DevOps Leadership - Steps For the Introduction and Implementation of DevOps E-Book

Martin J. Adams

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 78

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

DevOps is on everyone's lips. It is often presented in a very technical way, whether in terms of the methods and frameworks to be used or in terms of techniques and development frameworks. Martin J. Adams is a proven expert on agile approaches, especially on the topics of "leadership" and "organizational development". In this volume, he presents the most important methods in the context of DevOps and the resulting measures and methods for leaders who want to support their teams in being successful with DevOps and thus make a valuable contribution to the success of the company.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Introduction

What does DevOps mean?

The history of DevOps

The benefits of DevOps

DevOps culture

Basic DevOps procedures

Continuous

Continuous Integration is the first step

Continuous Delivery und Continuous Deployment

What is DevOps leadership?

Transformational leadership

5-step leadership model

Change according to Lewin and the continuous improvement

Unfreeze

Change (Change)

Freezing (Refreezing)

Steps for the introduction and optimization of DevOps

Unfreezing - the need for change

Change - plan and approach the transformation

Stakeholder management

Stakeholder identification

Categorization of stakeholders

Analyze stakeholder needs and set goals

Perform and monitor - take corrective action if necessary.

Change - framework conditions, concepts and measures

Corporate culture - the foundation

Cross-functional self-organized teams

An agile team and its environment

Teams and their powers

DevOps and the customers

DevOps and the processes

DevOps and Scrum

DevOps and quality assurance

Freeze - validate results and establish continuous improvement

Continuous improvement and Kaizen

Afterword

Literature list

Introduction

"DevOps means agile IT (operations) delivery, which is what is required to match the rhythm of agile IT development. DevOps is a philosophy, not a method, a model, a body of knowledge, or *shudder* a purchasable tool. DevOps is the philosophy of unifying development and operations at the culture, practice, and tool levels to achieve faster and more frequent implementation of changes in production.

Culture=behavior, collaboration, accountability/liability, trust/empowerment....

Practice=principle, roles/RACI, processes/procedures, metrics/reporting, KPIs/improvement....

Tooling=Shared knowledge, mutual tooling, common technology platforms

1

... "

When we talk about DevOps, it's not that simple. Depending on who you talk to, DevOps means something completely different. It seems to be somehow related to the other meanings and interpretations, but it is nevertheless so far removed from other views in everyday life that exponents of different approaches and approaches have a hard time finding a common basis for conversation.

In this book, we will look at the topic of DevOps from a leadership perspective. This means that we will look in particular at the aspects relating to culture and model and, of course, gain an overview of the various methods used. In addition, we will deal with heavyweight topics such as leadership in the DevOps context as well as the important question of the introduction and development of DevOps from a leadership perspective in this context, and from this we will work out requirements for the role and task of leadership in the agile context, particularly in the context of DevOps.

1 Rob England: Define DevOps. What is DevOps? In: The IT Skeptic. November 29, 2014, accessed February 17, 2016 (English).

What does DevOps mean?

DevOps focuses on a collaboration between development and operations that emphasizes a change in mindset, better collaboration and tighter integration. It does this by combining a wide variety of concepts and techniques to be more efficient, innovate faster, and deliver more value to businesses and customers.

The history of DevOps

The beginning of the DevOps movement can be traced back to the first decade of the 21st century. It emerged as a reaction to the identified conflicting goals of two areas in corporate IT.

On the one hand, there was the development area, whose task is to develop new solutions to problems as quickly as possible and put them into operation. On the other hand, there was IT operations, whose task was to ensure the stability, security and continuity of the existing solution in order to guarantee the availability of the programs and functions. In this way, two areas were effectively tied to each other, which had to fulfill different objectives.

With the emergence of the DevOps movement, approaches were sought as to how this conflict of goals could be overcome and thus the maximum customer benefit from both areas could be realized, so to speak. In this context, a wide variety of techniques were evaluated and in some cases newly developed. In addition, measures were also taken to support communication and collaboration between development (Dev) and operations (Ops) and to break down the silo mentality of the two areas.

The benefits of DevOps

Building a culture of shared responsibility, transparency, and faster feedback is the foundation of any high-performing DevOps team. Key success factors for realizing maximum benefits with DevOps are establishing a culture of collaboration and joint problem solving.

Teams that work in silos often don't adhere to the systems that DevOps advocates.

What is required is a systems thinking approach that is aware that actions not only affect one's own team, but also all other teams involved in the release process. For this, transparency and collaboration to achieve jointly pursued goals are essential.

The goal of DevOps is to change the mindset, thereby shaping a mindset that allows the development process to be viewed holistically and breaks down the barrier between development and operations.

In addition to the goal of building greater stability, the focus is also always on the goal of faster delivery of business value. To achieve this, a high level of automation is required. The lack of automated test and review cycles slows release to production, while poor incident response time impacts speed and confidence in teams. With tools that drive automation and new processes, teams can increase productivity and release more frequently with fewer issues.

In addition to the speed at which new solutions and solution parts are made available, systematic incorporation of feedback and rapid response to it is also crucial. Full transparency and seamless communication enable DevOps teams to minimize downtime and resolve issues faster.

If critical issues cannot be resolved quickly, customer satisfaction and trust will decline. In the absence of open communication, important issues may be lost, leading to increased tension and frustration among teams. Open communication both between the teams involved and their members, as well as with stakeholders, helps development and operations teams resolve issues, resolve incidents, and release pipeline faster.

Unplanned work is a reality that every team faces and has a significant impact on team productivity. The existence of suitable processes and a clear prioritization of work can help to handle corresponding incidents more efficiently and to have more time available again for the core tasks of the teams. In this context, it is necessary that handover and prioritization are also made transparent across teams so that the departments involved can anticipate situations and thus act more quickly and in a more targeted manner.

Teams that use DevOps practices consistently deliver better quality to their customers. The increased use of automation and cross-functional collaboration reduces errors, which in turn has a positive impact on recovery times and delivery times.

DevOps culture

DevOps is an agile approach to organizational change that aims to bridge traditional, isolated divides (silo thinking) between teams and establish new processes that enable better collaboration. DevOps leverages various tools and agile engineering practices; however, these are not enough to reap the benefits of DevOps. Without the right mindset and culture, the full benefits of DevOps cannot be realized.

The DevOps culture promotes closer collaboration and shared responsibility between development and operations for the products that are created and maintained. Optimization of the entire value chain and thus the benefit for the customer is at the heart of the effort.

DevOps strives to create multidisciplinary teams that are responsible for the entire lifecycle of a product. These work autonomously and rely on frameworks that equate the importance of operational requirements to that of architecture, design and development.

Prerequisites for a vibrant DevOps culture are increased transparency, communication and collaboration between teams that traditionally work in silos. In the process, important cultural changes must take place to bring these teams closer together. DevOps is an organizational culture shift that emphasizes continuous learning and continuous improvement. This is enabled by team autonomy, rapid feedback, high empathy, and cross-team collaboration.

In order for DevOps to work, a culture of collaboration and shared accountability for commonly held and aspired goals is necessary. This requires a mutual understanding of the work performance, the contribution to the value chain realized by other team members and especially by the other teams involved in the value chain, and their importance for the overall success and the realization of benefits for the customer.

Autonomous teams are another important aspect of DevOps. For development and operations teams to collaborate effectively, they must make decisions and implement changes without a cumbersome and lengthy approval process. This requires handing over trust to teams and creating an environment where there is no fear of making mistakes. This requires clear agreements and understandings about decision-making authority and competencies.

A DevOps team culture values rapid feedback. This contributes to the continuous improvement of a unified development and operations team. For this, it is necessary that there is an awareness that all those involved are moving along a development path (this does not mean a software development path) that demands continuous improvement for each individual as well as for the respective teams as a whole. The prerequisite for this is not to reject errors as blemishes, but to perceive them as opportunities for change and improvement. This is strongly linked to a positive error culture.