The divide between programmers and implementers may be on its way out thanks to the practice of DevOps. But just mentioning the term without any context can lead to a lot of misunderstanding. As developers strive to put together exactly the code they believe is needed, those putting the programs into action can come to find out that there are issues that still need to be resolved. Internal friction become problematic and make delivering customer satisfaction all but impossible. DevOps can create a bridge that shortens the distance between development and implementation and make quick work of updates - sometimes before the customers even know they have a problem. But it's important for CIOs to focus on the areas that have the most impact.
Bruno Scap, president of Galeas Consulting LLC, works with C-suite executives to improve processes. I asked Scap to comment on his experience working with CIOs interested in DevOps.
"IT organizations must integrate their development and operations teams to stay competitive in today’s business environment. In order to successfully implement a structured DevOps environment and use it to increase the flexibility and efficiency of the delivery and support of IT services, CIOs should strive to remove organizational silos to enable collaboration and effective use of their organization’s capabilities and resources."
Are there different areas that are important to the success of a DevOps initiative?
"CIOs should embrace metrics that focus on measuring the customer satisfaction of continuous delivery of solutions and services instead of measuring the increased volume of deliveries. Similarly, instead of measuring the quality of software development by the number of software problems found, they should strive to improve the process by determining where in the development process the software problem was introduced."
"CIOs should embrace the DevOps strategy that facilitates continuous service delivery and integration, and leverage the methodologies that expedite solutions from the development through operations stages. They should concentrate their DevOps efforts on increasing the value of their production applications by improving the delivery of application solutions in ways that enhance the end user experience."
Read more about DevOps in our five part DevOps Roundtable Series.
