PremierAgile

Have you heard about DevOps earlier? It is a combination of Development and IT operations. DevOps help with making not only software production but also deployment in a repeatable and automated manner. They are effective because they help organizations increase the speed. Yes, they can achieve speed in delivering software services and applications. Yes, this term is a combination of the two words development and operations.

With DevOps, you can serve your customers better. Even, you will gain the power to compete more strongly in the market. In simple terms, DevOps is the alignment of information technology operations and development. Nevertheless, the alignment happens with better collaboration and communication.

Why is DevOps Required?

Before the introduction of DevOps, operation and development teams in organizations worked in complete isolation. Also, deployment and testing were separate activities. So they consumed a lot of time as compared to actual building cycles. Without DevOps, your teams will spend more time on testing, deploying and designing as against project building. Also, the deployment of the software program using manual code can lead to human errors in the manufacturing process. Without DevOps, operation and coding teams will have their own individual timelines. As they operate separately, there will be further delays. Studies show that there is a demand for increasing the rate at which software programs are delivered. To handle this requirement, DevOps can be the right choice.

DevOps Concept in SAFe – A Basic Understanding:

According to Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), DevOps is a set of technical practices, a culture and a mindset. It helps with close cooperation, automation, integration and communication. These things will happen among all people engaged in maintaining, releasing, deploying, testing, developing and planning a solution. In a Lean Enterprise, DevOps will be a part of the Agile Product Delivery competency.

Without the presence of DevOps, there will always be  considerable tension between those building solutions. Even, it will happen in those maintaining and supporting those solutions. SAFe enterprises often implement DevOps for breaking down the organizational silos. Even, they do this for developing a Continuous Delivery Pipeline or CDP. This is a high-performance innovation engine. It is competent enough to deliver market-leading solutions at the pace of a business. 

The purpose of DevOps SAFe is to deliver value whenever there is a need in a business. This is something that can be achieved. A study shows that teams excelling in DevOps deploy with 7 times fewer failures, 106 times faster and 208 times more frequently on average. The study further shows that they recover from incidents at 2604 times quicker pace as compared to teams that perform low.

What to Know About DevSecOps?

In SAFe, DevSecOps is a term used for paying attention to the importance of sound information security practices. It is done in an endeavor to achieve continuous delivery. The reason for the use of this concept is that the origin of DevOps does not essentially include security as the top-priority concern. With DevSecOps, it will be possible for businesses to reduce the chances of security risk being an afterthought.

The SAFe DevOps Integration – It has been a Challenge:

As you are in the business arena, you know about SAFe earlier. Now, you might have gained basic knowledge about DevOps as well. You know both these concepts separately. But, how are they integrated? What is the value of integrating them? Also, you should know that  integration is not easy for most businesses. 

It will not be an overstatement to say that Agile at Scale frameworks have achieved a great level of maturity. Among the many frameworks, SAFe is one of the most favorite choices among businesses these days. In the same way, the DevOps concept has also achieved maturity. Nevertheless, many businesses face hardships in integrating them at Scale. But, with the popularity of both these concepts, the interest shown by many organizations in integrating them is huge these days. The approach of both these concepts is converging. For example, when you take the case of DevOps, it is featured as an element of the most recent version of SAFe. Nevertheless, organizations face hardships in integrating SAFe and DevOps. Do you know why? This is because of the intrinsic conflict existing at the base of both these concepts.

How is DevOps Incorporated in SAFe?

Do you know what is the primary goal of DevOps in SAFe? The goal is to enable organizations to deliver ongoing value to customers.  With this goal, organizations can follow the CAMLR approach for incorporating DevOps in SAFe. With SAFe, it will be possible to achieve continuous integration, deployment and release on demand. What does CAMLR mean?

Culture – Culture denotes the shared responsibility for operations and development

Automation – It involves dynamically spinning and breaking down the development atmosphere. The aim is to emulate deployment automation, test automation and production.

Lean Flow – It denotes general push for tinier sizes of batches for delivery of software. It involves restricting WIP and offering real-time visibility of software. Further, it encompasses lowering costs, increasing the frequency of release. Bringing down rework, quickening feedback and increasing predictability are other inclusions.

Measurement – It involves measuring the flow through improving delivery. For instance, you can use Karban for mapping out the whole delivery pipeline. Here, you can evaluate lead-time, cycle time and can use telemetry for all servers and applications.

Recovery – It enables real-time monitoring of scalability. It keeps an eye on redundancy to ensure a quicker recovery.

Benefits of DevOps:

DevOps can be beneficial in many ways. For instance, it will help with improving efficiency with automation. It improves stability and speed with software development and deployment. In turn, it can optimize the entire business. Above all, the important reason for integrating DevOps in SAFe is that it will help you focus more on what matters the most. Yes, the focus will be on your customers.

The benefit of DevOps over traditional SDLC helps with overcoming the long-standing separation of dev and ops. You can gain complete control over setup and deployment with DevOps. It is an integral part of SAFe, while many concepts and principles related to SAFe are valid in the concept of DevOps as well. Examples include fast feedback, short iterations and small batch sizes.

Possibility of Continuous Delivery:

The Scaled Agile Framework DevOps ensures the possibility of continuous delivery. So, is your business interested in delivering true value to stakeholders and customers? Then, your business should master the technical and mindset practices of DevOps. In the present situation, constant innovations take place. Also, skills are readily available in businesses. Nevertheless, achieving ongoing delivery particularly at Scale is not easy. However, these complexities can be navigated with SAFe’s approach to DevOps. 

A shift in the basic model:

Information Technology organizations face continuous trouble by a core and chronic conflict. This happens irrespective of the world destination a business operates from. The conflict is that they will have to handle technology delivery procedures. These procedures are dependent on teams with different incentives and goals. Here, Agile teams will have to deliver changes swiftly to keep pace with the needs of any business. In the same way, operations teams should regulate the flow of changes. These teams should do this for maintaining the stability of solutions that operate the business. The role of security teams is to institute policies. These policies are for hindering changes from introducing vulnerabilities. The reason is that these vulnerabilities can lead to a breach of crucial business data.

To rectify this, SAFe recommends a new delivery system named Software Factory. This system will align teams and will increase the speed of delivery. At the same time, it will increase stability, security and quality of solutions. Only when this happens, the requirements of all teams and the requirements of customers can be met. This can be done not only predictably but also effectively.

Nevertheless, most IT organizations do not support this kind of system natively. The reason is that their policies and processes are optimized. The optimization is done for the prevention of frequent changes to the production systems. This is why a shift in the basic model is important. This is something similar to the changes in the basic model made by Agile in the way any organization functions. DevOps too need a shift in the way they are built. It is better to make the utmost use of DevOps to introduce a new method of developing digitally-enabled solutions. This is something essential for transforming antiquated development life cycles. This transformation should happen into ongoing delivery pipelines.

Conclusion:

At the heart, DevOps is a mindset that directs decision-making and behavior all through the value stream. It is possible to embody this mindset with the CALMR Approach of SAFe to DevOps. The tooling, practices and technical skills of DevOps sustain and evolve solutions directly. 

In the SAFe environment, the benefits of DevOps can be experienced even in a better way. Right from ensuring quicker deployment, it will help with every aspect of business. An excellent example is stabilizing the work environment. You can ensure a considerable improvement in the quality of your product. This is possible by bringing together these two approaches into your business. When the repetitive tasks are automated, your teams will get more room for innovation. Again, this is possible by practicing these two approaches together.

References:

1. https://www.business2community.com/business-intelligence/9-key-benefits-of-devops-02391855
2. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/devops/
3. https://www.appdynamics.com/topics/why-devops-is-important#~challenges-of-devops