PR 52 - Dev&Ops: Defining Value From Two Sides Of The Same Coin

There is an instructive parable called “The Five Blind Men and The Elephant” where five blind men set out one day to decide on how to describe an Elephant. Each person approaches the elephant from a different perspective and as you can imagine each produce a different result. One insisting that upon touching the Elephant's leg that the Elephant is like a tree, another that the Elephant is like a snake, another touching the tusk states emphatically that the elephant is like a spear, and so on. Of course the moral of this story is that they were all correct based on their point of reference. It is the author's belief that this parable can be very easily applied to the core principles of DevOps and IT Service Management (ITSM). On the surface the two management approaches may seem dualistic in nature based on their general themes but look a bit deeper you will find more than a few parallels. From the media hype one would assume that DevOps is entirely focused on increasing the speed of stakeholder value realization through shortening and automating testing and release cycles (get it done faster). However, another main tenant that does not get the same airtime is that DevOps also describes the need to bring operational requirements back into the early release cycle in order to establish the basis for release standardization and reliability. IT Service Management on the other hand focuses on defining value in terms of customer outcomes expressed as services which are supported by a set of IT Management processes established to ensure value is defined, realized and improved through the discipline of Continual Service Improvement (get the right things done in the right way).
The million-dollar question (perhaps literally) is whether these seemingly opposing objectives can both be achieved by establishing a fit for purpose approach to blending the processes and timely actions needed and deliver both speed and quality? On this show Chris and I discuss how Dev&Ops are co-dependent and indivisible.

 

Show Notes:

“IT organizations are expected to respond quickly to urgent business needs while simultaneously providing stable, secure and predictable IT service. However, the systems on which the business operates are typically fragile and hostile to change. Adopting Agile development processes without improving operational reliability or communication between developers and operations only makes this problem worse. The increased frequency of releases from development creates even more of a burden on an already strained IT Organization. Similarly adopting ridged ITSM standards without addressing development issues and improving communication channels results in an inflexible IT organization that simply cannot respond to business needs quickly enough.” ~Puppet Labs - DevOps Report 2013
  • Troy's New Role: VP of Research, Innovation and Product Management
  • Pink's Conference in February
  • Practitioner Radio Live at Pink14
  • Conference Session: Dev & Ops — Two Tribes Under One Flag
  • Paper: Dev & Ops: Defining Value From Two Sides Of The Same Coin
  • Parable of the 5 Blind Men and The Elephant
  • DevOps and ITSM seem dualistic but are actually looking to both produce value
  • ITSM Perspective — Value Realization, Deliver Secure and Reliable Services
  • CIA: Confidential, Integrity and Available
  • DevOps: Looking at shorter release cycles and speed of value realization, culture of collaboration, bring operational requirements earlier in the lifecycle.
  • Just because you are looking for speed you cannot forgo security and stability
  • DevOps needs to get its Non-Functional requirements from ITSM, Architecture, Security, etc.
  • Service Orchestration via ITSM must coordinate all the value added build activities
  • Most people spend the majority of their time in un-planned non value added work.
  • The challenge of Technical Debt and Fragile Infrastructure
  • DevOps Report from Puppet Labs 2013
  • Lean Bright talk Session
  • The Phoenix Project
  • Article: Incident, Problem Change Dance
  • COBIT 5 Definition of Stakeholder Value: Benefits Realization, Risk Mitigation and Resource/Asset Optimization
  • Value is in the eye of the business Stakeholder

Troy Thunderbolt Tip: DevOps and ITSM are different sides of the same coin and I believe they are mutually supportive and in actual fact co-dependent and indivisible Technical Debt & Service Orchestration: Troy's and Chris's Thoughts What Are Yours? “There are two questions a person must ask themselves: The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?' If you ever get these questions in the wrong order you are in trouble.” ? Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly To subscribe to Pink's Podcasts on iTunes

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