Metrics to Power DevOps

Editor's Notes

• #2: So let’s begin…
• #27: Connect Teams, Processes, and Tools This conceptual graphic will help prove context on how TeamForge enables globally distributed software development before diving into further details. The key differentiating TeamForge product pillars are represented by the sides of the triangle – i) Open ALM Platform, ii) Flexible Process Templates, and iii) Collaboration Architecture.   Open ALM Platform TeamForge enables individual teams to integrate the desired mix of TeamForge tools with their favorite point tools to accelerate development, be innovative, and be responsive to their business needs. This is empowered by the TeamForge ability to have: Integrated ALM and Collaboration Tools – Communication by all lifecycle stakeholders is critical At the workgroup level, TeamForge uniquely provides users with a completely integrated set of i) development tools and ii) collaboration tools in a single platform, which enables all users –technical and business alike - to collaborate on the ALM activities from concept to deployment. This integrated set of ALM and collaboration tools is critical in today’s highly agile development world where timely communication is required for all stakeholders – business owners, the software development team, the support and deployment teams, and even users, - to collaborate on the development and delivery of the application. Contrast this to other vendor provided or homegrown environments where disconnected development tools and collaboration tools (e.g., Microsoft, HP, IBM, Atlassian) require the cost and error prone configuration of various point tools. Lifecycle Traceability – Workgroups require solutions that provide traceability throughout the ALM lifecycle TeamForge provides an integrated tool chain which spans the range of tools from requirements gathering and planning through delivery and deployment. More critically, as all of the ALM and collaboration tools are tied to a single database, TeamForge enables the complete traceability of the software lifecycle artifacts from concept to deployment, enabling rapid association of team members, tools, design data and decisions, and issues/tasks. All of this visibility and traceability is also guided by role based access controls as well as real-time alerts and monitoring – which ensures that just the right subset of information will be made visible to the right team members in real time. This traceability across the history of the development lifecycle is just not possible with the disconnected tools provided by most other vendors. Open Integration – Workgroups need to be able to interface with an ALM platform using their favorite tools and environment TeamForge builds upon CollabNet's long history in open standards, open source development communities and agile software development tools. The TeamForge platform enable users to integrate their favorite open source, commercial, and home-grown point tools into the software lifecycle, thereby accelerating tool adoption as well as enabling users to use specialized tools required to perform their ALM tasks.   In summary, workgroups are very satisfied with TeamForge as it enables them to integrate the right mix of TeamForge tools and development processes with their favorite point tools to accelerate development and be responsive to their business needs. As a result, workgroup teams have been able to easily onboard TeamForge, and cut their development times in half due to the employment of agile and response development approaches. However, the question that remains is how can an enterprise scale this success across their organization in a uniform, repeatable and measureable way? This question of global scalability is answered by the other two sides of the triangle in the graphic. It’s critical that these TeamForge architectural capabilities are well understood by your management and architecture teams if you want to achieve the scale achieved by CollabNet’s customers.   Flexible Process Templates – Enable company-wide tool chains and process consistency CollabNet provides an organization with the ability to define and publish “development through deployment” tools, processes, data models and reference architectures that can be reused by other teams. These out-of-the-box templates allow new workgroup teams to provision common and repeatable workflows within seconds. This codification and provisioning of repeatable templates enable: Company-wide Development Velocity – New workgroups will be up and running in minutes versus spending time and money to building and maintaining their own error prone tool chains and processes which can take weeks and months to get right, if ever. Management Measurement – Management will have consistent group reporting visibility enabled by common artifacts and development processes to measure and compare development velocity, thereby driving organizational transparency and improvement Application Integration – Enabled by the data consistency and common development tools chains, organizations can more rapidly integrate application SW built by various workgroups and subsequently trace and fix development issues.   Flexible Process templates provide an organization with “process reuse” – the sharing of tools, processes and methods to drive uniformity, measurement and integration across a company. But even more critical to driving organizational development velocity and business responsiveness is “SW IP reuse”, which is enabled by the 3rd side of the TeamForge triangle.   Collaboration Architecture The TeamForge Collaboration Architecture drives global visibility and organizational improvement across projects by allowing the mapping of your business lines and enterprise technology architectures into categories, groups and projects across your organization. For instance, a Bank may set up hierarchies of business line categories/groups/projects such as Consumer Credit, Commercial Banking and International Trading, technology categories such Company Wide SOA Apps, or process categories such as Application Release Automation and Release Workflow Standards. This Collaboration Architecture, unparalleled by other industry tools, enables global organizations with: Global IP Reuse: Enabled by the ability to search, discover, collaborate and reuse software IP built by other teams in the organization. Note that search and discovery is controlled down to the project and user level by role-based access controls, enabling organizations to govern usage according to their Intellectual Property strategy. Dramatic improvements in application software productivity gains are possible with TeamForge as the centralized Collaboration Architecture enables unparalleled global leverage of i) code (lifecycle artifacts), ii) community (the people behind the code who are ready and willing to help), and iii) context (the historical communication and context regarding design decisions). Along with the implementation of agile software development approaches at the workgroup level, this “cutting and pasting” or collaboration of other teams software IP is the primary driver of operational productivity and the reason why some CollabNet clients claim 50-70% company-wide time-to-market acceleration. Global Standards: the ability to collaborate and implement common technology and process standards, such as application release automation packages and workflows, will have a dramatic effect on improving overall release cycle velocity, software quality and costs. For instance, several of CollabNet’s clients such as Deutsche Post and others, claim a 50% reduction in the time it now takes to go from concept through deployment across 100s of projects and 1000s of developers, with an increase in SLAs and a development-through-operations cost reduction that is reaching the high 10s of millions of dollars per year. For the first time, these firms have an end-to-end view and DevOps processes provided by the insight and collaboration of the TeamForge Community Architecture. Global Reporting – the combination of consistent standards and organized project hierarchies combined with the TeamForge reporting capabilities and a CollabNet provided reference architecture will provide executives and managers with unprecedented reporting and visibility across their company – in real time.   In summary, TeamForge will uniquely provide your company with both workgroup agility and organizational wide governance. Workgroups can, within reason, utilize a mix of TeamForge tools with their favorite point tools to be agile and responsive to the individual teams’ business needs. At the same time, the TeamForge Flexible Process Templates and Collaboration Architecture allow organizations to scale their workgroup success across their organization in a uniform, repeatable and measureable way.