WHITEPAPER. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. Principle #1, Agile Manifesto

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1 30 September 2014 WHITEPAPER Delivery Maturity Model Releasing software is often a long, difficult and risky process. Defects and integration issues pop-up at the very last moment and cause dissatisfaction to end users. Furthermore, lack of collaboration between the software development and IT operations teams generally results in deployment errors and Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. Principle #1, Agile Manifesto finger-pointing. Delivery can solve all of that and even more. Delivery can help IT organisations to become lean and agile. It can help them to continuously adapt software according to user feedback and to stay ahead of changing market conditions, while improving the quality and speed of delivery. Delivery makes the delivery of software, from the hands of the developers to production a repeatable, reliable, visible and largely automated process with well understood quantifiable risks. Delivery creates an organised evolution of the software development process. How to Achieve This Saying that it is all about practices, tools and people would not be saying anything new. Practices such as Version Control and Integration have been in existence for quite some time. New practices such as Test Automation, Infrastructure Automation and Deployment and Monitoring have developed significantly over the last few years. The complete set of these practices, fully integrated, we call Delivery. Source code and configuration changes are checked-in to a Version Control system and each check-in (potentially) triggers a Integration build. Each integration is performed by an automated build and verified by unit tests to detect integration errors as quickly as possible. This approach leads to a reduced number of integration problems, and allows the teams to develop software more rapidly. If the build is broken, all ongoing activities stop until the problem is solved and the build becomes releasable again. 1

2 30 September 2014 Test Automation as a practice enables automated execution of test scripts and comparison of actual with expected results. Test Automation encompasses unit, integration, functional, performance and security tests and reduces the need for manual tests to a minimum. This requires skills from both testers as well as developers and their continuous teamwork. Infrastructure Automation enables automated provisioning and configuration of hosting environments and forms the bridge between Integration and Test Automation. Finally, the so called last mile of the deployment pipeline is covered by Deployment. This part of the process can be fully automated, by provisioning a virtual test environment to run automated tests, but it can also be semi-automated in the case of one-click deployment, where an operator selects the application version and the deployment environment. System and Application Monitoring enables a quick response to outages and decreases time to recover. Most importantly, to make Delivery a success, the development, test and IT-operations teams need to work together as one delivery team from the very start. Adopting Delivery We have established a Delivery Maturity Model allowing our customers to adopt Delivery practices in a pragmatic and incremental approach. The initial step is an assessment of the current status. This step is quantifiable, to show to what extent you have already adopted the various Delivery practices. The second step is to decide what goals and benefits you would like to achieve, both in the short and long term. This must be done realistically and pragmatically, higher is not always better or cost-effective. Based on the assessment and the pragmatic ambition, a concrete plan is created (step 3) where improvements are prioritised and evaluations are planned for re-assessing the value achieved by the improvements as compared with the set goals. Our approach is to introduce elements of Delivery in an agile manner, by measuring the benefits of each step and re-evaluating the goals. The approach we take, not only affects the software development process (in its widest sense) but may also result in recommendations for architecture and the organisational setup. The aim will always be to reduce time to market, and take the risk out of the release process. 2

3 30 September 2014 The Delivery Maturity Model Delivery Initial Novice Intermediate Advanced Version control Source code Unit tests Application Configuration code Database Schema Infrastructure configuration code Main branch always deployable release notes Integration Manual or scripted builds Scheduled (nightly) automatic builds Dependency management integration of source code and unit tests (commit based) Artifact repository CI Build Cluster CI orchestrated infrastructure provisioning integration of acceptance tests Quality Manual testing Test management unit and integration tests functional tests Static code analysis Facilitated peer reviews acceptance tests nonfunctional tests (performance, security) Test cluster Deployment Manual Manual database schema changes Scripted Same process across different environments Deployment pipeline Gated automated promotions Orchestrated deployments One click deployments deployments to production Infrastructure Physical Manual provisioning and configuration Virtual Cloud provisioning Infrastructure as code Self-service for experimentation Container based infrastructure Network automation Monitoring No System level Architecture Tightly coupled De-coupled Covered with unit tests Application level Log management Real-time centralised log Service oriented Fit for purpose frameworks Testable end-to-end Enables Application performance Anomaly detection Dynamic scaling Component based Scalable Organisation Waterfall approach Silo structure Iterative approach Direct collaboration Requirements management Agile Lean Multi-functional teams DevOps Technical debt addresses regularly 3

4 30 September 2014 Recommended Tooling Based on our extensive experience, we have compiled an integrated toolset that enables us to establish Delivery end-to-end. This toolset is supported by real-life examples, knowledge and experience with installation, configuration and use in various projects. Category Java, PHP, Android.Net Version control system Git Git, TFS integration Jenkins, Bamboo, Nexus, Maven, Gradle TeamCity, TFS, NuGet Test Automation and Code Quality Selenium, TestNG, FitNesse, soapui, JMeter, SonarQube, Phabricator Selenium, TestNG, ReSharper, FxCop, Review Assistant deployment Capistrano, RunDeck, Liquibase Octopus Deploy, RedGate Infrastructure Automation and Configuration Management Puppet, VMWare, Amazon, OpenStack, Azure VMWare, Amazon, OpenStack, Azure, Puppet, PowerShell DSC Monitoring Zabbix, AppDynamics, Logstash SCOM, Zabbix Collaboration Jira, Confluence Jira, Confluence, TFS The value of Delivery in your organisation In its very essence, Delivery is the implementation of lean principles. It defines Done as released into production and reaping business benefits. It enables organisations to become truly agile. It provides fast feedback and requires a prompt response from the whole team. This increases quality since the defects are found early in the process, while they are still easy to fix. Delivery automates, accelerates and integrates all of the processes needed to develop software. This shortens release cycle times, reduces the defect rate and increases the frequency of delivery. This results in better customer focus, faster time to market and improved reliability of the delivered solution. For further information please contact us via DevOps@levi9.com About the author Damir Solajic is the Delivery Director and Delivery Evangelist within Levi9 IT Services. He has worked as a Software Developer, Service Line Manager and Teaching Assistant across a variety of technologies. His focus is on automating and optimising end-to-end software delivery by implementing effective software engineering principles. 4

5 30 September 2014 Levi9 IT Services, a Dutch nearshore IT services company Levi9 Global Sourcing is a Dutch nearshore IT service company with headquarters in Amsterdam. Levi9 has 4 delivery centres in central and Eastern Europe, with over 500 highly skilled and committed IT specialists. Founded in 2005, Levi9 is currently one of the best performing near-shore IT service providers in the Dutch market, with exceptional client satisfaction. Clients Levi9 is the technology partner for businesses where IT has a strategic value. Over 80% of our work is performed on software systems that generate revenue for our clients. Services Our service portfolio covers all aspects of the software development lifecycle: from architecture, technical design to development, testing and IT operations. Architectural" Service Agile" Software" Development Architectural" Assessment Java Architectural" Concept and Design Microsoft Agile" Testing IT" Operations System Management Testing Cloud Management PHP Second Opinion Performance Review UX Mobile Infrastructure Automation Manual" Testing Deployment 5

6 30 September 2014 Delivery models We provide our services through 3 delivery models: Team as a Service (TaaS) This is a remote secondment model that provides add-on capacity for the IT departments of our clients. Our IT professionals become part of our client's R&D, and as such become fully integrated into the processes and teams of our clients. Levi9 provides more than just capacity: we take responsibility for the staffing and quality of the team, we provide continuity and reliability of delivery, and we pro-actively manage the satisfaction of both our clients and our team members. Furthermore, we provide added value through process and technology innovation, for instance in the areas of Test Automation, Delivery and Distributed Scrum. Projects We execute projects, either based on Scrum, or according to detailed upfront requirements. We accept projects based either on fixed price-fixed date, or on time & material. Maintenance and Support We perform application maintenance and support of individual systems or complete application landscapes, based on Service Level Agreements. We use ASL and ITL as our standard methods. Our Clients About Us Donald Leckie, Director Web Engineering TomTom: Levi9 is involved in the vast majority of TomTom's core development programs, including doing active work on a number of TomTom's strategic platforms. Levi9 has helped in the maintenance work of fairly complex systems in TomTom's landscape. It's that depth of domain knowledge and transferable skills that play an important part in TomTom's sourcing strategy. Jurrie van Rooijen, IT Director Bol.com: The Levi9 team members are pro-active, take initiative in the technical area and are profoundly interested in our shop. They are very dedicated and, like us, work to achieve a better shop. That is very valuable for us. Janneke Niessen, CIO Improve Digital: Levi9 is a great partner, that provides us with a motivated and dedicated technical team that maintains a high pace of delivery while retaining the flexibility our business demands. Across software development, quality assurance and technical operations teams, Levi9 helps us build the quality solutions our clients demand. 6