AGILE PARALLEL DEVELOPMENT EBOOK SERIES: Chapter 3. Four Steps to Achieving Agile Parallel Development

Transcription

1 AGILE PARALLEL DEVELOPMENT EBOOK SERIES: Chapter 3 Four Steps to Achieving Agile Parallel Development

2 Starting the DevOps Journey with Agile Parallel Development In the first two chapters of this ebook series, we looked at the trends most impacting application delivery today namely, the application economy and digital transformation and took a deep dive into the common challenge of constraints and the various ways they can manifest across the stages of the software delivery life cycle (SDLC). In this chapter, we re going to switch gears and begin a discussion of what IT organizations need to change in order to achieve the ultimate goal of Agile Parallel Development. They do this by: Sharing responsibilities, metrics and goals Collaborating, distributing tribal knowledge and learning from feedback Trusting in each other, the technology and the process Before we dig into that topic, however, it s important to remember that change will only occur within your DevOps practices when driven by evolution across people, processes and technologies. And the best way to ensure that happens is by adopting application delivery practices in which both Development and Operations groups have a unified goal of delivering better-quality, higher-performing applications at greater speeds and lower costs to the business. 2

3 Introducing the Four Steps Required for Agile Parallel Development While DevOps is a methodology that can support new application delivery paradigms, achieving truly agile and parallel development practices requires new thinking, processes and tools in specific areas of the SDLC. On the following pages, we ll explore the four key steps IT organizations must take to attain Agile Parallel Development. 1. Unconstrained Development 2. Test Data Management 3. Quality Acceleration 4. Improved API Management and Security 3

4 Step 1: Unconstrained Development When it comes to creating competitive advantage in the application economy, speed to market is one of the most critical factors which is why executives keep asking development and test groups to go faster. But oftentimes, there are a variety of application, system, data and testing constraints teams encounter across the SDLC that effectively put the brakes on their ability to push new innovations through the pipeline. In order to remove these roadblocks and achieve their speed-to-market goals, dev and test teams must practice unconstrained development. How? With tools that enable them to create and/or leverage virtual services that simulate the behavior and characteristics of dependencies (e.g., app components, systems, test data, etc.) whenever they are unavailable. Once constraints have been replaced with virtual services, teams can begin to work in parallel and shift left their efforts to earlier stages of the SDLC, which could bring in the project end date but also accelerates how quickly an application can go from development to production. Our research found that on average teams need access to 52 dependent components for development or testing but have unrestricted access to only 23 of the needed 52 components. 1 Theresa Lanowitz, Founder, voke The net effect for the business is that innovative applications become revenue-generators faster, and time saved can be redirected to push more projects through the pipeline helping the organization keep and maintain its competitive edge. 1 voke, New voke Research Uncovers How to Reduce Software Risk and Cost Through the Use of Service Virtualization, January,

5 Step 2: Test Data Management Getting new services to market quickly is only part of the battle. Another is making sure new services can meet behavior expectations once they hit that critical, customer-facing production environment. In order to ensure this, however, many teams have to spend significant time and manual effort to assemble or create production-like test data and keep it synchronized across all the systems it touches during the various test phases (e.g., integration, performance, user acceptance, etc.). And if they re just using copies of production data for these tests, they re introducing unnecessary costs and risks around storing that data and protecting it from a potential breach. What s needed is a better way to manage the entire test data process. This means being able to: Automatically generate synthetic, live-like test data whenever needed Mask sensitive information for improved data protection Store data sets in a central repository for reuse among teams Eliminate much of the manual effort and time that create delays in the testing stages of the SDLC With improved test data management, you can test faster and more comprehensively to improve the overall quality of your applications, while removing time and costs from the project speeding time to revenue and increasing profitability for the business. 5

6 Step 3: Quality Acceleration While most modern applications look simple on the surface, with user interfaces that prioritize ease of use, their inviting front-ends belie the complex web of systems, microservices, APIs, languages and objects that comprise their back-end architectures. In order to test efficiently amidst such complexity, IT teams need a way to automate testing of every layer of an application, while gaining transaction-level visibility into the various components, so they can quickly identify the root causes of issues. The problem is, many still cling to the mock and stub method, which requires manual effort before automation can take place and results in test assets that often cannot be shared across the various layers and components. A critical element of Agile Parallel Development practices is achieving accelerated or pervasive quality, which means teams are testing continuously and in a fully automated fashion throughout the SDLC rather than in time-consuming, discrete steps. Another way to think of this is that testing should not be considered a target event, but rather something that occurs naturally during the early stages of a project. To realize accelerated quality, you need: Complete test coverage across the entire technology stack from mobile to mainframe Actionable insights that help diagnose issues quickly Automation of virtual services and test cases With these capabilities, you can shorten software release cycles and reduce development and QA costs, while greatly improving the quality of your applications. 6

7 Step 4: Improved API Management and Security APIs are one of the key ways businesses can extend their services into new verticals and markets via collaboration and integration with third-party partners. However, there are numerous challenges IT teams face when sharing APIs, such as having to navigate firewall mazes and account for a wide diversity of back-end systems to which the APIs may connect. On top of that, there is the risk of exposing sensitive customer or business data to a potential breach once the APIs are outside of your sphere of governance. IT teams need a way to simplify API creation and management while increasing the security of API dev and test activities. In other words, they need to: Integrate and expose legacy systems and applications as APIs Onboard, enable and manage developers to create apps Secure enterprise data to meet the toughest compliance and regulatory standards Choose which apps, developers and partners can access their APIs When you improve your API management and security capabilities, you re able to expand markets and revenue streams through multiple channels and connect employees and partners to enterprise data anywhere, anytime without compromising your security posture. 7

8 What s Next? In the final chapter of the series we ll examine some of the tools that can help you accomplish the four steps discussed here, and show why CA is the right partner to help you achieve your Agile Parallel Development goals. Interested in ROI data from companies that are practicing parallel development today? Download this Market Snapshot Report on Service Virtualization by voke Research. CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) creates software that fuels transformation for companies and enables them to seize the opportunities of the application economy. Software is at the heart of every business, in every industry. From planning to development to management and security, CA is working with companies worldwide to change the way we live, transact, and communicate across mobile, private, and public cloud, distributed and mainframe environments. Learn more at ca.com. Copyright CA All rights reserved. This document is for your informational purposes only and does not form any type of warranty. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. CS