devops

DevOps and Audit Resources

Jeff Gallimore Uncategorized ,
binary and magnifying glass

I’ve heard a lot of questions about DevOps, audit, compliance, and how they all fit together. I’ve fielded more questions from more people recently. In my mind, that means more people are applying DevOps patterns and practices to their work and the work they’re doing is real (as opposed to sandbox, pilot, or “let’s try this stuff out” projects). Why else would they be interested in audit and compliance?

Here are some resources that might be helpful if you’re “doing the DevOps” and interested in making audit and compliance efforts go more smoothly.
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ACT-IAC’s Legacy System Modernization Approach Too Legacy

Jeff Gallimore Uncategorized , ,
Anchor from Kyle James
“Anchor” by Kyle James is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The Federal Government has a lot of legacy systems and spends a lot of money on them. In fact, according to a white paper on legacy system modernization from The American Council for Technology (ACT) and Industry Advisory Council (IAC), the Federal Government plans to spend $37 billion on “legacy” IT in 2017.

Lots of organizations struggle with legacy systems. Or more to the point, they struggle to maintain and make changes to them in a way that provides the pace and value the organization wants. So given the scale of this issue in the Federal Government, ACT-IAC took a crack at providing a “best practice” approach for modernizing legacy systems in the white paper I just referenced.

I read the paper a couple of times. I definitely had some strong thoughts and feels as I read it. I couldn’t keep them bottled up so I suggested some changes to how the Government should think about legacy systems modernization on Excella’s blog. I could’ve written a lot more (like on the role of DevOps, which shouldn’t be in the “DevOps/Sustainment” phase — see page 20 in the white paper), but the post was already getting lengthy. Let’s consider this a good start for discussion and iterate from there.

Top 3 Insights from the 2016 State of DevOps Report

Jeff Gallimore Uncategorized
2016 State of DevOps Report

The 2016 State of DevOps Report is out and carries with it some fantastic information — just like the 2014 and 2015 versions. I love the statistics and the research — and the support it provides in making the case for DevOps. This year’s version even more so because it covers the topics of employee engagement and ROI.

I wrote about my insights from this year’s report on Excella’s blog.

You can also see my insights from last year’s report.

Keep CALMS and DevOps On

Jeff Gallimore Uncategorized

Yeah, I know. This “Keep Calm” thing has been done to death. I’m only adding to the craziness by associating it with the DevOps movement (although I know I’m not even close to being the first). In this context, CALMS is an acronym coined by John Willis and Damon Edwards and later added to by Jez Humble. CALMS represents five key aspects of DevOps and stands for Culture, Automation, Lean, Measurement, and Sharing.

I wrote about CALMS on Excella’s blog. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Top 5 Insights from the 2015 State of DevOps Report

Jeff Gallimore Uncategorized

If you haven’t read the 2015 State of DevOps Report (or the 2014 version, for that matter), you’re doing yourself a disservice. I’m putting this report on my DevOps “must read” list, right along with The Phoenix Project and Continuous Delivery books. The report is one of the few things I’ve found about DevOps that consistently gets people’s attention — even if they’re not familiar with DevOps. The results and the research are that remarkable.

I wrote about the top 5 insights I had from the 2015 State of DevOps Report on Excella’s blog. Check it out and let me know what you think.

DC Continuous Delivery Presentation Resources

Jeff Gallimore Uncategorized , ,
I delivered a presentation entitled “Tactics To Kickstart Your Journey Toward Continuous Delivery” to an awesome group of attendees at the DC Continuous Delivery meetup on August 25, 2015. The back-and-forth was fantastic! That’s probably why I kept going for 90 minutes (sorry if you attended and had plans I impinged on). As a follow-up, I wanted to provide some resources I mentioned during my talk.

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Empathy: The DevOps Secret Weapon

Jeff Gallimore Uncategorized ,

Over the last year or two, I have often heard a word used in the DevOps community not usually uttered in IT circles. In fact, outside of the psychology and counseling communities, I don’t hear the word much at all. That word is “empathy”. And the more I learn about DevOps, the more I believe empathy may be the single best tool there is for building bridges and collaboration across boundaries — job #1 when considering a move to DevOps. Using empathy is better than any process, organizational redesign, or automation initiative. Empathy has tremendous power to improve any relationship that matters to you — personal and professional. Whether you’re Dev working with Ops, Ops working with Dev, IT with “the business”, or a parent with your child, everything seems to work better with a healthy dose of empathy thrown into the mix.
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