Leading Devops practice and principle adoption

This research, undertaken in highly structured software-intensive organizations, outlines challenges associated to agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles adoption. The approach collected data via a series of thirty (30) interviews, with practitioners from the EMEA region (Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Georgia, Greece, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, UAE, UK), working in nine (9) different industry domains and ten (10) different countries. A set of agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles, which organizations choose to include in their DevOps adoption journeys were identified. The most frequently adopted structured service management practices, contributing to DevOps practice adoption success, indicate that those with software development and operation roles in DevOps-oriented organizations benefit from existence of highly structured service management approaches such as ITIL®

Scaling agile on large enterprise level – systematic bundling and application of state of the art approaches for lasting agile transitions

International audienceOrganizations are looking for ways of establishing agile and lean process for delivery. Many approaches exist in the form of frameworks, methods and tools to setup an individual composition for a best fit. The challenge is that large organizations are heterogeneous and diverse, and hence there is no "one size fits all" approach. To facilitate a systematic implementation of agile and lean, this article proposes a transition kit based on abstraction. This kit scouts and bundles state of the art methods and tools from the agile and lean community to align them with governance and compliance aspects of the specific enterprise. Coaching of the application of the transition kit ensures an adequate instantiation. The instantiation handles business domain specific aspects and standards. A coaching governance ensures continuous improvement. An example of the systematic application of the transition approach as well as its scaling is demonstrated through its application in the Volkswagen Group IT

Exploring the link between leadership and Devops practice and principle adoption

Our research focuses in software-intensive organizations and highlights the challenges that surface as a result of the transitioning process of highly-structured to DevOps practices and principles adoption. The approach collected data via a series of thirty (30) interviews, with practitioners from the EMEA region (Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Georgia, Greece, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, UAE, UK), working in nine (9) different industry domains and ten (10) different countries. A set of agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles were identified, which organizations select as part of DevOps-oriented adoption. The most frequently adopted ITIL® service management practices, contributing to DevOps practice and principle adoption success, indicate that DevOps-oriented organizations benefit from the existence of change management, release and deployment management, service level management, incident management and service catalog management. We also uncover that the DevOps adoption leadership role is required in a DevOps team setting and that it should, initially, be an individual role

Challenges and Success Factors of Scaled Agile Adoption – A South African Perspective

Agile methods and Agile scaling frameworks have become a solution for software-developing organizations striving to improve the success of software projects. Agile methods were developed for small projects, but due to their benefits, even large software-developing organizations have adopted them to scale their software projects. This quantitative study was undertaken to deepen the researchers’ understanding of the critical success factors and challenges of Scaled Agile from the South African perspective. A simple random sampling method was used. Data was collected with the use of an online structured questionnaire and the response rate was 70%. The results reveal that customer satisfaction remains at the epicenter of adopting Scaled Agile methods. Lack of top management support remains the major challenge in adopting Scaled Agile. The results reveal some notable changes when it comes to the most adopted Agile scaling framework

Relationship between mature software engineering practices and agility practices

This paper reports on research work on Argentinean software development organizations. The analysis pro-vides insights on the profile of the companies regarding the usage of agile methods and software engineering practices trends, their motivations, and drivers. The conclusions can be used to understand what drivers facilitate the understanding of bonds between both in order to increase their competitiveness in domestic and off-shore markets.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Agile and software engineering, an invisible bond

The bond between agile practices and Software Engineering practices is clear and apparent for sea-soned practitioners with experience on the operation of high maturity development environments, yet it’s often ig-nored on the domain bibliography where most hybrid approaches are adopted. This article reviews a sensible sam-ple of the bibliography to confirm that trend and develop a map between what long established Software Engineer-ing practices and concepts stated as agile foundation principles. Previous research efforts are integrated into rein-forcing which aspects of an agile-based project need to be addressed with priority to protect the additional value yield by the usage of these methodologies.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Agile and software engineering, an invisible bond

La relación entre metodologías ágiles y las mejores practices recomen-dadas por la Ingeniería de Software es clara y evidente para los profesionales experimentados en la operación de ambientes para desarrollo de alta madurez. Es sin embargo a menudo ignorada en la bibliografía del dominio donde se tartan como si fueran enfoques separados. Este artículo revisa una muestra significativa de la bibliografía y confirma esta tendencia desarrollando un mapa de cuales son las practicas establecidas de Ingeniería de Software y los conceptos subyacentes que operan en las metodologías ágiles. Se integran esfuerzos previos de investi-gación para reforzar que aspectos de la gestión de proyectos basados en metodo-logías ágiles necesitan ser abordados con prioridad de manera que el valor adi-cional que las mismas generan resulte protegido.The bond between agile practices and Software Engineering practices is clear and apparent for seasoned practitioners with experience in the operation of high maturity development environments, yet it is often ignored on the domain bibliography where mostly hybrid approaches are adopted. This article reviews a sensible sample of the bibliography to confirm that trend and develop a map be-tween long-established Software Engineering practices on the one hand, and con-cepts stated as agile foundation principles on the other. Previous research efforts are integrated into reinforcing those aspects of an agile-based project which need to be addressed with priority in order to protect the additional value yield by the usage of these methodologies.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Lean-tekniikoista apua Citrix-asiantuntijoille

Erilaisten organisaatioiden kasvaessa isommiksi, on johtamismenetelmistä tullut erityisen tärkeitä käytännössä jokaisella alalla. Tuoreempi ja erittäin olennaiseksi osaksi maailmaa kasvanut IT-ala on luonnollisesti etsinyt inspiraatiota perinteisempien alojen johtamismenetelmistä. Yksi näistä, Lean-ajattelu, on jalostettu japanilaisen autoteollisuuden mullistaneesta menetelmästä. Lean-ajattelusta onkin 90-luvun aikana kasvanut erittäin tunnettu johtamisfilosofia, jota on kuitenkin vasta myöhemmin alettu ottamaan käyttöön IT-alan organisaatioissa, muun muassa turvaamaan toiminta erilaisten ongelmatilanteiden varalta. Citrix on IT-alan yritys, joka on perustettu 1980-luvulla. He erikoistuivat alusta asti sovellusten virtualisoimiseen käyttäjien kevytpäätteille. Citrix-järjestelmät toimivatkin eräänlaisena liimana verkon, sovelluspalvelimen ja käyttäjän välillä. Tämän yhdistelmän takia Citrix-järjestelmät näyttelevät tärkeää roolia käyttäjien ongelmattoman käyttökokemuksen takaamiseksi. Samalla Citrix on verrattain haavoittuvassa asemassa, sillä verkon tai sovelluspalvelimen rikkoutuessa katseet kääntyvät helposti siihen. Tämän tutkielman osalta pyritäänkin selvittämään Citrix-asiantuntijoiden kohtaamia ongelmia ja Lean-ajattelun niihin tarjoamia ratkaisuja. Tutkimukseen osallistuneilta asiantuntijoilta nousi esiin useita erilaisia haasteita ulottuen useampaan eri organisaation tasoon, yksittäisestä käyttäjästä yrityksen kulttuuriin ja toimintatapoihin. Asiantuntijoiden vastauksista pyrittiin löytämään yhteisiä nimittäjiä, joiden perusteella niistä luotiin neljä erilaisiin haasteisiin liittyvää ryhmää; vähäiset Citrix-tiedot, prosessit, organisaation käytännöt ja viimeisenä Lean-ajattelun ulkopuolelle asettuvat haasteet. Vastausten laajasta skaalasta huolimatta osaan haasteista löytyi ratkaisuja Lean-ajattelun laajasta kirjosta tekniikoista. Ratkaisuista esiin nousi muun muassa ristiin opiskelu ja kahdeksannen, vähemmän tunnetun hukan väistäminen. Näiden kahden avulla on mahdollista ratkaista eniten huolta asiantuntijoiden keskuudessa herättäneet haasteet