You’ve probably heard a lot about how government agencies need to move on from legacy technology in order to become more agile and built for the future, but what about moving on from a legacy culture?
That’s a key challenge for agencies seeking to become more agile and streamlined, especially those that are used to doing things a certain way. This way has traditionally consisted of development and operations teams working in separate silos, each with their own roles and responsibilities.
This “never the twain shall meet” mindset is in direct contrast to the Department of Defense’s modernization initiative. Today’s DoD is looking for streamlined operations and open collaboration. It’s looking for DevOps.
A cultural movement
You’ve likely heard of DevOps, even if you’re not entirely clear on what it means. In simple terms, DevOps is a cultural shift that breaks down barriers by merging development and operations teams into a unified group. It requires collaboration between two previously separate areas. It allows developers to be involved in operations and gives operations managers a role in application development. This approach promotes greater flexibility and enables quicker development and deployment of IT projects than ever before, supporting the agile and iterative practices detailed in the U.S. Digital Services Playbook and technology efforts like the Joint Information Environment.
While all of this sounds great, there are still some significant hurdles that federal agencies must clear if they’re to get on the DevOps train.
First, agencies need to be ready to accept and adapt to the changes needed for the transition. They must be open to letting go of long-standing work processes that don’t meet today’s needs. This idea may seem reasonable in theory, but it can be tough for some, especially those who have been in the field for a long time. Nonetheless, the readiness to change is a key first step toward adopting DevOps.
And make no mistake – achieving success with DevOps requires a significant level of adaptability and commitment from everyone within your agency. It’s not enough to have a few forward-thinking developers and operations managers dabble in practicing DevOps principles. Their projects have to align with the overall operational approach of the agency, and vice-versa. As such, everyone from you to the CIO to those responsible for QA and testing need to get behind the DevOps mentality and be willing to forsake walled gardens and waterfall approaches in favor of collaboration and shared responsibilities.
This culture does not develop on its own, it must be embraced, nurtured, and maintained. You also need to be willing to modernize your technology along with your thinking, because while DevOps is not a technology solution in and of itself, technology certainly plays a role in enabling the culture shift. After all, what good is changing the culture if it doesn’t have the technology to back it?
As such, DevOps requires the support of highly adaptable and automated solutions that support your team’s goals of continuous innovation and delivery. Solutions integral to the support of DevOps include configuration management that enables automation, a code repository, monitoring and logging tools.
Monitoring tools give developers and ops managers the visibility into how the code performs and how the system is running and allows them to quickly and easily identify any faults or resource contention in the application stack. Automation tools allow for rapid releases and scaling tasks as well as auto-remediation of known issues. Lastly, logging tools provide the necessary play-by-play of what’s happening in the DevOps environment that is essential for troubleshooting.
If you and your agency are ready to move toward a DevOps culture, you can prepare yourself for some significant benefits, including cost effectiveness and increased efficiency and delivery speeds. DevOps allows your agency to embrace a cultural framework that adapts to disruptive technology. This positions you well for both the present and the future of IT, all while giving you the chance to play an important role in that future.
For more information, check out the DevOps panel from thwackCamp 2015.