Bob Aiello - Agile Application Lifecycle Management: Using DevOps to Drive Process Improvement

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Using DevOps to Drive Process Improvement

Bob Aiello and Leslie Sachs

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936588

Copyright 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-321-77410-1
ISBN-10: 0-321-77410-8

Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at RR Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
First printing, June 2016

In loving memory of:

Bobs mother and grandmother, two exceptional women who
encouraged him to embrace all of lifes challenges and develop
an inner compass for the surest path forward,

and

IT expert and dear friend, Ben Weatherall, a pillar in the CM
community who was always eager to share his best practices
and tirelessly promoted the value of a modified agilescrum
development methodology. As an editor, I appreciated and
chuckled along with our readers at the many zany characters
he would weave into his articles for CM Crossroads. He was
proud of his involvement with both professional associations,
such as the IEEE and ASEE (Association of Software
Engineering ExcellenceThe SEIs Dallas-based SPIN Affiliate),
and social and charitable organizations. An enthusiastic
resident of his Fort Worth, Texas, community, Ben was an
active participant in his local Shriners Car-vettes group and
could be counted on to lend a hand whenever their presence
was requested at an event. Ben was a man of deep faith and,
over the years, we had many engaging discussions about
matters much more significant than configuration management.

Each of these three individuals was dedicated to balancing
a strong work ethic with an equal commitment to their
personal relationships; we cherish their legacy.

This is an amazing, and perhaps chaotic, time to be involved with the technology industry. The demand for talent, skills, and commitment to excellence has never been higher. Developing software and systems has become a remarkably complex task, with many factors affecting the success of the development effort. Learning new development frameworks and adapting legacy systems to meet the need for continued growth and flexibility require the modern IT professional to be able to press forward, while understanding the limitations imposed by earlier conditions. Teams may be located in one specific war room or distributed across the globe and frequently working at different hours of the day, with varying languages, cultures, and expectations for how they will operate on a daily basis. The project itself might involve writing complex application software or customizing a vendor package as part of a systems (versus software) development effort. The competition for specialized technical resources motivates many organizations to allow flexible work arrangements, including telecommuting along with choosing office locations convenient to attract local candidates. Technology professionals must often choose between the demands of high-paying (and often stressful) opportunities and trying to maintain a comfortable work-life balance. The Internet has clearly become the backbone of commerce, and companies are expected to continuously align themselves with growing Web capabilities in order to achieve and maintain success.

Successful organizations need to support complex technologies, most often with a significant Web presence. Even companies going out of business are expected to have a functioning Web presence capable of handling the peak transaction requirements of customers and other users. In practice, these complex development efforts necessitate effective processes and methodologies to meet both the demands of today and those that will surface in the future. This book will describe best practices for designing the appropriate application lifecycle management (ALM) processes necessary to successfully develop and implement complex software systems, whether your team is writing the code or customizing a system that you have purchased from a vendor. We will discuss both agile and non-agile methodologies to empower the reader to choose the best approach for your organization and the project that you are trying to complete. Our goal is to increase and enhance the readers understanding and ability to apply these principles and practices in your own environment. We often work in the imperfect world of having to support lifecycle methodologies that are not always optimal. In fact, we are usually called in when things get really bad and an organization needs to figure out how to incrementally improve processes to improve quality and productivity. In our opinion, the most effective methodology to emerge in the last decade has been agile.