Forget DevOps – Enterprise level DevOps is here
“But how do we actually start DevOps?” That is the big question we hear from our clients when they really start to feel the pressure to speed up software development and cut costs. People have heard about DevOps and the tempting results it has unlocked for others, but it is hard to know where to start and what exactly to do.
And to make matters worse, the research on DevOps can be a bit confusing.
Earlier this year, Puppet and Dora published an annual update report on DevOps adoption “2017 State of DevOps Report“. One of the main findings was a series of practices that successful DevOps adopters tend to embrace:
- High automation rate
- Loosely coupled architecture
- Working in small batches and short branches
- Utilizing feedback
- The freedom for teams to select their own tools
While most of these observations clearly serve the overarching goal of productivity, one is quite puzzling. The freedom for teams to select their own tools severely contradicts the long-established best practices of harmonization and IT landscape consolidation. I met with Puppet CEO Sanjay Mirchandani a few months ago, and interestingly, he stated that the tooling pipeline should indeed be harmonized within a company.
In a few weeks, I will be clearing up this contradiction in a talk on tooling (DevOps Tooling Day Helsinki) — and specifically why I think some governance in enterprise-level DevOps tooling is necessary despite the contradictory survey results mentioned above. Because DevOps is not yet widespread in organizations, economies of scale play little role and existing knowledge therefore becomes the dominant factor determining productivity. In this talk, I will also consider some of the other factors that should be considered when introducing an enterprise-wide DevOps workflow.
See you at tooling day! Please feel free to come by and meet me at the Tieto booth.
Tapani Tirkkonen
DevOps Lead Solution Consultant
Tieto Oyj
Image credit: Tieto HQ by Petri Pekkarinen.
