Senior IT managers are putting their best foot forward by harnessing DevOps to bring in agility in the business processes and enhance growth

Transcription

1 COVER STORY DEVOPS XXPENSATION FOR IT SURVEY MANAGERS Senior IT managers are putting their best foot forward by harnessing DevOps to bring in agility in the business processes and enhance growth BY M A ST U FA A H M E D DESIGN BY HARIDAS BALAN ILLUSTRATION BY SHIGIL NARAYANAN Organisations always want to be agile and more efficient. However, traditionally the functional silos of operations and development have poor intertwining relations. The initiative called DevOps that brings together the two teams on a collaborative platform makes sense in many ways for businesses to grow. While this reinforces the integration between two teams, the approach also steers clear of dysfunctions that arise out of the silo culture. Most large organisations are already leveraging it to ensure continuous delivery with enhanced collaboration. As against the orthodox development methodology where the focus used to be on stability, DevOps aims at bringing applications faster without compromising on performance. The key benefit with DevOps is high quality applications at reduced costs associated with fixing bugs and applying patches later. It is more of a collaborative approach where the IT operations and application life cycle development and management are tightly coupled resulting in improved communication among peers, establishing a more cohesive learning environment within the organisation. 60 per cent of data center application failures are the result of faulty deployment and 1 2 ITNEXT O C T O B E R

2 COVER STORY DEVOPS FOR IT MANAGERS uncoordinated changes, says a report. DevOps standardises coordination between the teams, thus bringing in agility to organisations with reduced gaps between. The initiative also standardises the coordination of development and operations, which results in accelerated delivery of products. The cultural shift The ultimate objective of DevOps is to bring in agility, reducing the product cycle-time from idea inception and delivering the value to your users. So, by deploying DevOps, enterprises can automate continuous delivery, and facilitate real-time collaboration between development and IT. This also helps enterprises establish standard and protocols to reduce product lifecycles. DevOps is not really about processes but about cultural shifts, says MS Kiran, Director DevOps Technology, [24]7. When asked why IT managers should take cognizance of DevOps, he says, IT mangers can no longer stick to just provisioning of infrastructure and maintaining the same. He adds, Currently, most development happens in agile methodology; IT should get involved from day one on technologies to be used for provisioning the infrastructure and deployments. IT should be around to troubleshoot and offer a faster feedback mechanism which will contribute to real agile development, Kiran adds. Agile development In today s rapidly changing world, one of the key aspects of software is building generic products, and pivoting these to numerous customers till the right segment is found. The same is true for enterprises where one given solution does not fit the requirements of all customer segments until it is tweaked to do so. Therefore, development teams are required to be geared up with multiple skills including knowledge of multiple programming platforms, test first and develop later attitude, and a deep understanding of design, says Jayanth Bagare, Product Owner, Custom Development & Strategic Engagements, SAP Labs India. They should be accustomed to continuous integration with the markets either through the sales team or with the customer directly, and deliver in extremely fast turnaround time. From an operations perspective, getting simpler legal definitions, pricing, customer release and support is critical, as today s customers are flooded with choice. Plus, if the conversation is not simplified, the risk of losing customers is pertinent. Cross functional visibility The lack of right resources in a crunch situation is a problem faced by many project and product managers. At the same time, there are developers who have some amount IT managers can no longer stick to just provisioning of infrastructure. Most development today happens in agile methodology MS Kiran Director DevOps Technology, [24]7 of free bandwidth at various points of time, says Vidyasagar Reddy, a Senior Developer with SAP Labs India. DevOps helps keeps employee engagement and motivation high, as it allows for cross team visibility and new learning, says the developer who is a part of the DevOps project. Development and operations teams can benefit from insights into each other s processes, and measure progress. Getting to know work priorities on the other side help steer clear of confusion, thus leading to efficiency. The role of IT Having a strategy in place for implementing DevOps is important. Instead of thinking how IT can change the world, you should think of how business situations enforce changes in IT systems. So, the IT team has lead to make sure everything is in place to embark on DevOps. It has to ensure eliminating the gaps between skills and workforce availability. IT teams should convince themselves and the higher management to invest in tools and technologies enabling transformation from traditional IT technologies to DevOps. They have to promote the shift in culture from departmental silos to cross-functional and collaborating teams, and empower teams to promote adoption of DevOps to their projects. 1 4 ITNEXT O C T O B E R

3 DevOps: Way To Do There ain t clear rules and best practices around DevOps, but organisations are trying it out and deriving benefits already There are organisations that are leveraging this new trend to expedite software delivery by reducing dysfunctions arising out of development and operations silos. However, since the rules of the game are not well crafted as yet, organisations are practising it in different styles and forms. We spoke to IT managers and developers to know how they are exploiting it to their business benefit. Here is an account of a few stories on DevOps by organizations. Taking the DevOps journey We recently embarked on the DevOps journey and it s working and helping us to shrink the cycle time, says MS Kiran, Director--Technology DevOps. Currently, the DevOps team consists of folks who have development and operations backgrounds. The team has a bunch of good programmers too and the team engages closely with the development team in understanding the requirement and implementing it at various environments, Kiran adds. Today, most of the process flows are automated using continuous integration and continuous deployment processes, as Kiran says. DevOps initiative very well cements gaps development and operations while avoiding the dysfunctions arising out of silos Jayanth Bagare Product Owner- Strategic Engagements, SAP Integration and automation SAP Labs India has a DevOps platform that allows for developers and operations to collaborate on various projects. The crowd sourcing platform allows for individuals working across all SAP Labs locations to contribute to the evelopment of diverse projects. The platform offers a standardised process to integrate employees of different skill sets into a single team for a particular project. This project works in line with the needs that DevOps aims to cater to. It is aimed at harnessing the creative energy, enthusiasm, and technical skills of employees toward innovative work across all locations. It connects project sponsors, who want people to contribute to their projects; and project contributors, who are looking for interesting projects to work on, says Jayanth Bagare, Product Owner- Strategic Engagements, SAP. The developer says that the lack of right resources in a crunch situation is a problem faced by many project and product managers. Developers also look to upgrade their skills or work on a new project. The DevOps initiative very well cements those gaps and dysfunctions between development and operations. For many organisations, this is just the beginning. However, development and operations teams agree that an initiative like DevOps is sure to yield business benefits and increased customer engagement. O C T O B E R ITNEXT 1 5

4 Collaborate to deliver value in real time The process of getting the unified whole collaborate to help an organisation calls for a fundamental change in approach of delivering software to users The need to embrace devops is driven by the competitive market place which causes business leaders to require faster cycle time for getting new solutions. This requires a complete rethinking of how organisations deliver software. For instance, collaboration and close integration between teams is of paramount importance to be able o deliver value to customers on time. Before you get started with Devops, it is important to have a clear view of DevOps and why it is important for various stakeholders. Understand that businesses reward development for new features while they penalise operations for any downtime. However, what you need to deliver are minor iterations frequently instead of large deployments infrequently. To begin with, you have to be strategic in understanding the business requirements and plan the service delivery accordingly. DevOps is about working collaboratively a n d e f f i c i e nt l y --whether you are a start-up or a large enterprise, and DevOps reaps real benefits if implemented correctly. The key is getting started with a project or a definite area and later DevOps is not about technology, but a cultural phenomenon. Hence, it is important to communicate effectively with the IT and delivery teams Arindam Ray Chaudhuri COO, AgreeYa Solutions. creating a team of specialists who can spread the DevOps gospel within the organisation. DevOps is more of a culture phenomenon than technology, and therefore, it is very important to communicate effectively with the IT and delivery teams explaining the real goal-- which is to accelerate the time-to-market and deliver high quality products, says Arindam Ray Chaudhuri, COO, AgreeYa Solutions. 1 6 ITNEXT O C T O B E R

5 DEVOPS FOR IT MANAGERS COVER STORY Modern IT managers should reach out to the execution team, identify the gaps in skills in the existing set-up and address them by hiring or training resources on technologies, and programming languages relevant to DevOps, adds Arindam. Since DevOps involves working simultaneously on multiple heterogeneous platforms and cloud based applications, there is a need to build a competency within the organisation. DevOps requires a lot of automation, and hence, you need to select the right tools to be used for automated testing, build-release integration, configuration, deployment, network and server performance monitoring, among others, argues Arindam. To expedite software development with business operations, the first step is to agree that teamwork is required. Because shortening development cycle is the key to stay on top-- which is not plausible without tight coordination between the release team, developers, testers, and the operation team The cultural shift The company culture will also see a transformation to one of sharing and openness as they embrace this trend. For adopting DevOps, it requires a cultural shift within Development, QE, Getting people skilled in DevOps and Continuous Delivery practices will increase the stickiness of the employees and motivate them Balasubramaniam Vedagiri Vice president & head Enterprise Application Delivery Unit, Mphasis limited Operations and management teams. Once the team is open to change, you should train the Operation team with the ability to understand and code in the language developers are working on. You need to train teams in various automation technologies, tools chain, etc. During the process, there will be some folks who would like to stick on just for operation; you need to move them to different organisation best suited for them. Also, the Development team should support the DevOps team in integrating and deploying the product at various environments. Overcoming hurdles Embracing DevOps requires you to overcome certain hurdles. The first is about getting the team educated about DevOps/ Continuous Delivery and its benefits. Convincing the project stakeholders to invest time and effort in DevOps so as to reap long term benefits is certainly challenging. With support from the senior management and workshops that were held at various levels, we were able to get the ball rolling in multiple accounts, says MS Kiran, Director DevOps, [24]7. The other challenge is about picking the right projects for pilot, as you need a few quick wins to invoke and also keep the interest alive. The choice and availability of tools to get the desired outcomes, especially in legacy platforms is another big challenge. It requires evaluation of multiple tools and vendors before you can close in on the right ones. Also, there is an investment that is required to be done by the customers when it comes to spending effort for automation, cost for tools, etc. Typically, the project work does not include efforts for continuous improvement, automation, etc. However, unless time and effort is invested in automation and tools, the DevOps objectives cannot be achieved, says Balasubramaniam V, VP--Application Delivery, HP Enterprise, Mphasis. So, as on organisation, you have to show your readiness, skills and the potential ROI in-order to convince your customers to invest money for a longer term benefit, he adds. Balasubramaniam says they have focused task forces, manned by motivated individuals, who run the DevOps movement across their organisation. Arun Goyal, Head OSS/BSS Operations division at SSTL (MTS), leads both development and operation teams. Our operation team is always in sync with development, says Arun. This helps them do away with major conflicts that may arise from delivery and operations. Open information flow, cross-functional collaboration, shared responsibilities, learning from failures and new ideas are at the heart of DevOps which they leverage. Bug identification becomes easy for Ops and Testing Team due to better design knowledge, says Arun. O C T O B E R ITNEXT 1 7