devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: pace layered

  • Enabling Collaboration Across Diverse Cultures

    Enabling Collaboration Across Diverse Cultures

    Welcome back to this series, ‘Enterprise DevOps Q&A.’ In my last post, I talked about breaking down the barriers between dev and ops. Now, I want to address another, very typical question from a global enterprise about managing cultural differences in a globally dispersed enterprise.

    Q. Being part of a large org, our biggest issue seems to be a global culture clash. How can we address the issues of geographic location and culture that are a big obstacle for us?

    Large multi-national enterprises, like CA Technologies too, often have major data centers in multiple geographies in North America, EMEA, Asia and Latin America. Despite so much data center consolidation and cloud migration, cross-geo cultural issues remain a major issue.

    For example, in Israel the holy day is Saturday, while in the US and Europe it is Sunday, so it can be hard to lock down a release window. In Japan it is common to work long, late, and on the weekends, while by contrast some French labor agreements specifically limit the workday, so ‘crunch time’ may not have the same meaning in both locales. In the USA, staff may only get ten days annual vacation, and not even take all of it, while much of Europe takes all of July or August off, so consistent teaming can be a challenge.

    To help you address these geo-cultural challenges, here are some approaches I have seen my customers adopt including:

    A local approach

    A local approach, such as co-locating devs and ops to service business users in a common geographic or cultural area allows teams to adopt DevOps practices within cultural norms. This may mean imposing a difficult structural change, but it can also be very effective. See my last Q&A for more on this approach.

    A ‘core team’ approach

    Some businesses have assigned one or two team members from each cultural area to represent their teams in a common virtual or ‘core’ DevOps transformation team. Representatives on the core team can translate (sometimes literally) for their ‘home’ teams, and bring unique culture back to the core team. This can raise process/hierarchy barriers, but when done well can also help to break them down.

    A vertical approach

    I have seen a handful of global businesses implement DevOps vertically, with devs and ops teams, often geo-located, acting as service providers to individual business units, rather than the whole company. This is best suited for organizations that are already organized by business unit, but it ensures teams have common focus on specific and shared business problems.

    A ‘known good process’ approach

    Speed the flow of software delivery by focusing on refining and documenting specific processes all teams can rely on.  Each geographical or cultural team can define and share their own ‘known good process’ (cf. the Visible Ops handbooks), and share the interfaces to those processes, so they can continue to optimize their own activity, but work seamlessly with other teams at handoff points.

    A process automation approach

    Even better is if each team can encode their processes in automation to make it possible for anyone, anywhere, using any language, to execute those processes remotely. Even small improvements matter, so even task automation can help get closer to a cross-cultural, ‘enterprise-wide,’ DevOps approach.

    A ‘pace-layered’ approach

    Different business services have differing levels of acceptable risk and tolerance to change. Mobile app dev, for example, is more tolerant of risk than, say, accounts receivable. Rather than changing the world (literally!), instead build a DevOps approach into a specific service delivery team, even in a single geography. This ‘pace-layered’ approach is working very well for some of the world’s largest enterprises.

    A tactical approach

    Similarly, you do not need to fix all your service delivery problems at once. In a global enterprise, pick one big winner at a time instead. Identify constraints in the test process, a roadblock in QA, a provisioning delay, a problematic release process, a monitoring gap, or a broken feedback loop, and connect cross-cultural staffs from similar functional teams to solve specific shared issues.

    A technology-assisted approach

    Regardless of the approach, technology can assist. Global tools with multiple language support can enable common experience and terminology. Telecommuting can give regional staff a virtual presence in team meetings. At CA Technologies, we are trialing remote-controlled robotics to give staff a physical avatar in meetings from anywhere across the globe.

    Other approaches?

    As with most of DevOps, there is no definitive prescription, and I am sure there are many other approaches that can work. If you have ideas or experience to share, please post in the comments below, and let us all know how you have or could address these cultural and geographic barriers.

    And remember, if you have questions about Enterprise DevOps, let me know and I will try to answer them for you. If I can’t answer them myself, I will find someone who can! Please leave your questions in the comments below; hit me up on Twitter at @AndiMann; or send me an e-mail to me at andi.mann@ca.com.

  • Your End Users Want Everything: Here’s How to Give it to Them

    Your End Users Want Everything: Here’s How to Give it to Them

    In today’s application-centric business environment, the end user is king. Whether we’re talking about being first to market with the next big thing or adding new capabilities and features to an existing application, so much of our current development time, resources and energy is spent on trying to meet the needs of end users.

    It’s not difficult to see how we got here. The proliferation of social media and mobile and other connected devices has empowered end users to make their voices heard – and whether their opinions are positive or negative, we have no choice but to thoughtfully consider them if we want to produce market-leading applications.

    At this point, you might be thinking, “How is this different? End users have always been king.” You’re right, but the difference between then and now is that we used to build roadmaps and select features based on what we thought they wanted. Now, thanks to social forums, user reviews and other avenues for collecting feedback, we know exactly what they want. The trick, of course, is finding ways to deliver on that knowledge quickly and at a high level of quality without breaking the budget.

    Taking Agile to the Next Level

    Agile was one of the first methodologies to incorporate user feedback directly into development. You know the drill: choose a small set of capabilities to develop, release the build to a select group of users, collect and incorporate feedback into another build and continue iterating until the application is ready for production.

    One of the goals of DevOps – which CA defines as best-practice application delivery methods that improve communication, integration and collaboration between development and operations – is to enable Agile-like development practices that incorporate end-user feedback from after an application is on the market.

    We talked a bit earlier about collecting such feedback. Whether you read forums, poll customers or even collect usage data directly from the application, you know that getting the feedback isn’t the hard part – it’s incorporating that data into the development lifecycle in a way that meets your speed, quality and cost requirements.

    Starting with Pace-Layered Approach

    When it comes to being nimble in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and reacting to the marketplace, one of the challenges many enterprises have is that their IT infrastructure is complex, comprised with legacy and modern technologies that have been assembled over time. According to a major analyst firm, the key to speeding development in such environments is to segment the infrastructure into layers: namely, systems of record, systems of differentiation and systems of innovation.

    For systems of record, think foundational technologies like mainframes that have typically lengthy development periods, versus systems of innovation, such as mobile apps or cloud services, that have a lighter footprint and are more flexible. Once you’ve categorized your components into these layers, you’ll be able to react to customer feedback most quickly with your systems of innovation – and there are two types of tools to help you do just that.

    Application Delivery Tools That Speed Development and Delivery

    With a service virtualization tool, you can simulate constrained or unavailable systems across the SDLC, allowing developers, testers and performance teams to work in parallel for faster delivery and higher application quality and reliability. In other words, service virtualization enables you to decouple your systems of innovation from the slower moving systems of differentiation and record, so you can quickly deliver on customers’ requests, even amidst all the change and complexity in your IT environment.

    To further accelerate the SDLC, a release automation tool can automate complex, multi-tier release deployments through orchestration and promotion of applications from development through production. This tool is your assembly line, driving the application from code development to production, so you can get new innovations into your customers’ hands faster than ever before.

    Addressing end-user feedback is an ever-evolving, constantly moving target. But if you follow Gartner’s pace-layered approach and plug your systems of innovation into the right application delivery tools, it’s a target you’ll always be able to hit.