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Tag: REP

  • DevOps: Using Games to Make it Practical

    DevOps: Using Games to Make it Practical

    This blog stems from my experience of being one of the earliest DevOps Foundation trainers of DOI and successfully completing 19 batches of DOI Foundation course in the last year.

    In retrospect of the year starting when TaUB Solutions signed up as a registered education partner (REP) of DOI, my opinion is this has been the best service portfolio offering for our customers and partners.

    There are few things that appeal best when it comes to DOI Foundation course and I can summarize them with the collective feedback I’ve received so far:

    “Challenges the preconceived myths and practices around DevOps with practitioner stories.”

    “Gives a holistic overview of philosophy behind DevOps. Philosophy should precede science and science should precede engineering.”

    “This course maintains the discipline to be truly advisory in nature by illustrating tool chain without recommending vendor-specific tools.”

    “The group exercises during the class and the facilitator practical insights helped us to put the aspects in to our organizational context of delivering products and services.”

    “We have never seen a course such beautifully designed that could be the first basic building block to know ‘Do’s’ and ‘Don’t’s’ of DevOps across application developers, infrastructure operations, project managers, infosec professionals and business leaders.”

    To enhance the overall learning curve of the audience, we put them in to the third day of experiential learning using the Phoenix Project Business simulation. The simulation was divided into four rounds and played with maximum of 12 people per batch. The Team was entrusted to achieve a target of $300,000 within four rounds and take the share value from $21 to $45.

    While the target milestones were clearly laid down at the beginning of game it was difficult for the teams to get hold of the situation due to various unknown parameters. It took them quite sometime to understand the different moving parts of flow, dependencies, business impact of projects, issues and features that came up in every round and make  appropriate choices and decisions.

    The teams experienced significant learning, sharing and collaboration over the four rounds and had loads of fun. One common feedback from the teams was for the game to be mandatory after every two-day DevOps Foundation course.

    The consolidated feedback after playing the DevOps business simulation after the two-day course:

    “It demonstrated that it is not easy to build collaboration, communication and integration. It takes time and there is a lot of patience and team work needed to make this a reality. The DevOps culture had to be nurtured through self-organizing teams with mutual respect, sense of pride and collective ownership to work toward a common goal.”

    “It gave a working knowledge on how ITSM and DevOps are complementing each other [Ex. Change Management and Improved Flow].”

    “The Principles of DevOps, namely the First Way (Improve Flow from left to Right), Second Way (Shorten Feedback Loops) and Third Way (Repetition through Mastery) was visibly evident over the course of four rounds.”

    “The speed of execution improved over the rounds using short feedback loops, continual improvement and applying lessons learned from previous rounds.”

    “It gave a good understanding of how different roles and responsibilities in the organization contribute to the overall success of the project.”

    Finally, the teams made over and above the required target of revenue and stock price. The winning moment was enhanced by the significant learning opportunity and ability to bond with diversified cross functional teams.

    The experience of playing the business simulation reinforced practical understanding of DevOps and also transferred skills that they could implement immediately at their workplace.

    About the Author / Suresh GP

    sureshSuresh GP is the Managing Director of TaUB solutions and Regional leader of BRMI (APAC). He has more than 15 years of experience in IT Service Management, IT Governance, Program Management and Organizational Change Management. He is regular blogger and International speaker at itSMF UK, itSMF Australia, itSMF USA, itSMF Finland and itSMF Norway. He is a Certified DevOps, Agile Service Manager, Business Relationship Management Professional, PMP, CGEIT, ITIL V2 Service Manager, ITIL V3 Expert,  ISO 20000 practitioner. He was awarded the ITSM contributor of the year by itSMF Singapore in 2013.

  • REP SPOTLIGHT: Daysha DevOps Solutions

    REP SPOTLIGHT: Daysha DevOps Solutions

    DevOps Institute: Tell us a little about your organization.

    Daysha DevOps Solutions: Daysha DevOps Solutions is a leading IT services and solutions company focused on helping companies to deliver their IT projects, transform their capabilities and ultimately to provide value to their customers and stakeholders. Our goal is to help organizations benefit from disruptive technologies, such as cloud computing, Lean/Agile software development and DevOps. We work across a range of industries including financial services, government, aerospace and high-tech.

    Daysha DevOps Solutions has partnered with the best-in-class product vendors to help organizations improve their ability to deliver software quicker, more frequently, with higher quality and less risk. Our DevOps solutions address all stages from project planning right through to deployment.

    DOI: What other topics do you teach or consult on?

    Daysha DevOps Solutions: Daysha bring proven expertise and consults across the wide domain of DevOps. Partnering with vendors such as Atlassian, App Dynamics, Chef and Zephyr, we offer expertise, training and tooling to support all aspects of the DevOps journey.

    Our IT Project Services team consists of experienced IT consultants including project managers, technical experts and business analysts. These can be deployed to help augment your existing IT teams or to provide specific project help, such as requirements gathering, gap analysis and process improvement.

    DOI: What type of interest in DevOps are you seeing in your region?

    Daysha DevOps Solutions: The interest in DevOps is growing, though to be honest, a lot of organizations are wary of it. That said, the same organizations are heavily rooted in traditional waterfall environments. There is a recognition that DevOps is the way forward but also a realization that cultures need to change first.

    DOI: How do you think that DevOps contributes to the business’ value stream?

    Daysha DevOps Solutions: Primarily by delivering value earlier and increasing the visibility of the IT contribution to the business stream.

    DOI: What topic area in DevOps excites you the most?

    Daysha DevOps Solutions: How business can get more value from IT. In other words, turning an IT department into a revenue-generating tool rather than a cost.

    DOI: Why should enterprises and individuals consider formal DevOps Training?

    Daysha DevOps Solutions: It is the first step, and a certified first step, on the road to improving the value of IT functionality.

  • REP SPOTLIGHT: Glenfis AG

    REP SPOTLIGHT: Glenfis AG

    1. Tell us a little about your organization: Based in Zurich, we offer consulting and training services since almost 20 years. We see ourselves as an independent enabler for the digital transformation, helping our customers getting fit for the digital age. To this end, we use the ‘Glenfis Principle’ – a holistic approach that, alongside theoretical knowledge, attaches particular importance to the mediation of practical skills (competence), which can be used to successfully and lastingly deploy this knowledge in the company or organisation (Implementation).
    2. What other topics do you teach or consult on? Topics include:
      – Cloud & Sourcing
      – Lean, Agile & DevOps
      – Value Chain Service Models
      – Training and Awareness (Cloud, ISO, ITIL, Cobit, Security, Agile, DevOps)
      – Security & Cyber Resilience
      – Change Enablement
    3. What type of interest in DevOps are you seeing in your region? As everywhere the interest of DevOps is rapidly growing, in Switzerland this in not different. For many it’s really to understand in a first step what DevOps is about and why it is relevant for them. In Switzerland we deal a lot with financial institutes with a high level of legacy and regulations, the question is often how to apply DevOps practices in such an environment.
    4. How do you think that DevOps contributes to the business’ value stream? DevOps is all about getting faster and better and this is how it positively influences the value stream. And DevOps does it in a holistic way by looking at the value stream end-to-end, from idealization to $$$.
    5. What topic area in DevOps excites you the most? Dev’s and Ops’ finally talking to each other!
    6. Why should enterprises and individuals consider formal DevOps Training? Before starting any change initiative, it is paramount that everybody gets a common understanding. This is especially true for DevOps, as it includes a wide range of Agile, Lean and ITSM practices. A training or special awareness sessions definitely facilitates this.
  • REP SPOTLIGHT: Xellentro Consulting Services

    REP SPOTLIGHT: Xellentro Consulting Services

    DevOps Institute: Tell us a little about your organization.

    Xellentro: Xellentro Consulting Services LLP is an emerging global provider of project, program and portfolio management, IT service management consulting and training services. Established in 2012, with headquarters in Bangalore, India, Xellentro works closely with its clients in tackling their most difficult organizational development challenges. Xellentro is a specialist organization that works with its clients to identify improvement areas and uses experienced consultants to enhance their business and development processes.

    While the realm of management consulting is vast and a number of firms provide a range of advisory services—starting from niche areas to general management domains—what differentiates us is our practitioner’s approach where we don’t limit ourselves only to advisory and rather prefer to stay on till envisaged benefits are realized and final outcomes are delivered. We bring in huge experience across industry verticals.

    DOI: What other topics do you teach or consult on?

    Xellentro: ITIL Foundation, Intermediate, Practitioner, Expert, Scrum Master and Product Owner, PRINCE2, PRINCE2 Agile, MSP, MoP, PMP, Lean Six Sigma

    DOI: What type of interest in DevOps are you seeing in your region?

    Xellentro: There is interest mainly from corporates.

    DOI: How do you think that DevOps contributes to the business’s value stream?

    Xellentro: This will be a good extension to the ITSM and with Agile being used everywhere, DevOps will have a great value.

    DOI: What topic area in DevOps excites you the most?

    Xellentro: The concept of having both Development and Operations working together is very important to finally deliver value to business.

    DOI: Why should enterprises and individuals consider formal DevOps training?

    Xellentro: To really understand the culture change and not focus on only the tools/automation part of it.

  • REP SPOTLIGHT: Soft2Solve

    REP SPOTLIGHT: Soft2Solve

    DevOps Institute: Tell us a little about your organization,

    Soft2Solve: We work with our customers in order to help them to enhance IT performance, saving cost, and training on best methods, process and practices, selecting at the same time the best solutions for Spanish Speaker Customers.

    DevOps Institute: What other topics do you teach or consult on?

    Soft2Solve: Cost savings in some specific areas as printing, energy.

    DevOps Institute: What type of interest in DevOps are you seeing in your region?

    Soft2Solve: The interest is initial. Most of customer are aware of DevOps initiatives, but they are still learning and looking how movement evolves and how they can set up the practices on their companies. Some of them already started with agile methodologies in development.

    In the other side, most of them already have ITSM practices implemented, based mainly in ITIL.

    DevOps Institute: How do you think that DevOps contributes to the business’ value stream?

    Soft2Solve: First, aligning IT with the business requirements in terms of speed, flexibility and agility. Then it contributes to analyze the bad processes in place and getting high cost savings when implementing DevOps practices. It also enhances the internal relationships between IT departments, as usually there is a big fight between them. Also, that impact on quality and speed to answer the business.

    DevOps Institute: What topic area in DevOps excites you the most?

    Soft2Solve: It is an IT answer to the business requirements to follow the business needs; meanwhile, being more productive and less expensive. In other areas, the automatization is a base for DevOps.

    DevOps Institute: Why should enterprises and individuals consider formal DevOps Training?

    Soft2Solve: Although sometimes the organizations do not know, any new change—especially culture changes—need internal sponsors as much as possible in the organizations. These people have to be trained by third-party independent people outside their organizations that are aseptic and not influenced from the internal existing culture and way of doing. These people will be the people that will support the change and the IT alignment with the business organization and will answer quickly to business requirements.

  • REP SPOTLIGHT: getITright

    REP SPOTLIGHT: getITright

    DevOps Institute: Tell us a little about your organization.

    getITright: With offices in Australia, South Africa, The Netherlands, Nigeria and Malta and a network of partners operating in 31 countries, we offer a bouquet of services to help organizations to:

    • Manage better
    • Lower risk
    • Perform better
    • Make better business and IT decisions

    Our service offering includes:

    • Training courses – Learning best-practice through our Partner Academy courses or network of training providers
    • Accredited IT Best practice course material – License our training material
    • Consulting – We use an agile approach for projects and a lean approach for operations when consulting and coaching.

    DevOps Institute: What other topics do you teach or consult on?

    getITright:

    • Service Management: ITIL®, ISO/IEC20000, Lean IT, Service Desk Institute
    • Governance of Enterprise IT: COBIT® 5
    • Project Management: PRINCE2®, PRINCE2® Agile, DSDM AgilePM®, Scrum
    • Information & Cyber Security Management: ISO/IEC27001, NIST Cybersecurity using COBIT5
    • Quality Management & Business Improvement: ISO9001, LEAN SIX-SIGMA
    • Risk & Continuity Management: ISO31000, ISO/IEC27005, ISO22301
    • Cloud Computing

    DevOps Institute: What type of interest in DevOps are you seeing in your region?

    getITright: DevOps awareness in the region is still low, but we see a steady increase in the level of interest in the topic.

    DevOps Institute: How do you think that DevOps contributes to the business’ value stream?

    getITright: It makes projects and business as usual faster, more stable, with less risk.

    DevOps Institute: What topic area in DevOps excites you the most?

    getITright: DevOps enables organizations to improve productivity and respond to change with less risk. It’s easy to adopt by organizations with mature ITSM practices in place.

    DevOps Institute: Why should enterprises and individuals consider formal DevOps training?

    getITright: Training ensures that all resources in the organization are in sync when implementing new practices like DevOps in an organization and ensures a cohesive approach that facilitates proper organizational buy-in and adoption.

  • REP SPOTLIGHT: ITSM Academy

    REP SPOTLIGHT: ITSM Academy

    DevOps Institute: Tell us a little about your organization.

    ITSM Academy: Since the early DevOps Days in the U.S., ITSM Academy has been involved in the DevOps community. We are proud to be the first DOI REP in The Americas. We offer DOI’s full line of training, in our open-enrollment public (virtual) classrooms as well as on-site. All instructors have completed thorough Train-the-Trainer programs and we are achieving phenomenal pass rates.

    DevOps Institute: What other topics do you teach or consult on?

    ITSM Academy: For the last 12+ years, ITSM Academy has offered the full ITIL catalog. These courses are all developed in house, and licensed to other organizations. Our groundbreaking Certified Process Design Engineer (CPDE) course is also developed by our in-house team.

    DevOps Institute: What type of interest in DevOps are you seeing in your region?

    ITSM Academy: Enterprise organizations are embracing DevOps and agile service management and attending our courses to help build sustainable programs.

    DevOps Institute: How do you think DevOps contributes to the business’ value stream?

    ITSM Academy: At its core, DevOps is about a shift in culture. Organizations have a tendency to focus on tools, or the automation of manual tasks. Taking a big-picture approach, starting with reviewing existing processes and being willing to re-engineer, is where the real value comes in. Organizations that are coupling DevOps training with the Certified Process Design Engineer (CPDE) course are seeing equipping their teams for success.

    DevOps Institute: What topic area in DevOps excites you the most?

    ITSM Academy: Improvement of the flow of work between software developers and IT operations professionals. Enriched workflows enable IT organizations to deliver greater business value by improving the ability to more quickly design, develop, deploy and operate reliable software and services.

    DevOps Institute: Why should enterprises and individuals consider formal DevOps training?

    ITSM Academy: DevOps is a philosophy, not a “tool” to be learned. DevOps foundation training helps teams start on the same page, with common vocabulary and goals.

  • REP SPOTLIGHT: TaUB Solutions

    REP SPOTLIGHT: TaUB Solutions

    DevOps Institute: Tell us about your organization.

    TaUB Solutions: TaUB Solutions is a consulting-cum-training organization based in Bangalore India. Our vision is to take the customers beyond the existing state of maturity to envisioned business outcomes.

    We serve a lot of customers in southeast Asian region by delivering consulting assignments on ITSM, IT governance, project and program management and business relationship management. This also includes delivering business simulations on the respective domains and make our customers gain benefit from learning by doing.

    DOI: What other topics do you teach or consult?

    TaUB Solutions: ITSM, IT governance, agile, DevOps, business relationship management, cybersecurity, project and program management and ISO standards (20000,27001, 22301)

    DOI: What type of interest in DevOps are you seeing in your region?

    TaUB Solutions: At the moment, we have successfully delivered around 11 batches of DevOps Foundation and Certified Agile Service Manager courses. We appeal to our customers because of the practitioner focus that we bring to the table and take them through case studies to understand the end-to-end value chain. Our current run rate indicates a strong pipeline of interest in southeast Asian countries who want to apply the DevOps principles and philosophy in their workplace. We also see great traction from Indian corporates to plunge in to the DevOps journey to serve their respective customers better.

    DOI: How do you think DevOps contributes to the business’ value stream?

    TaUB Solutions: One of the things that appeal most to me is the ability to articulate the end-to-end value chain. Business today does not care about which framework or methodology you adopt for the customers. All that matters is to deliver an end-to-end value chain and get a common understanding among different functions and leverage the best across the enterprise. I see tremendous value of leveraging agile, ITSM and lean principles with culture and tool chain to demonstrate key business value.

    DOI: What topic area in DevOps excites you the most?

    TaUB Solutions: There are three things:

    • Culture change
    • Power of automation using tool chain
    • Business KPIs and Common Metrics across the organization

    DOI: Why should enterprises and individuals consider formal DevOps Training?

    TaUB Solutions: Today, DevOps is still at its infant stage and has not yet been codified. So people have their own perspectives, thoughts and misconceptions. So in order to be certain with the path they traverse, it is increasingly important to step in the right direction. This is where a formal DevOps training from DOI can help people to understand fundamentals and DevOps trends from practitioners.