DevOps practices change the way teams approach projects. DevOps puts emphasis on speed and agility, rather than a linear planning process and software building that moves from one team to the next.
IT leaders must adapt to a new way to manage projects in the DevOps environment.
HowDevOps Changes Project Administration
Key stakeholders meet regularly to discuss project timelines, deliverables, and other aspects of project management. The operations team can start to work once the code is completed by the development team. In some cases, the code is passed to the security team. This leads to a lot of meetings and a lot of “waiting time” while other phases of a project are completed.
This “waterfall approach” is a top-down methodology that can cause software builds to take months or even years before they are deployed.
Software builds can be done quickly and efficiently in DevOps. Updates and new releases are performed on a continuous integration(CI) or continuousdelivery (CD). The fixes are deployed as soon as possible and in a seamless fashion.
Janeiro Digital’s technology architect Josh Collins explains how businesses want to complete projects faster and more accurately. Although DevOps processes and technologies are important to these goals, they do not replace the need to know exactly what you are doing. To keep projects moving across teams and dependencies, strong project management skills are essential.
DevOps is about delivering a minimum viable product (or MVP) that includes the core features necessary for deployment. Based on user feedback, new features can be added as soon as possible.
It’s all about agility in DevOps. Throughout the process, Operations and development teams work together. Large projects are broken down into micro-services or chunks. This allows multiple pieces of code to be developed at once. Each chunk is compiled and tested every day. It’s sent to the main repository when it’s complete. Everyone works from the same version.
There are fewer formal meetings. They are replaced by hands-on discussions.
How IT leaders must evolve
In the DevOps culture, it’s all aboutgetting to working software as rapidly as possible and makingcourse-corrections or updates whenever necessary. IT leaders must also be able to adapt in order to manage projects.
Information moves quickly. Code fragments change quickly. Software testing takes place every night. IT leaders need to be able to see what’s happening in real time. Your information’s value and validity can change or expire in minutes or hours. It is vital that team members have access to reliable, real-time information at all time.
This includes monitoring and managing your network and system continuously, as well as responsive ticketing and control. This can be done either internally or remotely using an RMM (Remote Monitoring Management) solution. You need to be proactive to spot problems before they become serious problems that could slow you down.
A Continuous Loop
Consider the DevOps cycle a continuous loop.
Build.
Plan.
Integrate.
Deploy.
Operate.
Feedback.
Rinse and Repeat.
IT leaders will need to be in closer contact with customers and key stakeholders to receive feedback. This is more important than traditional builds. This feedback loop is critical to the development process as well as meeting the needs of customers or stakeholders.
End users not only get their initial releases faster, but also have continuous integration with new features they want. This is a significant advantage over the traditional linear approach to project management, as end users may need or request things they didn’t know they needed.
The project is never finished. Although there may be an end date, in a CI/CD environment that means that the feedback loop is still open, it does not mean that the project is finished.
