Making the 'shift left' to devops?
You need Proven approaches
DevOps transformation can require changes to organizational structure, team skills, product technology and product development approaches, all adjusted for your company culture. Transform often different for greenfield and legacy businesses and requires a concerted analysis and execution to maximize business outcomes.
Devops transformation
Getting Started
DevOps Transformation isn't a 'one-and-done'. It's a methodology that is geared around constantly improving. We firmly believe that DevOps is a mix of organizational culture, organizational structure and often with a shift in product development technology. In order to be successful, all three must be considered and developed in concert with each other. Our transformation approach will make recommendations in these areas specific for your situation. We've built our practice around approaches that have consistently worked for us and will look for ways you can:
- Find the common ground across differing views and teams
- Land and expand - find a non-critical-path pilot project and make it a success
- Automate the process - and not the people. Take time to re-examine how things have been done in the past and make targeted, scalable changes
- Automate 'all the things' to remove friction and 'segments' of the process that require manual intervention
- Always make conscious decisions, not let the 'de facto' ones sneak in, and not the decision process drag on
Keeping It Going
We'll work with you on how to build on initial successes:
- Post-mortems on the process - and the quantified and qualified improvement. Change for the sake of change isn't a winning approach for anyone
- Plan early for repetition of what worked - and replacement of what didn't
- Even partial success among different teams with their own processes is a form of acknowledgement
- Of course, don’t try to boil the ocean as you scale out your transformation
- Find your allies and your antagonists and constantly reach out to both to keep them closely aligned
- Don’t try to push a rope uphill. Sometimes it's best to fall back and try again later if something's not ready or right.
- Be grateful for the small wins
Product Attributes to Cultivate with DevOps
We'll help you identify the best design principles and practices in your technical leaders (not just the team writing code) and foster those principles in other teams; even the non-development ones. In particular, look for the ‘ilities’ of software design and operation - a.k.a. the “non-functional requirements”:
- Reliability
- Resiliency
- Scalability (horizontal, vertical)
- Testability
- Observability (auto-scaling, alerting, alarming, logging)
- Sustainability/Modularity/Technical Debt
- Build maturity (CI/CD vs. big bang releases)
DevOps Culture to Cultivate and Grow
Culture is a huge part of DevOps and the value can't be overstated. Processes and tools don't define an organization - culture does. As a result, DevOps is reinventing how we run our cloud-based businesses. DevOps is a cultural and technological shift; a movement and a practice vs. a philosophy. It focuses on how we build and operate high velocity organizations - not just products. Key aspects:
- Empowered Teams - with the authority to act, paired with the information to make informed, responsible decisions - and to 'own' them. DevOps practitioners own their destiny via granted authority, responsibility and accountability. If something breaks, it’s not someone else's problems. "Trust is the ultimate human currency."
- Prioritization - we practice ruthless prioritization and don't accept any risk for which we don't understand.
- Managed Risks - we rely on CI/CD to release small changes that have a contained and manageable impact if something goes awry under with the understanding that any smaall near-term volatility will decrease long-term risk.
- Require 'everything as code': Applications are code of course but so is Infrastructure configuration, documentation, test cases, etc.
- Testability and observability are fundamental tenets. If it’s not testable, observable and measurable and it isn't ready for release.
- Anticipate and plan for the bad stuff. Automate incident handling to keep human interactions to a minimum and for the added value that is 'insight'.
- Data is not information. Data 'supports' information. Airlines are well versed in the issues of information overload in the cockpit and DevOps strives to emulate the best practices of the airline industry during incidents, during recovery, and during fault analysis and recommendations after the fact.
- Shameless self-promotion isn't a bad thing. Ensure your successes are visible to all teams and executives.
Wondering if What Got You Here will be able to Get You There?
Scaling a company and product from a great idea to a successful business can be a huge challenge. If you're an early stage company, what specific growth areas to fund - and when - can be a daunting question. We can help analyze your product architecture and code base and make recommendations on where to focus next vs. later on with appropriate funding. Scaling teams internally vs. outsourcing is also a huge decision. Our world-wide geographic and technology experience can help you make the right decisions - at the right time.
How We Can Help
We've been through all sorts of transformations. None is more potentially game-changing than the transformation to DevOps and it's something you may underestimate you can do on your own. Let us guide you through your transformation with our insights, direction, and experience.
Customer References
"With development teams scattered across five countries, in a technology organization with over a thousand people, we had been struggling for a year to properly move forward on a DevOps Transformation project. As soon as Mr. Hinnant came on board, he was able to make an immediate impact. His ability to communicate effectively to the myriad executives, while running a team that embodied DevOps best practices that could serve as a model for other teams dramatically accelerated the transformation."
"Mr. Hinnant enabled our teams with a roll-forward and rollback deployment pipeline which is an absolute requirement in today's microservice based environments. Enabling teams to quickly deploy well-tested code into production is the only way we can stay competitive and drive innovation."
CHECK OUT our services
We have a series of tiered services to meet your needs, and we can customize our services to your specific requirements.
About Us
Experience
Mr. Hinnant is a career product development and operations executive with a broad background in computing and networking. His 30+ years of product development experience include access networks, end-to-end network management, IT application and performance management, and software development technology - all delivered as commercial products. His background in product management, software development and production operations enables him to bring a well-balanced perspective to organizations undergoing great change. Change often comes with seemingly conflicting objectives but always with great opportunities. Most recently, he has focused on Engineering transformation - both Agile and DevOps across Product Management, Engineering, and Operations - the concert of which require concurrent cultural, organizational, and technological changes.
His broad and deep network of experts can help with:
- DevOps transformation (people, process, tools, ...)
- Open-source technology selection
- Cloud-based development and operations
- Product migration to 'the cloud' (AWS, Azure, ...)
- End-to-end integration testing
- DevOps pipeline tooling selection
Our Approach
Our service includes a comprehensive advisory service to help identify gaps and opportunities, a comprehensive report that includes a project plan with timelines and milestones, a cost analysis, and a schedule. We provide services that will help you get you there quickly and smoothly, and a recurring review to ensure your success.
But Why Us?
We're not the biggest game in town (heck, we're small!) or the best known but we have current real-world experience with companies from 30-3000 employees and teams ranging from tens to hundreds. You won't get an ever-changing host of consulting characters working with you so you're going to get a consistent, quality, valuable, experience and most importantly - the outcomes you want.
Again, Why Us?
Your business associates are key to your success - ours are too. We give each of our customers the time and respect you deserve. We all got here by leveraging our successes but also understanding how to address the challenges we face in order to succeed . We're experienced so we can leverage our experience with yours. Sounds trite, right? Yeah, but we hear you. We've been through the trenches so we can navigate the success path forward with you.
Lastly, What's the Deal With the Company Name?
Well, it's a great place to live. We're situated near Boone, NC, home to Appalachian State University which offers Bachelor's and Masters degrees in CompSci. so we're looking forward to our regional growth in expertise for scale. We're also a short hop to Charlotte, NC for global air transit to customers to work with live and in person in the post-COVID economy. And we're a 3 hours drive to North Carolina's Research Triangle Park with a huge and dynamic tech economy and business opportunity. With good network connectivity for remote working, location matters less and less and our experiences globally have proven that out time and time again.
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