, Security and other requirements are not going away. The old way of having a Change Advisory Board that meets once a week is gone. We strive for NO WAIT GATES in a CD pipeline. If the old way does not work, then what does? What is the new “modern” way to expedite and accelerate change while ensuring security and compliance? What does work?

DevOps doesn’t eliminate the need for controls and data. Regulatory controls and audits still exist, and risks and impacts must still be managed. “ITSM for DevOps” introduces ways to achieve both speed and control while driving value across the IT value stream.

To ensure time to value, a service provider today must radically rethink and understand how these process activities and requirements are performed. More important is how can they be performed and help to expedite the flow of work?

For more resources and information consider ITSM Academy's Course: ITSM for DevOps

ITSM Academy Resource Center - webinars, templates, etc.

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