Continuing this series of five key questions on the topic of DevOps (see yesterday’s answers by a Director of Engineering), today I asked Steve Witkop, Tooling Chief Architect with HP, five thought-provoking questions.
Steve Leung – What are some of the most common challenges for Development & Operations teams today?
Steve Witkop – Balance is the most common challenge, with change management on one side and continuous delivery on the other.
In this context, the objective of change management is to ensure standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes to control IT infrastructure to minimize the number and impact of related incidents upon service. Changes in IT infrastructure may arise reactively in response to problems or externally imposed requirements, e.g. legislative changes, or proactively from seeking improved efficiency and effectiveness, or to enable or reflect business initiatives, or from programs, projects or service improvement initiatives.
Change Management can ensure standardized methods, processes and procedures which are used for all changes, facilitate efficient and prompt handling of all changes, and maintain the proper balance between the need for change and the potential detrimental impact of changes. Keeping up with the pace of change both business and IT and more importantly significant shifts (regulatory, economic, etc.).
Steve Leung– Who should be driving the changes needed, business or IT? What is the role of the CIO in this transformation?
Steve Witkop – Both business and IT should be driving change. Change requests come from both the business, IT vendors and operation teams to ensure the enterprises’ business capabilities are secure and operational. The role of the CIO in the past was a change controller which is now evolving to a continuous change enabler.
Steve Leung – What would you say are some indicators that an organization is ready to take on a DevOps project?
Steve Witkop – When most projects in the organization are CMMI level 3 or higher. These organizations are now ready to begin making investments in automation in tool chains that enable continuous delivery.
Another indicator to look for that leads to successful DevOps projects are teams where the developer sandboxes are collaborative in nature and work hand-in-glove with an organization’s IT change management business capability. If the organization data center (ITIL) service management and development teams have an adversarial climate (leave your baby at the doorstep), that is the opposite of the collaboration needed to achieve a successful DevOps flow.
Steve Leung – What are common misconceptions about DevOps and PaaS?
Steve Witkop – Equating speed with insecurity. With DevOps, the most common misconception is that the Testing Trifecta (quality assurance) is cut out — that apps move from development to production while skipping functional, performance and security testing. That is not, and should never be, the case.
Steve Leung – What is the role of PaaS in the context of DevOps?
Steve Witkop – Simplification and Security. The “new style of IT” bridges on-premise and the cloud, introducing increased complexity and security concerns. PaaS plays a simplification role by reducing complexity and increasing security, enabling enterprises to implement increasing levels of automation and achieving continuous deployment more broadly.
To learn more, you can check out our On-Demand content featuring the Google+ Hangout titled, “Private PaaS: Accelerating Continuous Delivery for DevOps.”
For more on cloud and systems integration, watch this webinar with Forrester VP and Principal Analyst John Rymer.
