HOW to build a DEVOPS dream team
The fast pace of new technologies is changing business environments drastically. Organizations have to race faster and smarter with limited resources. And the ever ultimate goal is achieving better business results.
As a consequence, IT teams have to break down the silos between development and operations to meet these high business requirements.
But one driver is definitely not sufficient to win the race. And neither is one pit stop team. Because racing is a team sport. Where each team member performs assigned tasks and communicates with his fellow members.
The same applies to IT teams. They as well have to work together to solve business problems and maintain IT systems.
So, what about winning the race with DevOps?
– Dries –
FOUR STEPS TO WINNING THE RACE WITH DEVOPS
Thinking workshops
We kick off with a number of design thinking workshops. These involve your developers, operators, analysts and project managers. Together, we sort out how they work today. Next, we analyse what their ideal work situation would look like for tomorrow. As a result, we write a detailed DevOps transformation plan. In this plan, we precisely describe the actions that are necessary to achieve the required cultural and technological changes.
Choice of tools
To achieve the necessary technological changes, you need a set of DevOps tools. Of course, we are happy to help you choose the tools that best fits your IT environment. All our expertise is bundled in our ‘DevOps Monkey’ reference framework. This offers an overview of best practices and tools. The tools that we use are de facto standards. The reference framework is an integrated tool set with open source products*.
Implementation
The next step is to effectively implement the chosen DevOps tools. Our experts thoroughly enable your IT team to start automating small repetitive tasks. This is an iterative process that helps them to become more and more confident as they gain experience with the DevOps tools. Gradually, this approach results in the automation of more complex tasks. The ultimate goal is automation by design.
Managed services
As the automation level of your IT environment rises, it becomes more cost-efficient and even more cost-effective to delegate the IT operations to a managed services provider. We are also happy to help you control your IT cost and reduce the labor cost. In addition, we quickly implement new available technologies to run your IT environment. All this offers you the opportunity to focus on your core business.
* These products include:
- Code storage: GIT versus GitHub or Bitbucket
- Configuration management: Puppet or Ansible (both offer open source products and enterprise alternatives)
- Automation and orchestration: Jenkins versus Bamboo
- Monitoring: ELK versus Splunk