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Tag: gary gruver

  • Jenkins World Speaker Gruver on the State of DevOps

    Jenkins World Speaker Gruver on the State of DevOps

    Santa Clara, California, will be home to the biggest gathering of Jenkins users in the world Sept. 13-15. This year’s Jenkins World conference will feature Gary Gruver, DevOps expert and author of “Leading the Transformation.” We had a chance to connect with Gary and hear his thoughts on the state of DevOps, continuous delivery and what he thinks the biggest trends are.

    devopsy.kinsta.cloud: As continuous delivery (CD) and DevOps continue to be adopted and advance, what specifically should we be on the lookout for?

    Gruver: I believe the biggest opportunity for breakthroughs in CD and DevOps is in large, complex, tightly coupled systems. Most DevOps implementations have been with smaller teams—whether in small businesses or large businesses—that allow these small teams to work fairly independently. Currently, these are the fastest moving, most innovative DevOps implementations. That said, I feel the biggest opportunities for positive business impact are in the larger, more complex systems just because they are currently much less efficient. This is why I think we will see the biggest improvements in those environments, and innovations and updates will track towards these advancements.

     devopsy.kinsta.cloud: How are technologies like containers becoming a bigger part of an automated pipeline?

    garygruverGruver: Containers make it easier and less complex to move to infrastructure-as-code, which is one of the big breakthroughs of DevOps. This space is moving quickly because of how important environment consistency is to companies. It will be interesting to see how this space evolves over the next few years.

     devopsy.kinsta.cloud: What advice do you have for enterprises just starting their DevOps journey?

    Gruver: Segment the applications down into different deployment pipelines to make the problem as small and less complex as possible. A deployment pipeline should include all the applications that have to be qualified and deployed together because of their architectural coupling. Then, optimize each deployment separately based on DevOps principles instead of forcing everyone to implement all the same DevOps rituals like was common with previous agile transformations. This is a topic I can spend quite a bit of time discussing and thinking about, as you can read more about in my book!

    devopsy.kinsta.cloud: What roadblocks still exist for companies trying to adopt DevOps?

    Gruver: Finding executives that are willing to engage with their organizations and lead the DevOps transformation is a solid roadblock. It is still new concept in larger enterprises that require the multiple acceptance from members of the C-suite.

    devopsy.kinsta.cloud: What do you find most exciting about the current state of CD?

    Gruver: It is finally scaling to large organizations where the majority of the code that is being worked with exists and therein are the biggest opportunities I see for improvement. This means that DevOps is being introduced right up the chain, extending it from just the realm of IT.

    devopsy.kinsta.cloud: What do you want Jenkins World attendees to know about your keynote?

    Gruver: I am planning to provide a framework you can use to help align your large organization on your DevOps journey. My objective is for DevOps practitioners in organizations of all sizes to walk away with tips for implementation and a better understanding of best practices to apply to individual DevOps journeys.

    devopsy.kinsta.cloud: What does being “all-in” on DevOps mean to you?

    Gruver: To me, being “all-in” on DevOps means that everyone one is committed to the DevOps principles and is working together to continually improve the development and delivery processes. In other words, they have the same approach to achieving the same goal.

    devopsy.kinsta.cloud: Where do you think DevOps adoption is today?

    Gruver: Mature in unicorns and just getting started in large enterprises; hence, there are so many opportunities!

    To learn more about Gary Gruver and his approach to DevOps, please visit his homepage. While you’re at it, download a sample of his latest book, “Leading the Transformation.” Interested in learning more about Jenkins World or attending this year’s Jenkins World? Click here and register with the code JWDEVOPSCUST to receive a 20 percent discount.

  • Puppet Labs Launches Annual State of DevOps Survey

    Puppet Labs Launches Annual State of DevOps Survey

    Puppet Labs has announced its 5th annual State of DevOps Survey. In the past five years, we’ve surveyed more than 20,000 technical professionals around the world, spanning all industries and companies of all sizes. We’ve captured a tremendous amount of data about how IT performance, culture, technical practices and organizational performance intersect.

    What sets our survey apart from the many other surveys out there is that it’s science-based. Yes, there is a science to creating surveys and analyzing data, and there’s also an art to translating all of that amazing data into something that’s useful to the industry at large.

    This year, we’ve partnered with DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA), founded by our friends Gene Kim, Jez Humble and Nicole Forsgren. If you’ve been following the DevOps conversation for a while, their names should be familiar. Together, our goal is to help advance the DevOps community and help technology organizations improve their practices through rigorous scientific research.

    Through our analysis, we’ve been able to quantify IT performance. We know that high-performing IT teams deploy code 30 times more frequently, with 60 times fewer failures, and they recover 168 times faster. We also know the factors that predict IT performance—technical practices such as continuous delivery, cultural norms and lean management—which in turn predict organizational performance.

    This year’s survey seeks to dive deeper into each of these areas, while also shedding light on new areas of research, including:

    • ROI of IT performance. What can you expect from your investment in DevOps? Our goal is to understand how throughput, stability and quality affect the bottom line.

    • Security and compliance. What role do security and compliance play in a DevOps environment? Some people see security as a roadblock to DevOps, but we want to investigate if it has to be that way.

    • Quality. So you’re deploying code faster than ever. What’s the quality of that code?

    • Containers. How do containers affect IT performance? Are they making IT’s job easier?

    • Lean management. Last year we found that lean management practices such as limiting work in process and creating and maintaining visual displays showing key quality and productivity metrics predict IT performance. This year’s survey looks at additional lean management practices to help us better understand what it really means for a technology organization to go lean.

    The survey seeks answers to questions we get all the time and we believe they reflect the broader concerns of the DevOps community. Your experience matters and we hope you’ll share it by taking the 2016 DevOps Survey. It should only take about 20 minutes, and when you complete the survey, you’ll be entered to win some great prizes (see the official rules), including :

    Please take the survey and share it with your friends and peers. Together, we can make IT better for everyone.

    About the Author/Alanna Brown

    unnamedAlanna Brown heads up DevOps research and go-to-marketing strategies at Puppet Labs. She also works closely with Puppet Labs product owners and engineers to develop a roadmap and support for Puppet on Windows.

  • New DevOps Book: Leading the Transformation

    New DevOps Book: Leading the Transformation

    When I first started researching DevOps and was looking for early enterprises that were successful but not “Unicorns” I was introduced to Gary Gruver. At the time Gary had led the transformation at Macy’s and he was talking about it at several DevOps events.  For me it was strong proof that DevOps could work beyond the native-cloud companies and start ups. Gary had made it work at Macy’s and at HP before that. In fact Gary had co-authored a book on his experience at HP, “A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware (Agile Software Development Series)”

    I was lucky enough to meet Gary around then and have stayed in touch since then. He left Macy’s and was consulting helping companies transform from waterfall to agile and DevOps.  I knew that he was working on another book.  Well finally I am happy to report that Gary’s new book is now available:

    leading the transformationLeading the Transformation: Applying Agile and DevOps Principles at Scale. Gary is actually co-author of this along with Tommy Mouser. The forward is by Gene Kim and the book is published by Gene’s IT Revolution.  I have just started reading it, but knowing Gary and from what I have read all ready, it should be a must read on your DevOps book list.

    As a special treat for readers of devopsy.kinsta.cloud, we are very happy and proud to offer our readers a sneak peek at this exciting new book. At the bottom of this article is a link to a PDF with the first two chapters of the book free for you to read! Of course we are sure that once you read the first two chapters you will head over to IT Revolution and buy the full copy.

    BTW, don’t take our word about how good Gary’s book is.  Here is what Jez Humble, VP Chef, author and DevOps leader said:

    “If you want to understand how to lead a Continuous Delivery or DevOps transformation in your company, there’s no better book than this. Concise, practical, and based on hard-won executive experience, this book is essential reading for every IT executive.”

    So click the link and enjoy!

    Leading the Transformation

  • DevOps Golden Rule: Writing More Code for Test Than For Production

    DevOps Golden Rule: Writing More Code for Test Than For Production

    Continuous improvement can help completely turnaround a staid IT organization into an innovation machine. But without effective test automation, that transformation is a non-starter. So says Gary Gruver, who has led DevOps journeys both at HP and Macy’s and now works as a consultant guiding other organizations through his firm, Practical Large Scale Agile.

    Last month at IBM InterConnect, Gruver gave audience tons of great big-picture advice on leading DevOps from the top of the food chain. But perhaps one of the best takeaways when drilling down into the details was his emphasis on test-driven development.

    “It needs to be reliable, it needs to be stable, it needs to be maintainable. i would say test automation is something that’s the most important if you’re going to transform your  organization,” Gruver said. “And it’s one of the things that’s most often done wrong. If you do it right it’s extremely valuable, if you do it wrong it’s going to be a maintenance nightmare.”

    He provided real world lessons he learned from his stints at Macy’s and HP, explaining, for example, a situation at HP where unstable tests and unstable codes on trunk had kept the team from checking in code for four days. With a $2 billion business “breathing down my neck,” Gruver admitted he was getting antsy at that point and found out that the instability prompted them to add even more tests to the process.

    “So we weren’t getting any better because no code was making it in to get fixed and what we really needed is a process that lets the good code in and keeps the bad code out,” explaining that his team eventually settled on gated commits. “That’s where if the code doesn’t pass the system tests it needs to for red build, then it doesn’t make it into SCM and doesn’t make it on to the trunk.”

    Meanwhile, when he got to Macy’s he was told there were 1,000 automated tests ready for use. But when he started marrying those tests with the burgeoning continuous delivery team, they found not a single one worked reliably enough to depend upon. He recommended to the audience to take a look at the architecture philosophy’s put forth in Jeff Morgan’s Cucumber and Cheese, which helped in his work at Macy’s, where by the end of his stint the IT department was running over 5,000 automated tests several times a day, versus 1,300 every 10 days.

    He explained that he’s a firm believer that quality assurance should be brought together with the architects to make sure the automation framework is sustainable for the long haul.

    “Get your lead architect on the development side to engage with your lead on the quality assurance side and think about how to architect your framework for your test automation where its maintainable,” he said. “If not, you’re going to die under the weight of test automation.”

    If done right, an organization will very well likely write more code for test than for running its product.

    “And that’s not a bad thing,” he says. “You’ll find when you write good test automation it forces you to write better code.”