In the era of DevOps and Agile, continuous delivery holds the power to drive digital transformation. This interplay has changed how software companies work and foster innovation. High-velocity software delivery, feature responsiveness, team productivity and competitive advantage are increasingly becoming critical for DevOps and CI/CD success.
Indeed, attention to DevOps has branched out from just developers, IT, operations and infrastructure teams to stakeholders, leadership and management.
Let the data speak for itself
A recent survey by 451 Research , Voice of the Enterprise: DevOps 2019 states:
“Beyond developers and IT operations, security is one of the key stakeholders that are critical in DevOps implementation (44%), followed by central IT admin (38%), management and leadership (25%), line of business managers (23%) and so on.”
But, how do you measure the success of CI/CD and DevOps? Both internal DevOps implementations and customer-facing software releases require substantial validation to ensure that you are doing well.
Again, according to 451 Research:
“42% of the surveyed organizations use quality metrics (defect rates, vulnerabilities) to measure or prove the business value of DevOps implementation. On the other hand, 41% of companies use business-level metrics (customer satisfaction, user experience, traffic, etc.) to measure the DevOps effect.”
However, the success of DevOps-driven delivery shouldn’t be limited to traditional IT metrics. It should also consider the value that ties technical outcomes to business results. Taking a modern approach to software delivery not only amplifies value creation throughout the release pipeline but it also helps to scale DevOps.
Do you have a software delivery management (SDM) strategy in place to deliver high-quality products faster? Are you prioritizing DevOps to streamline the entire development and delivery workflow?
Software Delivery Management is the key to CI/CD and DevOps success
As we say at CloudBees, you cannot improve what you cannot measure.
Recently, we talked to some of our customers, including a leading bank in Canada, and found some interesting insights. According to the bank, despite being ahead in its sector in terms of DevOps implementation and modernizing dev and delivery practices, it will lose the edge in the market if it doesn’t have better visibility into its product pipelines.
Organizations with mature DevOps practices still battle to mitigate friction between teams, tools, people and processes. Indeed, developers are often concerned with questions like:
Am I building the right feature or capability for the customer?
Where does the feature or capability fit in the product?
Why am I building this product? Who is my customer/user?
These blockages occur due to fragmented data and the use of multiple standalone tools, instead of an integrated solution that establishes connectivity all across the organization.
Engineering teams need to connect to business objectives and customer requirements in the same way as product and marketing teams.
To be able to function and flow in a seamless, connected manner throughout the organizational hierarchy from stakeholders to product, dev, QA and ops, your software delivery should revolve around the following key pillars:
Common data and information around software delivery processes shared in a consolidated view;
Universal insights derived from the shared data;
Enablement of a unified connected processes for software delivery orchestration; and
Along with the prior three pillars, the fourth pillar brings you to the place where all your functions are collaborating and focused on delivering value.
These four pillars form the foundation of what we call software delivery management, helping you make software delivery a core business process. CloudBees’ platform for SDM extends this picture by providing a unified view of product builds, pipeline repositories, contributors, release frequencies and more. It collects data from your different enterprise tools (e.g., GitHub, JIRA) and surfaces insights that make sense to you and your team.
The CloudBees platform for SDM acts as a software delivery visibility and orchestration layer that sits on top of your DevOps toolchain, bringing together all the information from scattered sources on a single dashboard, so that your cross-functional teams are on the same page. The platform offers end-to-end visibility into your software development and delivery lifecycle from a product and engineering perspective. You can also gain visibility into things like:
How well your teams are performing based on efficiency metrics;
Figure out efficient ways of rolling out a feature with the help of the Rollout feature flagging module; and
Define product policies as recommended by recommendations engines.
With this one-stop dashboard, you get to know the features under development, the development or delivery stage of your products and issues that need to be addressed. Such contextual information in one place makes it easier to establish a complete and useful feedback loop.
To connect your distributed organization and deliver the right product at the right time, join the CloudBees Preview Program .
Additional Resources:
Watch this webinar and get more information about the fundamentals of software delivery management.