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10 Types of People Who Need to Understand DevOps

If your organization hasn’t adopted DevOps approaches yet, it probably will soon. In the InteropITX 2018 State of DevOps Report , only 9 percent of the business technology decision-makers surveyed said that their organizations had no DevOps plans. A third said their organizations had already adopted DevOps principles and another 46 percent had plans to do so within the next two years. As DevOps spreads, many IT leaders have questions about which types of employees should get basic training on the fundamentals of the approach. We recommend that at least the following ten types of people get a foundational education about DevOps: 1. Developers In many organizations, DevOps begins with the application development team adopting Agile methodologies. DevOps begins to spread as those in the operations team start to follow some of the same principles. 2. IT operations professionals DevOps is all about closer integration between development and operations, so it stands to r

Skilling The Squad

Originally Published on the DevOps Institute Site One of the most interesting trends in DevOps adoption is the evolution of the IT silo into the cross-skilled squad. This is not just a semantical name change. Most IT teams today are comprised of like-skilled individuals such as a Scrum team of developers. The modern squad takes a slightly different approach, is more static than dynamic and is more product-focused than project based. Squads are built around T-shaped professionals –where each member has a specialty competency, but all members have a broad scope of skills across multiple disciplines. A high performing squad essentially has all of the skills needed for the product or feature to which it is assigned and is not generally constrained by the availability of an individual resource. There is enough breadth of knowledge inside and outside the squad to shift more activities to the left so as to allow them to move more quickly and with more agility. While the squad model ori

Orchestration vs. Automation

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

DevOps Testing vs Traditional Testing

Appropriate testing is THE differentiator for high performing IT organizations. What is the Same? Tests need to be classified according to the attributes of the system or the product that is to be tested.  Test types include: Unit Test - This is a method that validates that the code statements satisfy assertions. Static Code Analysis – Testing that checks source code logic and consistency.  Static testing evaluates code against development standards and guidelines. Code execution is not required. Dynamic Analysis – This type of testing might also be referred to as “Functional Testing”. In this type of test, code is executed against positive and negative functional scenarios. Code Coverage – Measures the percentage of relevant lines of code tested. Integration Test – This form of testing will help to determine if code changes work after a code merge.   Integration testing may also be referred to as smoke test, sanity test or build test. Compatibility T

DevOps Test Monitoring Strategy

The combination of continuous monitoring with continuous testing and analytic tools can provide a broader strategic view of test results.  This view is necessary to collect, aggregate and organize test data that enables a gain in confidence for each release.  Key Concepts for Realizing Your Test Monitoring Strategy: Determine continuous test monitoring priorities: Some examples of problems that continuous test monitoring can help with include intermittent failures caused by marginal designs, marginal test designs, environmental condition changes not detected by individual tests, memory leaks, varying starting conditions, interactions with other systems, system topologies and performance degradation within the margin of a test. These can and will accumulate over time. The best practice for continuous monitoring indicates that the problems of most concern to a specific product or DevOps environment will be monitored. Regression test product areas even though there were no expe

Measuring Goals for DevOps Test Succcess

Each organization will have to define what their quality goals are for integrated testing based on the business and customer requirements for speed and outcomes.  The fact is that these goals must be quantified or in other words measurable. If you are not measuring your testing activities in alignment with the strategic goals then success becomes subjective and it will be very difficult to show value for your effort. Some examples of measurements might be in the form of Run-To-Plan and Pass-To-Plan. Run-To-Plan (RTP) is the number of the total planned tests that have completed and typical goals are to have 95% RTP Pass-TopPlan is the number of tests that have passed and a typical goal for this metric is to have a 90% PTP The criteria for determining when testing is complete is agreed by all stakeholders.   It will be impossible to have all stakeholders on the sprint team, but certainly input and validation from key stakeholders will have to be included before acceptanc

DevOps Testing – Do it Right

One of the key principles of DevOps stresses that we need to fail and fail fast.   A key part that frequently gets omitted.  That key element of the principle is that we fail fast so that we can LEARN. When we learn it is always best to act and to share.   In the spirit of learning and sharing here are some consequences of not performing DevOps testing properly that might help to mitigate some of your challenges. Consequences of NOT doing DevOps testing properly – challenges and thoughts Culture Conflict Culture Conflict can exist between business leaders, developers, QA testers, infrastructure/tools staff, operations staff or any stakeholder in the entire value stream. When there are unclear roles and responsibilities for the testing of a new or changed service or product, a friction begins.  This friction propagates conflict.  Be aware.  Make management of organizational change a priority. Test Escapes (False Positive)           False Positive Test Escapes occur when

What is a Botnet - Why do I care?

Today every business is an internet business.  The performance of any business is directly related to the capability and performance of IT.  Therefore, we must all take cyber security seriously.   Let’s start with a botnet by breaking down the word itself.  The first syllable, “bot” is short for robot. The second syllable “net” is from the word network.  A botnet is formed when a hacker writes a computer program that will breach security on a single computer.  It does not stop there.  This computer program called a virus has the capability to take over that computer that it just hacked into. It does not stop there either because this is not good enough for the cybercriminal.  With a botnet, the virus will move from one computer to another, take control of each and then connect all of the disparate computers into a powerful system or network of control.  This is known as a botnet. Cyber criminals are control freaks.  They will sometimes create a virus that controls thousands or