Essential Guide
Use these DevOps examples to reimagine an IT organization
Changes have to occur in IT operations, infrastructure and team structure to enable DevOps. Despite the relative youth of DevOps as an IT strategy, diverse companies have walked the walk, and now eagerly talk the talk.
Introduction
DevOps means something different to every organization in terms of culture, best practices and tool pipelines. And that's a good thing.
"Now, we have a lot of enterprises [to provide DevOps examples]. We don't only want to rely on what works for the unicorns," said Patrick Debois, co-author of The DevOps Handbook, a guidebook for DevOps implementation. The balancing act for DevOps best practices, tool recommendations and other advice is to make it broad enough for diverse IT teams to apply it successfully, not just companies with deep Agile and IT technical expertise paired with vast resources and flexible roadmaps. According to The DevOps Handbook co-author Gene Kim, enterprise IT shops are more like horses than the unique early DevOps adopter unicorns.
For teams unsure of where to start -- or those that have plateaued without a clear path to more improvements -- these before and after DevOps examples from real IT organizations yield insights into processes used, metrics for success and common mistakes and delays.
1How they did it-
Successes and struggles of DevOps transformations
These real-world DevOps examples from IT and software development professionals are gritty, not idealistic. Enterprises carry legacy IT baggage, have compliance obligations that push apart collaborative efforts and have learning periods for new technologies that must account for time spent actually running existing applications and infrastructure with today's tool set.
Self-service pays off for Allstate
Insurance provider Allstate looked to a DevOps philosophy so that IT could empower employees and customers, rather than simply serve them. Continue Reading
Gearing up for Docker in production
Ray Krueger, VP of engineering at Hyatt Hotels, discusses what it takes to move Docker containerization onto live production infrastructure. Continue Reading
DevOps best practices, forged from crises
For two airlines and a government contractor, organizational turmoil from merger and spinoff was the perfect time to establish DevOps best practices. Continue Reading
Three paths to smoother DevOps collaboration
DevOps collaboration is as critical to transforming IT ops and product teams as the tool sets they use, several large enterprises agree. Continue Reading
All it takes is one application
A financial services company isn't about to jump headlong into an experimental IT infrastructure. Fannie Mae's DevOps approach was cautious -- starting with a single application -- and yielded results. Continue Reading
Automation thaws code freezes
Rather than working under the restrictions of a build schedule, Navis increased its test automation and feedback speed. Now, the company develops continuously, even though continuous delivery wasn't the goal. Continue Reading
Compliance and DevOps do mix
Traceability is a trait to look for in tools if you're adopting DevOps in a regulated industry. Sparta brought DevOps to life sciences with improved compliance despite cultural and technical obstacles. Continue Reading
Don't stick to what you know
During a transition to Agile development, Medtronic's Sarb Singh-Kaur chose a new application lifecycle management platform rather than one that he knew well. Continue Reading
There's room for automation
Change management and role separation gets "grafted" onto DevOps at some regulated companies, but that doesn't mean automation has no place in the compliance process. Continue Reading
Send in the SWAT team
DevOps implementation can go wrong -- in a myriad of ways -- so it doesn't hurt to think outside of DevOps dogma with a centralized ops team. Continue Reading
2Put ideas into motion-
Creating a CI/CD and agile infrastructure
While DevOps examples vary from company to company, there are some key tenets and practices that all organizations use as a common basis for implementation. Continuous delivery, configuration management and automation are the go-to choices, while immutable infrastructure and NoOps push the possibilities for organizations that are ready for radical infrastructure change.
DevOps in production: The ITSM mindset and DevOps
Jayne Groll of the DevOps Institute explains how Agile ITSM bridges the gap between developers and operations, and what other changes DevOps brings to an organization. Continue Reading
How to put DevOps to work
Enterprises with entrenched IT and development practices need a DevOps guide that makes the methodology accessible and achievable. Continue Reading
Test your DevOps knowledge
We've seen some DevOps examples from diverse industries. So, think you know DevOps pretty well? Take this quiz to prove you know the tools, techniques and terminology. Continue Reading
Do it today with continuous integration/continuous development
An 18-month-long process solves an 18-month-old problem. Use continuous delivery instead of, or as a companion to, large-scale changes to make IT more dynamic and agile. Continue Reading
Demand a swappable, adaptable pipeline
As soon as a DevOps deployment pipeline is created, it is outdated. With emerging technologies and shifting tool preferences, organizations must maintain a flexible pipeline. Continue Reading
Better IT infrastructure means better apps
Continuous integration and delivery is no small feat, and it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Major companies, such as Meetup, found they needed modernized, diverse IT options to support agile code releases. Continue Reading
What testers want their DevOps teammates to know
Test automation facilitates rapid code development and deployment as a means of attempting to mimic the production environment to prevent surprises on live systems. To make tests more effective and faster, listen to these requests from an automated testing engineer. Continue Reading
Is infrastructure as code too difficult for IT ops?
Infrastructure as code (IaC) enables a DevOps shop to frequently change the IT resources supporting agile applications, but it's a concept that IT pros struggle to put into action. Continue Reading
Or is IaC just a skill that takes some practice?
With some context for how IaC functions and some practice creating templates, DevOps teams can feel just as comfortable on the command line as they do in the cold aisle. Continue Reading
Create an immutable infrastructure
Immutable infrastructure means no change, but it's hardly static. Components of the system are replaced with each change rather than updated. This brings the power of build automation to IT infrastructure. Continue Reading
Configuration management keeps instances -- and IT shops -- from falling behind
Tight configuration control means IT shops can take mixed cloud and data center resources, rapid-fire code changes and close alignment with business needs in stride. Continue Reading
Use These DevOps Examples to Reimagine an IT Organization
Changes have to occur in IT operations, infrastructure and team structure to enable DevOps. Despite the relative youth of DevOps as an IT strategy, diverse companies have walked the walk, and now eagerly talk the talk.
3Feedback loops-
Monitoring in a DevOps environment
Much like the Japanese concept of kaizen, DevOps promotes a culture of nonstop change and improvement. Iterative development, proven code and smooth deployment get the application to production, while monitoring provides feedback that will direct further development and infrastructure improvements.
The upside of a DevOps feedback loop
DevOps users explain how IT ops control benefits from DevOps feedback loops, as well as platform and application reduction. Continue Reading
Monitor from code to CPU
When the full stack matters to application performance, the full stack should undergo performance monitoring in an easy-to-read, integrated fashion. Continue Reading
Achieve better monitoring with integration
DevOps culture espouses the smart use of tools and infrastructure to improve applications. In this pertinent DevOps example, the integration of log analysis and AWS Lambda solved a monitoring problem at The Washington Post. Continue Reading
Microservices = big tooling challenges
Microservices open new possibilities for application developers, but throw up new roadblocks for how performance monitoring tools work and how IT shops pay for them. Continue Reading
Just the right alerts
More services and more deployments mean more monitoring tool alerts. Invest some 9 to 5 time to paring down, sorting and customizing IT alerts to avoid midnight calls to handle false alarms and unexpected issues. Continue Reading
The answers are all there
IT systems and applications generate a wealth of data, and big data science lets emerging tools synthesize these data points into actionable analysis. Continue Reading
4Put it all together-
How to create a DevOps team bond
DevOps implementation doesn't happen overnight, and it also doesn't have to happen in the dark. Whether through articles, blogs and books; formal training and certifications; or peer-to-peer sharing, DevOps professionals can learn what their roles entail and how to work together.
Map the value stream to stay the course
Mapping out the value stream of a given project is a valuable process to ensure you get the most out of your deliverables. It brings in members from every step of the life cycle to identify problem areas, allowing them to be smoothed out in advance. Continue Reading
You're never skilled enough to stop learning
Gene Kim is no newcomer to the DevOps movement, so when he says IT operations professionals must learn automation and other new skills -- or lose their jobs -- people listen. Continue Reading
Everyone is in operations
IT operations' responsibilities must be shared across the DevOps team, according to many professionals adhering to the methodology. Ideally, not only will developers accept the extra responsibility, they'll clamor for it. Continue Reading
Find universal language translators
To bring IT operations and developers together, give them tools that meet both groups' needs. Monitoring tools, ChatOps interfaces and other tools give dev and ops a common language and a path toward achieving common goals. Continue Reading
Share your problems with everyone
DevOps is a mess, admits Avi Cavale. His company, Shippable, decided to make its DevOps transformation transparent to the outside world -- including customers, partners and anyone else interested in following along. Continue Reading
What if everything was different?
Considering a radically new approach to IT operations? See what the site reliability engineers at Google have to say about daily tasks, automation and the fear of becoming obsolete. Continue Reading
Plan a hackathon
Hackathons are a fun, social way to get developers, line-of-business partners, IT administrators and architects, testers and others thinking creatively about technological capabilities. See how insurance company Aviva runs its annual event, and then schedule your own. Continue Reading
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