March 20179 Agility is as important for Ops as it is for Devthe legacy waterfall method of new service delivery still effective in today's fast-moving app economy. Expensive, multi-year projects based on waterfall development practices often miss the mark because technology and customers' needs change significantly from when projects were first scoped.You can still do big projects with Agile but you do them in small chunks. Keeping project work manageable allows you to easily adjust as needed. Testing and validating your solution with your customers on a continual basis ensures you are providing the solution they need.Step 2: Build a Project Team that Includes Customers and Establish TrustDon't let perfection be the enemy of progress. Perfect, complete plans can delay projects getting off the ground, but you do need enough clarity to start and test. As the results emerge, fine tuning will take place. Iterative testing and customer validation is important to the agile process and results in a solution that really addresses a customer need.Also, having a single management system that is shared and visible to all stakeholders is critical. Plan, track and measure your work across teams, with real-time visibility via a single source of truth.Step 3: Limit Your WIP Set reasonable expectations for the functionality to be delivered by any task team. Avoid feature creep.Focus on the highest value/smallest chunks of work with the greatest business benefit, sometimes called the MVP (minimal viable product). Remember that the goal is to solve a customer problem, so having your customer on the team keeps the focus on track.Step 4: Automate Deployments and Release ManagementTake the time to ensure effective deployment of any new product or service. This is a key function of the Ops role and an essential measure of Ops success.Automated deployments go a long way towards delivering a project on time and without mishaps that can result from a casual hand-off. The requirement to specify components and prerequisites, all parts of an automated release process, eliminates finger-pointing and leads to smooth delivery.Also important is an automated rollback capability, just in case. Many automated deployment solutions include the rollback feature for a quick resolution of a failed deployment.Step 5: Share and Evaluate the ResultsOnce a new app or service is up and running, it is not the time for Dev and Ops to declare victory and go their separate ways. Maintain shared visibility and transparency to enable the collaboration and continuous delivery of DevOps.Developers will see for themselves how their app is performing and shared visibility will greatly benefit troubleshooting as they gain experience with the app.Conduct a project retrospective to incorporate lessons learned into future efforts. Even if the process wasn't perfect, by delivering value in smaller chunks and fine-tuning along the way via customer feedback, you minimized risk and enabled quick corrective action, both keys to success. Realizing the Full BenefitBy incorporating agile practices into IT Operations, your organization can begin realizing the full benefits of an agile transformation. With the Dev and Ops teams operating in sync you achieve the real benefit of DevOps- continuous improvement of apps and services.In addition, shared visibility between Dev and Ops enabled by a single management system goes a long way in eliminating trouble spots. The bottom line is that you can more quickly deliver the services and apps that customers want and value. CA Technologies, incorporated in 1976, builds system software oper-ating in mainframe, distributed com-puting, virtual machine, and cloud computing environments. It is based in Tokyo, Japan. Bill Talbot
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