Agile methods for IT operations

Agile software engineering has fundamentally changed service delivery. There are no more release cycles; new features ship immediately after completion – several deployments per day are the norm.

Again and again, IT operations appears to be the limiting factor, not without reason. Over the years, administrators have learned what the secure operation of services requires:

• Data classification – protection and recovery needs of data,
• Service description – definition of SLAs,
• Operating manual – handling of configuration changes and escalation chains,
• Monitoring and backup concept.

Insisting on these definitions before go-live repeatedly delays the schedules of agile projects. Many DevOps engineers who want to take these tasks over themselves – faster – treat the operations part as mere deployment and configuration, and run into serious trouble with incident management and business continuity.

Agile methods for IT operations

It is not necessary to sideline classic IT operations. Instead, develop it further in analogy to software development and use its experience. These optimizations are available:

• Kanban & stand-up: Electronic Kanban boards abound; the classic post-it wall works just as well. A daily stand-up creates a shared view of the current state and adjusts priorities together. Advantage: shared situational awareness. Implementation: very simple.

• ChatOps: Modern teams live in platforms like Slack, Mattermost or Teams. ChatOps moves status queries and simple operational tasks into these channels via bots. Advantage: fewer interrupts for IT ops. Implementation: simple, requires some programming.

• AgileOps: Accelerating operational processes through automation – all tasks are analysed by frequency and effort and automated with suitable tooling. Advantage: better resource utilisation, drastically faster changes. Implementation: demanding; processes and habits must change.

• DevOps: Cross-functional teams merging architecture, development and operations per service, supported by a CI/CD tool chain. Advantage: extremely fast reaction, no knowledge gap between areas. Implementation: very demanding; organisational structure and communication change.

• Lean IT: More than a reorganisation – a change of principles. All processes are analysed against the seven types of waste (transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, overengineering, defects) and improved in PDCA cycles. Advantage: holistic. Implementation: complex.

Which path fits depends on team, service landscape and maturity – most start small (Kanban, ChatOps) and grow into the bigger models.