Why is Agile incomplete without DevOps?

Copyright © 2017, Vlink, Inc., All rights reserved. 1

Point of View September, 2017

by Monika AcharyaDirector, Business Services

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White Paper

Automation – Agile – DevOps! Three popular buzz words in today’s IT industry. As these concepts mature, so do their practicality. Through each implementation and customization, innovation occurs. This allows more flexibilty for future uses in various contexts and situations. Since Automation and Agile have been around much longer than DevOps, both concepts have been elevated to a level that they can be implemented and utilized as one chooses. A good analogy would be learning the alphabet, then using that knowledge to create sentences. Through use, your sentences would improve and so your efficiency. As organizations understand the importance of automation, many have already implemented it or are currently working on an implementation plan. Agile is still facing resistance because it is such a huge change in mindset and culture. It is an investment that everyone needs to understand before they can practice. Some are reluctant to change unless it is proven with absolute certainty. Just as Agile is reaching this point, we now have DevOps.For example, to improve service at a local restaurant; ‘Joe’s Diner’ (for illustration purposes) has all manual processes with their limited wait staff. With just 2 cooks, everything is cooked fresh with a cooking time per order of 15 minutes. When the diner was busy, the guests were unhappy with the wait time for their meals. The management realized the problem and decided to address it by adding some machines that would chop, clean and knead the dough, etc. This effort reduced the cooking time from 15 to 12 minutes, but it still wasn’t good enough. After a few days, the management decided to go Agile and started cooking in iterations. Better automation and small cycles helped reduce the cooking time and have the food (product) ready much faster. Because they didn’t add new members to the wait staff (delivery team, using DevOps) and the wait staff wasn’t trained to work in Agile, the product still wasn’t delivered to the customer on time. Hence, only developing but not delivering in iterations (DevOps) did not really make the customers happy.

Why is Agile incomplete without DevOps?

The bottom line is that not just the queue for work needs to be shortened; the time to market, time to release (or deliver) the product also needs to be equally short. The actual achievement would be only when the product reaches the ‘release anytime’ or ‘release as developed’ stage.

Copyright © 2017, Vlink, Inc., All rights reserved.

Cloud & Business Intelligence : A Winning Combination?

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Why is Agile incomplete without DevOps?

DevOps as per Scaled Agile is defined; ‘where all entities of SDLC come together, plan, develop, test, deploy, release and support the product, via continuous cooperation, communication, integration, and automation.' This enables small cycles of work to be completed end to end, including its frequent release. It is a demanding cultural change, making organizations high-performing, elevating their efficiency as they evolve and grow.Today, Agile & DevOps are forcing people to think and work ‘old school style.' I remember the words my teacher used to say, ‘A stitch in time, saves nine.' Further, my management school taught me ‘Just in time’ and ‘Doing it with the highest possible quality, doing it right the first time,' the law of Lean and finally ‘Time lost is an opportunity lost.’ If we were to ponder on all these statements and the principals of Agile and DevOps, it doesn’t seem like it’s rocket science at all. It is what we all have always learned and always wanted to achieve. Until now, we never had the framework to do so. It is now proven and being accepted quickly by every organization. Back to my example, if the management of ‘Joe’s’ relaunched the diner did everything the right way, their customers would be happy. To conclude, you may not always want to be the first to move on a trend, but you certainly don’t want to be the last.

Copyright © 2017, Vlink, Inc., All rights reserved.

MONIKA ACHARYADirector Business Services | Lean Agile & Scrum Trainer

Monika is a certified trainer for Scrum Study and SPC4 with Scaled Agile. She is licensed to train and certify participants in scrum role based courses like Scrum Developer, Scrum Master, Product Owner, Agile Coach or event organization based workshops like SAFe for teams, leaders, or executives.

She has over 13 years of industry experience, bringing real life examples, case studies, simulations, and fun activities to her workshops. She has a 100% success rate with all her 100+ students by far and is dedicated to adding value to every students' existing role. Monika is leading the BA practice at VLink, Inc. in addition to her dedication towards Agile. She believes in leading by example and is always thinking out of the box to bring new ideas and implementations for organizations.

About the author

Cloud & Business Intelligence : A Winning Combination?

• Digital Transformation• Application Development and Maintenance• Information Management• Strategic Workforce Management

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Copyright © 2017, Vlink, Inc., All rights reserved.