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Tag: IT teams

  • Best Practices for Managing Remote IT Teams

    Best Practices for Managing Remote IT Teams

    With IT teams around the world adjusting to remote working while still struggling to maintain productivity and workflows, ensuring DevOps and Agile practices are in place has never been more important. And while typical DevOps professionals probably have significantly better remote desktop setups than most of their business peers, it’s how IT leaders manage these teams that will make all the difference. One way to approach this is by implementing database monitoring.

    Many DBAs and developers have been working remotely for months now, but as IT budgets grow tighter, they’ll need to do more with less. Ensuring DBAs have the ability to monitor the database from anywhere will be a core part of a continued successful remote working strategy. There are many reasons for database professionals to embrace remote monitoring, whether it’s migrating to the cloud, adapting to new challenges, keeping an eye on multiple instances in many environments or gaining fine-grained access to monitoring data.

    Success Remote IT Team Management

    Here’s a look at some best practices for remote IT teams.

    Easing cloud adoption woes: Cloud adoption is up significantly this year as development teams turn to it, particularly for greenfield projects. But with all of that data migration, database professionals are struggling with being able to monitor cloud-based servers alongside on-premises servers, and having a distributed team doesn’t make it easier. Adopting remote monitoring tools can simplify monitoring of the cloud—once you’re monitoring a remote database server it doesn’t matter where the server is. It’s impossible to say what might happen next month or even next year, but as companies grapple with these cloud challenges, advanced remote monitoring tools can help monitor disparate, hybrid environments from one screen.

    The need for non-production environments: Non-production environments such as UAT and staging are often used to spot problems before deploying software to customers, but it becomes a little more challenging when you can’t simply walk down to the server room, where they’re often housed, and clear up any issues that arise. With remote working and moves to the cloud, consistent database monitoring can help make it much easier to manage non-production servers so that developers can review the systems, understand any potential problems and fix the issues. And although monitoring non-production environments is a good start, errors can still make it into production environments. Setting up database monitoring by configuring the right set of alerts for any environment ensures that teams are always aware of the most critical errors as they’re occurring, rather than finding out after systems become unresponsive.

    Managing access control: When people usually think of “access control,” most immediately jump to the idea of security. But access control is about much more than just keeping people out—it can also mean letting the right people in. Providing developers with read-only access to monitoring tools lessens the load on production DBAs. While the DBA team is handling infrastructure-level tasks, developers can focus on improving the performance and stability of their applications if they have access to monitoring data. Managing this correctly with your developers and DBA teams ensures they have better insights into overall application performance and how their changes affect it.

    Identifying Agents of Change: There’s real value in identifying one or more persons to be an Agent of Change in your organization, especially when working to improve database engineering and delivery. An Agent of Change is adept in both their role as a developer and as a communicator. It’s usually someone from the data processing team who can move into one of the front-end teams and seamlessly offer help both in designing short-term changes and in helping evolve the architecture of the system. Agents of Change are invaluable when you have established silos between development and operations, particularly when there are limited healthy lines of communication between the groups. They work to bridge that gap and can help make a big difference, even for teams working remotely.

    Bringing it All Together

    Remote awareness is critical to keeping development and production environments healthy, but visibility into all of your databases and systems doesn’t need to disappear when nobody is in the office. And considering there’s no telling when people will be able to get back to a normal office routine, remote monitoring becomes much more important. Regardless of location, by actively monitoring databases remotely, companies can spend more time and attention on innovation and freeing up their team for other activities. Look for web-based tools that can monitor hybrid environments seamlessly and allow your software and database teams to do this so that problems can be spotted and resolved quickly. Managing non-production environments and access control are good ideas, as are finding and appointing a team leader who can serve as the liaison between your remote teams. After all, with clearer paths of communication present, your teams can be more productive, too.

  • Survey Shows Most IT Teams Adapting in New COVID-19 Normal

    Survey Shows Most IT Teams Adapting in New COVID-19 Normal

    A survey of 122 IT professionals published today by SolarWinds in advance of IT Pro Day next week, finds that while IT teams are enjoying greater respect within their organizations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly a third (31%) admit there’s a need to rethink internal processes to better accommodate rapid change.

    Overall, nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents said despite contending with challenges such as reduced budgets, greater decision-making responsibilities and longer hours, they were instilled with a new sense of confidence in the wake of the pandemic. Just under half (46%) also said they feel empowered to bring more ideas to the table, while 58% said they now feel more prepared to succeed in similar unexpected situations. Another 29% reported feeling prepared to manage change but require additional resources, training and support. In addition, 40% said they believe they will now be involved in more business-level meetings.

    Patrick Hubbard, head geek at SolarWinds, said in the wake of the pandemic it’s clear the historic divide between IT and the rest of the business has narrowed considerably. The challenge will be maintaining that closer alignment in the era of the new normal, added Hubbard.

    In general, IT teams have proven themselves to be more adaptable than might have been anticipated prior to the pandemic. Many respondents also reported working longer hours due to stretched teams (29%), more responsibility (28%) and decision-making requirements (28%). However, only 22% of respondents said they were experiencing job-related stress.

    However, it’s also clear organizations will need to revisit their IT strategies as workers continue to work from home well into 2021. It’s also clear that while many employees will eventually return to the office, many of them will also be working from home more frequently. As such, the need to create digital workflows spanning a highly distributed workforce will require new approaches to networking and security, among other things.

    Just over a quarter of IT professionals (26%) said it was necessary to learn new skills to support their organizations’ transitions to a remote workforce. However, it would appear additional training is required. Systems management (55%), network management (50%), security policy and compliance (43%) and hybrid IT monitoring/management tools and metrics (28%) were identified as the top skills in need of development. Nearly half of respondents said they received the training they needed to learn these new skills, but (25%) said they are still waiting for training resources to be made available.

    That skills shortage may prove to be especially crucial when it comes to security, which Hubbard noted is usually the last thing to get funded. In the rush to enable remote networking, for example, many organizations did not pay much attention to the need to secure endpoints that were frequently accessing cloud applications, which aren’t protected by a corporate firewall.

    It’s still not clear to what degree the pandemic may drive more organizations to adopt best DevOps practices to enable IT teams to become more flexible. However, it’s apparent to all that when it comes to IT in post-COVID-19 era, there has never been a greater need for speed.

  • Sparkhound Unveils Pop-Up Service Desk

    Sparkhound Unveils Pop-Up Service Desk

    Sparkhound, a provider of managed IT services, has launched a Pop-Up Service Desk designed to augment the existing capabilities of internal IT teams during a major transition.

    Chris Kimmel, managing director for managed services at Sparkhound, said the new service was created to help organizations cope with transitions such as migrating to Windows 10 or deploying a major upgrade to an electronic medical record system.

    In both cases, Kimmel said it’s not uncommon for internal IT service desk personnel to be overwhelmed by requests for support. In some instances, organizations have decided to rely on Sparkhound, a provider of IT services that are available 24/7, to handle all the calls specifically relating to Windows 10 until such time the volume of support calls declines to a point where they can be handled by the internal IT team. In other cases, he said, Sparkhound has acted as a concierge that triages support calls before passing them on to a professional services team that has been contracted to implement an EMR system.

    IT teams can also “white-label” the Pop-Up Service Desk service in a way that makes the Sparkhound team appear to be an extension of the company’s internal IT service desk.

    Tensions between internal IT teams and managed service providers (MSPs) such as Sparkhound are long-standing. Many internal IT teams fear they will be replaced by an MSP. However, while Sparkhound continues to offer a wide range of managed IT services, Kimmel said none of the customers who have trialed Pop-Up Service Desk have opted to replace their internal IT staff.

    While most MSPs have an advantage in terms of technical expertise because of their ability to invest more in IT automation frameworks, many organizations still prefer to hire full-time employees to manage IT because they typically develop a closer relationship with end users. Less clear is to what degree managed services are less expensive to employ as an operational expense versus the fully loaded cost of hiring an internal IT team. The Pop-Up Service Desk allows organizations to strike a middle ground between those two extremes at times of stress.

    Kimmel said the services provided by Sparkhound are based on the ITIL framework. More organizations served by Sparkhound have yet to adopt best DevOps practices for building and deploying applications. However, Kimmel said the MSP will be prepared to make that transition if and when it comes.

    In the meantime, a chronic shortage of all types of IT skills is pushing more organizations to at the very least consider managed IT services as an alternative to hiring an internal IT team. The global managed services market is forecasted to be valued at $376 billion by 2025, representing an 11.7% compound annual growth rate.

    IT professionals who would prefer to see the management of IT remain in-house are under constant pressure to show more value. Alternatively, many IT professionals can simply opt to go to work for an MSP.

    Regardless of the route chosen, however, it’s apparent most internal IT teams can’t keep pace with the rate of change now occurring across the IT landscape. Whether it’s maintaining security or simply upgrading applications, few internal IT teams are going to have all the skills required to succeed, so like it or not, managed services are now a permanent part of the IT ecosystem.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Untapping the Potential of DevOps, Part 4: Tips for Launching a DevOps Team

    Untapping the Potential of DevOps, Part 4: Tips for Launching a DevOps Team

    DevOps has become a hot strategy for IT teams across just about every industry—and for good reason. DevOps is built around increasing the velocity of the development pipeline, and in businesses where time to market is a key to success, it’s easy to imagine why DevOps has gained traction. While the tools and processes put in place are certainly essential, building the right team—from top to bottom—is maybe the most important factor for getting the most out of a DevOps strategy.

    To help get the most out of DevOps initiatives—and to set teams up for long-term, sustained success—here are some basic tips for creating the team that will take development pipelines to new heights.

    Change Is Coming

    When kicking off a DevOps strategy, it’s clear that changes will be made. But, the extent of those changes may be underestimated. To get the most out of DevOps, it’s not just about changing up the tool stack or switching up meeting styles. The mindset around DevOps is at least as important as the processes. To squeeze the most juice out of a DevOps initiative, make sure the company and leadership understand what all DevOps entails and create the understanding that it requires a lot of internal changes to the existing culture. Getting leadership on board with the cultural changes that come with DevOps will go a long way toward driving success.

    Talent Talks

    This may go without saying, but it is imperative to build a team with the right skills for the task at hand. It can be easy to try to shoehorn people into roles, especially when trying to move quickly. But make sure to set individual talent up for success—both employees and the company will benefit. This means having DevOps engineers and leadership with the skills—whether they are technical, interpersonal or something else—to perform the work required.

    Get Your Budget Right

    DevOps helps create efficiencies. Leveraging automation, maximizing value delivery and getting products to market faster are all key tenets of a good DevOps strategy. But that doesn’t mean you should skimp on the important items. Like any project worth doing, it’s a lot easier (and more successful) when it is budgeted properly.

    Make sure to have an adequate budget to create a team, perform the work and support the appropriate environments and infrastructure to perform the DevOps tasks and initiatives that need to be done. Doing this in advance will save a lot of headaches down the line and help develop a clear understanding of what is really needed to get from point A to point B—and help keep spending in line while the DevOps train is moving.

    It’s Not Just About IT

    Remember there are two parts to DevOps—dev and ops. It is often easier to get the developer side to buy into the strategy—after all, many of the tenets of DevOps speak to the technical teams. But overall buy-in is necessary for cooperation and involvement of all teams needed to achieve goals. That means development and operations—plus other departments within the organization, such as sales, marketing, the executive team, etc. Getting everyone on board with the process and rowing in the same direction will fundamentally change the mindset around how to design and deliver products. When the whole team is moving in lockstep, that’s when success can really be visualized.

    By keeping the thoughts above in mind when planning a DevOps journey, organizations can help ensure teams are organized and set up for long-term success. But remember, every organization is different and has different requirements. What may work for one organization may not for the next.

    When considering the potential of DevOps for your organization, it can be tempting to dive right in and skip some important considerations for setting up the initiative. But the key points listed above are tried-and-true and carry weight, no matter the size or scope of business. Having a leader who acts as a champion for DevOps efforts is essential, so IT professionals tasked with leading the organization into the DevOps transformation should arm themselves with these tips to be better positioned for success.

    — Jonathan Fries

  • How Can IT Admins Maintain a Grip on Secure Access?

    How Can IT Admins Maintain a Grip on Secure Access?

    Today’s IT environment is evolving at a rapid pace, requiring production environments to be highly scalable and elastic and requiring faster software release cycles and cloud adoption.

    As a result, there’s a broad move toward Docker containers to make software deployment faster, easier and more consistent across computing environments. Bundling an application and its supporting code, libraries, settings and assets into a single container enables the speed and flexibility that today’s business environment demands.

    At the same time, many large enterprises are also experimenting with creating internal startups, or labs, that are given latitude to innovate, housed under the company umbrella and resources. Similarly, some companies are hosting startup-like “innovation incubators,” where developers are empowered to think and work like startups, within the relative safety of the corporate environment. They can quickly test new ideas, using the “fail fast, succeed fast” startup mentality, without incurring the usual risks of an independent startup.

    It’s a new agile way of working that companies, in the race to innovate, are widely embracing. In fact, more than half of Fortune 500 companies have some version of these startup-like efforts housed within at least one business unit. 

    Replicating the unstructured movement of a small–say, six-person–startup is difficult to do within an enterprise environment. Nevertheless, the rapid pace, combined with the flexibility to innovate, is what the vast majority of developers desire today. But, it does mean that enterprises’ IT environments have to be ready to adapt.

    IT Administrators Under Pressure

    Developers on these innovation teams are often given the freedom to select the tools they’d like to work with. That can–and often does–include Docker containers, which adds to the complexity of the IT environment. 

    The environment that fuels developer innovation also creates additional concerns for the IT administrators supporting them. Developers can work so rapidly–creating hundreds of new servers each day–but often only do the bare minimum in terms of security. How can IT admins maintain secure access in the face of these changes? How can they keep track of who has access to what application and what data, when those applications and data are constantly changing? That’s a massive issue when it comes to compliance.

    As containers make enterprise IT environments even more complex, IT admins are under pressure to carefully manage access without slowing down development. The more complex the environment becomes, the more important it will be to have a holistic view of all of their underlying infrastructure, including the hybrid or multi-cloud environments that support platforms such as Docker and Kubernetes.

    Meanwhile, the enterprise executive team, often the CISO, overseeing both the development and IT departments is hard at work trying to satisfy the requirements of both groups. Of course, it’s in the business’s best interest to innovate and explore. But, all that innovation means nothing if the business is no longer secure and open to compliance concerns.

    Below are three steps executives should follow in order to keep their developers and IT admins happy.

    Consider the Developer Experience for Secure Access

    Off-the-shelf single sign-on solutions (SSO) may be good enough for business employees who need to access Outlook or Salesforce, but they aren’t robust enough for privileged IT users, like developers, who need to access secure environments. 

    Privileged access management (PAM) software sprung up to serve IT users, but even this isn’t a perfect solution, because traditional PAM tools are often too clunky to use, nonintuitive, or hard to configure. A bad user experience simply encourages developers to bypass PAM however they can, which is a compliance risk.

    Businesses need a way to deploy secure access very quickly, so they can holistically manage access to critical IT resources without slowing down development. That means choosing secure access solutions that are built with the developer’s needs in mind.

    Lean PAM solutions prioritize automated, instant access to secure IT environments with the click of a button, combining the convenience of modern SSO solutions with the security and fit of a PAM solution. If sysadmins have a great PAM user experience, they’re more likely to play by the rules. 

    Opt for Role-Based, Time-Bound Access

    To maintain the highest levels of security, access must be controlled on a role-by-role basis. Your rock-star in-house developers should be able to quickly spin up access to core IT infrastructure whenever they need it, while a third-party development contractor should only have limited access to those same resources for the time in which they are working in your environment–and no longer than that. 

    This is where we begin to see time-limited, credential-less secure access, enabled by ephemeral certificates, start to play a role in privileged access management. Ephemeral certificates are short-lived access tokens that are automatically generated and automatically expire–so access is granted only for as long as it is needed to authenticate and authorize privileged connections. 

    In other words, privileged access is able to move toward a just-in-time model, eliminating the need for passwords and clumsy credential management. IT users no longer need to authenticate using credentials at all–instead, based on predefined roles and security policies, they are granted access to resources only as and when required.

    Ultimately, ephemeral certificates help streamline access processes, ensuring that IT admins don’t have to worry about revoking access when access roles or needs change.

    Make It Easy on the IT Admin, Too

    Speaking of IT admins, it’s important to consider their experience, too.

    Admins want to give staff the best tools for the job without compromising corporate security. The friction between admins and developers begins when the developers feel that the tools admins force them to use are slowing down their work. In reaction, admins become frustrated when more unmanaged, unmonitored tools enter the corporate network, requiring more of their time to implement, configure or remediate if something has gone wrong.

    The right technology solutions make life easier for IT admins, too. That means secure access solutions that can be installed and deployed within a single day–not weeks–and that introduce automated routines and maintenance to eliminate manual work in the access management process. Accountability, in the form of session monitoring and logging, is also important. 

    Ultimately, it’s about giving IT admins some distance. They can retain the oversight they need to feel comfortable about organizational security, without needing to be on top of every single secure access decision in the organization. At the same time, developers retain the autonomy they need to work quickly without feeling like they’ve got someone looking over their shoulder. 

    By enabling rapid development, while keeping a watchful eye on enterprise security, enterprises can satisfy both their developers and IT admins, and ultimately, the business’s bottom line.

    — Markku Rossi

  • How Enterprise IT Teams Can Win the Hearts of DevOps

    How Enterprise IT Teams Can Win the Hearts of DevOps

    Take your average IT team in a young enterprise in the midst of skyrocketing growth. There’s a good chance the workflows they’ve used since the outset can’t keep up with the ever-increasing volume of requests from the business. In the minds of some DevOps and app development teams in particular, the IT department of the scrappy startup has gradually become the department of slowing things down.

    As a result, tasks that once took hours, such as provisioning resources (e.g., virtual machines, workloads, XaaS), can now take days. For agile DevOps teams, this is essentially a showstopper: They need access to resources when they need them–not when you deem them worthy. Anything else feels like a drag on development and the business.

    Giving DevOps What They Want

    IT needs to make access to resources as seamless as possible for DevOps teams. The ultimate goal is self-service. DevOps should be able to instantly gain the access they need to the resources they need, without the back and forth of ticketing systems, or the complexity of provisioning resources on totally unfamiliar systems. And with a user interface that only serves up the resources relevant to the requesting team, DevOps can easily manage and provision resources on demand.

    Maintaining the Controls the Enterprise Needs

    Of course, it’s not about just giving DevOps access to whatever they want when they want it. You need real controls in place.

    For example, without the right guardrails, DevOps teams can easily spin up more virtual machines than they need and let them run without limit. To give you an example of how bad it can get, Gartner estimates shadow IT accounts for 30-40% of IT spend, from idle resources consuming costs by the minute.

    Through blueprints, repeatable ways to orchestrate and automate provisioning of resources, this self-service nirvana to eliminate shadow IT can be a reality for admins. Since blueprints contain set rules and builds sanctioned by IT, they’ll always be able to accurately and securely deliver the right resources, without users going rogue and out of compliance with taking provisioning into their own hands.

    For instance, IT can determine who can order servers, workloads and XaaS—along with quotas set for spend and resource usage—to who can approve fulfillment of those orders. This way, resources are never over-provisioned and a real tally is kept as to exactly who is using which resources across the business. By automating routine approval processes and applying the proper conditions to user requests, the errors and time associated with manual provisioning are eliminated and users can get what they need without going at it alone.

    Control Doesn’t Have to Come at the Cost of Delight

    In the absence of the right tools and the right processes, IT can start to seem like a slow-moving gatekeeper to DevOps teams, who need resources fast. Consuming resources needs to be easy and quick for agile developers who need to ship products to market fast. In this sense, the self-service IT model plays greatly to agility: By presenting only the resources needed for DevOps teams, and orchestrating automated processes, resources are provisioned in seconds versus the days involved with an IT ticket. Additionally, with built-in, automated permissions and role-based controls, IT teams can still protect the enterprise, as they should, but at the same time delight users.

    Take for example an organization as big as Home Depot, with over 385,000 employees: By rolling out a self-service approach to provisioning resources, they were able to completely reign in VM sprawl and at the same time make their developers’ lives easier with a provisioning time decreased from two weeks to just under 20 minutes.

    Indeed, IT admins can win the hearts of DevOps and at the same time win back their role as an enabler of enterprise-wide innovation. By empowering users with intuitive self-service to quickly get resources when they need them, IT becomes the heroes that enterprises–and their DevOps teams—need.

    — Brian J. Kelly

  • IT Leadership Still Struggles to Satisfy the Business, Deliver Innovation

    IT Leadership Still Struggles to Satisfy the Business, Deliver Innovation

    If a recently published report by Salesforce is to be believed, the rest of IT leadership is starting to catch up with what IT leaders have long known: Business technology needs to be customer experience-driven. This year’s report, Salesforce’s second annual broad look at the state of enterprise IT found that the line continues to blur between business leadership and IT leadership, driving innovation is the imperative, and IT is focused more than ever on providing business value.

    According to the “2017 State of IT Research” report, based on a survey of about 2,200 technology leaders worldwide, 71 percent of organizations reported they are shifting efforts from technology being a cost center to becoming a “value-based service brokerage over the next 12 to 18 months.”

    “Instead of being viewed as a cost center, IT is emerging as a value-based service brokerage,” the report states. “The old model of IT as a maintainer of the status quo infrastructure is giving way to a new mindset, in which IT adds innovative capabilities that bring a competitive edge to the business. Seventy-four percent of IT leaders say the business teams they partner with believe IT is the biggest driver of business success.”

    How are IT teams gauging their success? They’re measuring success based on satisfaction scores. A sizable 74 percent of IT leaders said that such business satisfaction scores are a leading key performance indicator, IT teams are only delivering on 56 percent of their customer-facing initiatives. With such less-than-flattering results, it’s no surprise that 67 percent of IT teams said that improving their collaboration with other lines of business is a high priority—second only to improving security policies and practices in priorities.

    This inability of some enterprises to execute on business initiatives couldn’t come at a worse time, as every company is tasked with becoming as agile and competitive as possible during a time of critical business disruption. According to the survey, Top IT teams are three and a half times more likely than underperforming teams to say it’s a critical priority to innovate for industry disruption.

    It’s important to note that Salesforce didn’t quantify the performance of the enterprise teams surveyed; instead, the respondents self-identified as underperformers, moderate performers or high performers against their competition.

    One of the biggest challenges IT has when it comes to innovating is the sheer amount of time they must spend keeping up on the basics, such as infrastructure. “Even with all the talk of prioritizing innovation, IT leaders still spend more time on tasks that keep the lights on (54 percent of their time, on average). A majority of IT leaders are moving to automate routine tasks so their teams have more time to innovate,” Salesforce wrote.

    According to the survey, about half, 52 percent, said that legacy technologies are a challenge to meeting strategic objectives.

    Finally, moving at speed remains a challenge as well. “Sixty-seven percent of IT leaders say improving the speed of development cycles is a high priority. And while speed is an important success metric, it’s also a top challenge. To improve, IT leaders are exploring options such as low-code solutions and citizen development. Some concerns—namely, security and insufficient governance or training—still hold IT teams back from putting business users into the driver’s seat,” Salesforce wrote.

    Where do they stand now? Just under half, at 47 percent, can deploy an app in under a month. Based on my reporting that’s quite an improvement in deployment time from just a year ago, and I think what we are seeing here are the fruits from agile, DevOps, continuous delivery, and low-code development platforms. And the half of enterprises that can’t deliver at speed are going to find themselves deeper and deeper down a competitive hole.

    — George V. Hulme

  • Puppet Launches 2017 State of DevOps Survey

    Puppet Launches 2017 State of DevOps Survey

    It’s that time of year again!

    We at Puppet have kicked off the 2017 annual State of DevOps. survey. Now in its sixth year, we have once again teamed up with DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA), founded by our dear friends Gene Kim, Jez Humble and Nicole Forsgren, to survey technology professionals worldwide in an effort to better understand the health and habits of organizations adopting DevOps. We’re pleased to see that the report now serves as the de facto gauge for the DevOps community to find out how IT organizations are doing and how they can improve.

    One of the most critical aspects of the survey is that it manages to translate the processes between technical practices and choices into actual business outcomes and helps organizations understand the real benefits of DevOps adoption. Through analysis of each year’s survey responses, we’ve been able to quantify IT performance. From last year’s report, we know that high-performing IT teams are pulling away from the pack in terms of throughput. They deploy 200 times more frequently, have 2,555 times faster lead times, have a three times lower change failure rate and recover from failures 24 times faster.

    Survey Says …

    This year, we’re interested in learning more about infrastructure architecture patterns within organizations. We’re not just asking how the services are designed, but we also are curious to see if teams are free to move at their own pace and if they are largely self-sufficient. Can they easily make large-scale changes to their architectural design?

    We’re asking questions about team experimentation and whether teams are able to evolve the design of their architecture as they work and if they are required to interact with a lot of people across the organization. One of the things to emerge from the agile and DevOps movements is that the more we can enable teams to work quickly and self-sufficiently, and increase speed without reducing quality, the better it is for everyone.

    This year, we expect to see proof that high-performing IT teams are those who have been enabled to operate with a much higher degree of autonomy, and that their quality metrics remain stable or even exceed those of high-performing IT organizations. We also expect the findings to confirm that early DevOps adopters are still seeing exponential benefits compared to their colleagues who haven’t yet embraced DevOps. The longer your organization has been adopting DevOps practices, the more it becomes muscle memory and reinforces positive behavior within them, which has unparalleled benefits. As any IT professional working in a large company knows, there’s an awful lot of waste and inefficiency and we’re not anywhere near peak DevOps penetration. With each passing year, survey results show DevOps adoption is a key contributor to enhanced productivity and efficiency. We expect this year’s results to be no different.

    We’ll be publishing the results and our analysis in June, and have no doubt it’ll be worth the wait. Stay tuned!

    About the Author / Nigel Kersten

    Nigel Kersten is CIO of Puppet. He came to Puppet from Google, where he was responsible for the design and implementation of one of the largest Puppet deployments in the world. At Puppet, Nigel was responsible for development of the initial versions of Puppet Enterprise, and has since served in a variety of roles, including head of product, CTO and CIO. He has been deeply involved in Puppet’s DevOps initiatives, and regularly speaks around the world about adoption of DevOps in the enterprise and IT organizational transformation.