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Introduction
The digital age we now live in demands a pace of delivery to market unheard of ever before. Delivering
new or enhanced software to market rapidly can keep your business relevant, delight your customers
and ensure you stay ahead of your competition.
Historically businesses have worked in silos, with developers working very separately to other departments.
Whilst existing processes will have served an organisation well in the past, this silo approach drastically
reduces the ability to compete in today’s rapidly developing and demanding markets.
DevOps by its very nature disrupts these silos as it requires all teams - Development, QA and Operations
- to collaborate, communicate and work in a more cohesive way, allowing organisations to be enabled
through software. DevOps can make a real, tangible and positive difference to your development and de-
livery lifecycle. In this guide we look to introduce the relatively new concept that is DevOps and how it can
benefit your business.
Daemon Solutions Ltd. T: +44 (0)800 0463987 E: [email protected]
Your Software: Faster. Stronger. Better.
Daemon Solutions Ltd. T: +44 (0)800 0463987 E: [email protected]
What Is DevOps?
Like any new term, sometimes contradictory inter-
pretations can be used until it becomes established
and more mainstream. DevOps is a relatively complex
concept and because of that it doesn’t have a simple
definition. It means different things to different peo-
ple but fundamentally it is a philosophy and way of
working that stresses communication, collaboration,
integration, automation and measurement with the
purpose of creating and delivering software applica-
tions to customers.
Perhaps it is easier to immediately clarify what Dev-
Ops is not; It is not no ops at all; it is also not just tools
to automate processes, testing and the like; neither is
it just the implementation of a cultural change within
an organisation; or just a collaboration with Develop-
ment and Operations alone.
DevOps by its very nature is constantly evolving and
changing, so there are no hard and fast rules. Don’t
see that as a negative though, far from it in fact as
DevOps is having a massively positive impact across
many industries already and this will continue to
gather pace as it matures as a technology manage-
ment approach.
At Daemon Solutions we believe that DevOps in its
purest form is an entire organisation pulling in the
same direction to rapidly deliver high quality software
products and reduce costs. However, to achieve this
state of DevOps utopia requires the letting go of old
methodologies and a universal willingness to truly
embrace a new way of working. One of the key chal-
lenges for any enterprise is how to implement Dev-
Ops whilst continuing to deliver change throughout
the business.
“Dev” encompasses all the people involved in
developing the software including Product and QA
amongst others, whilst “Ops” includes systems en-
gineers and administrators, operations staff, release
engineers, DBAs, network engineers, security profes-
sionals and the rest. Simply put, for truly successful
DevOps implementation within an organisation, it is
everyone collaborating throughout the entire lifecy-
cle, with the understanding that software isn’t finished
until it’s launched to market and successfully meets
customer expectations.
What Is DevOps?
Daemon Solutions Ltd. T: +44 (0)800 0463987 E: [email protected]
Why DevOps?
DevOps does closely resemble both Agile and Lean
approaches. However, the historic view of “Dev” and
“Ops” working in their own silos, and the ensuing
negative impact that has had on software delivery to
the customer, has seen the advent of DevOps which
extends Agile and Lean principles to encompass the
entire software delivery lifecycle.
It involves numerous techniques, multiple roles within
an organization and lots of intersecting technologies,
which means there has already been a huge range
of tools developed with the goal of facilitating con-
figuration, management, orchestration, monitoring,
virtualisation and containerisation, amongst others.
As the DevOps world matures and continues to try
things, learn from them and fine-tunes approaches,
we will see this range of tools created increase expo-
nentially to help make those approaches easier and
more consistent to apply.
Development with safe, manageable, easy to monitor
ways of getting software to the end user, without the
process always being a major project.
Providing the infrastructure for a DevOps enabled or-
ganisation can require a lot of thought, planning and
activity prior to implementation, for example, consider
a multi-site enterprise – they will need to develop
either their own automation or customise off-the-
shelf- tools to meet the needs and demands of the
business before DevOps can be embraced. Exactly
what capabilities your Operations function provides,
will vary greatly depending on your products and
your organisational structure.
Be clear on one thing - there is no DevOps quick fix.
To truly embrace DevOps is to change ways of work-
ing, only then will the true benefits be clearly appreci-
ated and the results speak for themselves.
To really embrace DevOps you need to understand
all the layers that go into it, and what a given
DevOps implementation might look like, depending
on the requirements of your organisation. Therefore
there is no “one size fits all” in terms of how you im-
plement it. What is generic is the need for the initial
decision makers who wish to introduce it to your
business to fully understand the values, principles,
methods and practices of DevOps and then get man-
agement buy-in. Without that top-down approach
to introducing cultural change, which is what truly
embracing DevOps principles is all about, it can never
really deliver on its full potential within an organisa-
tion.
In any organisation intent on implementing a DevOps
approach, Operations will need to embark on a cer-
tain amount of software development, to create units
of automation that make the operations side of the
organization run more independently and provides
DevOps - the reality
Daemon Solutions Ltd. T: +44 (0)800 0463987 E: [email protected]
What are the benefits of DevOps?
●●• The creation of very few barriers between coder and user
●●• Software releases are more frequent and more rapid to deliver
●●• Everyone involved both understands and shares the same end goal
●●●●●• A company-wide culture of trust and collaboration is introduced
●●• Tighter integration of application lifecycle phases
●●• Collaboration delivers the ability to monitor the end user experience
Daemon Solutions Ltd. T: +44 (0)800 0463987 E: [email protected]
The reality of implementing DevOps
DevOps gets a lot of press these days and there are
a lot of different opinions on how a “DevOps project”
should be implemented.
The key to successfully implementing DevOps within
your organisation is in recognising it is not confined
to just technology and automation. To realise the full
potential of DevOps and reap these benefits requires
significant cultural change and the implementation
and acceptance of new working processes, functional
and operating models. Working with a partner organ-
isation with considerable experience in implementing
DevOps across a range of businesses, both in terms
of size and sector, could ensure your company pos-
itively embraces that change and can achieve a real
competitive edge in your specific markets.
Daemon Solutions can work with you to achieve this
by utilising our proven, high-energy agile approach:
Step 1: AssessWe conduct a high-level assessment of your existing
capabilities and potential benefits. This sets out the
costs/benefits case for wider engagement of DevOps
throughout your organisation. Timescales: 3-5 days.
Step 2: DiscoverThis is a 4-6 week detailed review with a team of our
consultants working with you to fully analyse your
existing processes, capabilities and culture. This is
where we agree the backlog for the delivery phase.
Step 3: DeliverUsing Agile, we work in partnership with your teams
to implement the agreed DevOps improvements.
Depending on the scope of these, the project times-
cales can vary but as a guide 3-12 months.
Typical Discovery Scope:
• Current practices (source control, branch & merge
strategy, defect management, code build &
deployment)
• 3rd party supplier development practices
• QA and testing practices including frameworks
and tools
• Environment build and management practices
• Service Operations processes
(eg. Release/ Change Management)
• Project process and pipeline
• Solution architecture and boundaries of
CI/CD solutions
Typical Discovery Outcomes and Deliverables:
• Documentation of problem statements and
relevant findings for the discovery scope
• CI/CD competencies & capabilities to address
problem statements & findings
• CI/CD roadmap, showing anticipated timelines
for CI/CD capabilities delivery
• Definition of workstreams for CI/CD
capabilities delivery
• Statement of quick wins & expected benefits
• High level project plan for delivery of quick wins
• Agreement for benefits metrics & measurements
Assess Discover Deliver
Daemon Solutions Ltd. T: +44 (0)800 0463987 E: [email protected]
Summary
DevOps is not something you do, it is an ethos that
needs to be embraced company-wide to ensure your
organisation becomes agile enough to rapidly respond
to customer demands, market conditions, competitive
pressures and regulatory requirements.
If you wish to explore the tangible business benefits
that DevOps can deliver, we are currently offering a
no obligation, fact finding consultation to
demonstrate how you could gain real value from
your investment in DevOps with Daemon Solutions.
Please contact us on +44 (0)800 0463987
alternatively search for Daemon Solutions
on the g-cloud digital marketspace.