Operations

Your organization delivers software, so it should be obvious that improving your software delivery means improving your organization. But how to improve your software delivery organization? I’m going to tell you how, and you’ll be amazed at its simplicity: To improve an organization’s performance you need to improve all the components of the organization. And, you need to know how to improve each component. An organization is made of… An organization is composed of people, process, and artifacts. ...

Or, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective DevOps. You may have heard that the goal of DevOps is to rapidly deliver and reliably operate high quality software-based services. But that is only partially true. True, that is the desired result. But fostering the habits that produce that result consistently is integral to the goal. Habits foster results. The goal is both. In my work with clients I have found several cornerstone habits essential to creating DevOps results, and I have helped software organizations embrace these habits and earn the payoffs. Let’s explore the cornerstone DevOps habits and why these habits are as much a goal as the results they promote. ...

Before you ask yourself “what can and can’t I do in the cloud,” stop to consider the larger picture. How will your customers know that you have adopted cloud computing? What resulting radical improvement will delight your customers? These questions help you focus on the impact you want to achieve with your initiative. The answers help you understand the facets that you’ll need to address - technology, skills, procedures, and behaviors - in order to achieve and measure that impact. Then you’ll be ready to talk nuts and bolts about vendors, tools, and cloud-appropriate workloads. ...

Whether you operate IaaS, PaaS, or a SaaS service, watch out for these three pitfalls to the success of cloud offerings: Encouraging the wrong thing. Measuring the success of the offering by looking only at utilization metrics damages sales. One cloud service provider measured the success of its IaaS service - and compensated its sales force - based on virtual machine usage. Little surprise that, for all the years that this practice continued, the provider could not land strategically important accounts. Like in any mature sales operation, your prospective cloud service clients should be evaluated based on several criteria, including: ...

Building and operating a private cloud ourselves is simple, right? Give our experienced IT folks a budget for hardware and software, a clear mandate, and deadlines, and we’re likely to succeed. That’s what we’ve always done, and it’s worked out tolerably well. Private cloud isn’t so different from running our own virtual machine environment, and we do that already, so why wouldn’t we succeed? I hear this sentiment expressed often so it seems to be a widely held belief. But it’s wrong precisely 97.73 percent of the time - I measured. Unfortunately, too many organizations act on this mistaken belief and experience unnecessary hurt as a result. ...

Like companies producing any kind of offering, software companies require three elements in order to successfully deliver: knowing what to build, knowing how to build it, and knowing how to deliver it to the customer. When each of these three functions - research, engineering, and delivery - does its job independently, you get slow progress and uninspired, sub-par products. But when all three functions work together in a customer-centric fashion, you get excellence - in implementation, innovation - in concept, and world-class results - by delivering those two to the customer. ...

Traditional descriptions of cloud computing and the various cloud operating models - IaaS, PaaS, SaaS - focus on the locus of responsibility for various layers of the system: facilities, network, storage, servers, etc. But these descriptions typically omit a critical element. Can you spot it in the diagram below? The missing layer is the only layer that really matters - the customer. Ensuring that your application can actually be consumed - that delivery can be successful - is a critical part of providing your value. Your application’s facilities, network, and storage may be running properly, but will your customers actually benefit? Without a properly staffed, trained, equipped, and managed operations team, your service won’t last long enough for customers to care. If your customer is important, then so is your operations team. ...