When giving presentations or doing demos it always strikes me how all of us live in our silo as an analyst, developer, DBA, tester, operations team member.
We perfectly understand what our role is but it seems we don't know or understand what the other stakeholders need or do and what the impact of our deliverables is on them.
In our DevOps white paper (link at the end of this post), we will give an overview on what DevOps really means, not just for ODI but at enterprise level.
We describe a DevOps architecture, different possible environments at enterprise level and again the benefits (tangible and non-tangible) for the different stakeholders. Some extracts:
Automated build
The "Build" is not just “compiling the source code”, it is a process that covers all the steps required to create a "deliverable" of our software. In the Java world, this typically includes:
• Generating and/or compiling sources.
• Compiling test sources.
• Executing tests, e.g., unit tests, integration tests, …
• Packaging (into jar, war, ejb-jar, ear).
• Running health checks (using static analyzers like Checkstyle, Findbugs, PMD, test coverage, etc.).
• Generating reports.
Best Build practices in a DevOps environment require that all those steps are fully automated and run automatically and continuously. That is known as Continuous
Integration, what we apply.
Intangible benefits (more difficult to make tangible)
• Improved release consistency and quality
• Enhanced service to customers
• Timeline improvement of application releases
• Less human mistakes
• Ability to control the development process at any moment
• Maximization of stakeholder satisfaction
• Optimized collaboration between teams
• Creation of an Agile IT environment
Conclusion
The positive outcome of an ALM solution on an organization is rather impressive.
Not only the organization as such benefits, each stakeholder will experience his own
benefits.
A uniform, standards-based ALM / DevOps solution like IKAN ALM doesn’t only
enforce your processes, it also makes sure that the process is repeatable, reliable and
documented. It will free your key people of repetitive, less interesting tasks. The size of your team does not matter, both small and large teams can benefit. Of course, the larger the team, the greater the benefits.
Gartner mentions three principal values that can be expected from adopting ALM:
• Enhanced management transparency & visibility
• Effective execution of challenging processes
• Better results for the business.
ALM and DevOps are hot topics, there is already a lot of literature about these topics out there. In the appendix of our white paper you will find a list of industry expert quotes.
Read the entire story here: DevOps: bridging development and operations
About the author
Hello, my name is René De Vleeschauwer.
Throughout my career I've been responsible for the development of enterprise software. Since 12 years I've been leading the development of IKAN ALM, an open DevOps framework.
Do you have any questions about this post? Just ask me!