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Agile Web Development & Operations

Shaping and Evangelizing DevOps since 2008

What Is DevOps?

DevOps is a professional, cultural movement. It not only aims at harmonizing collaboration between software development and operations, but has the broader goal of optimizing the whole software development process: from idea to delivery of a useful product or service.

DevOps tries to extend agile, which is now commonplace in software development, into the realm of operations. Lean principles, like continuous flow, build the foundation of DevOps. This is reflected in the adoption of practices like continuous delivery or infrastructure as code.

Continuous delivery enables the team to release software in small batches as soon as they're done. Immediate release of these small batches creates tight feedback loops across team boundaries which helps bring everyone together: development and operations act on shared knowledge about the current situation. This is one of the cornerstones for a successful DevOps culture.

How Delays Render All Your Efforts Useless

by on January 16, 2013 · 0 comments

Crowd at the train for the Royal Adelaide Show by State Library of South Australia
Creative Commons LicenseState Library of South Australia

London Stansted Airport, early afternoon – a huge crowd at the railway station. No trains – only people, and a lot of confusion and anger. Having just flown an hour from Munich, Germany, I was supposed to meet a client two hours after touch down. But here I stood, waiting with the crowds: the railway just broke down. After several hours of waiting, I was able to catch a bus and reached London city late in the evening – but the client meeting was long over. The whole trip (not to mention an entire day of my life) was wasted just because one leg in my journey failed. Do your users waste their time because you have failing legs in your product development journey?
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Devops Protocol: No Manual Changes

by on October 25, 2012 · 1 comment

Let's Walk by Hamed Saber
Creative Commons LicenseHamed Saber

You’ve heard about Devops and you like the idea. But how can you grow a Devops culture in your organization? In my series about Devops Protocols I talk about the fundamental building blocks for growing a Devops culture.
No Manual Changes refers to the behavioural trait of not messing with any productive systems. Let’s discuss why messing with production systems is bad and what to do about it.
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Devops Protocols

by on September 6, 2012 · 2 comments

Protocol droid by Ariaski
Creative Commons Licensejurvetson

We all know that protocols are an essential building block of our craft. What would our jobs look like without TCP/IP or HTTP? While there is room for improvement in all of them, they’re definitely helpful in defining how our systems work together. But systems programming are not the only area where protocols play an important role. Wikipedia talks about protocols in diplomacy, for example: “A protocol is a rule which guides how an activity should be performed”[1]. Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. So why not apply the ‘protocol’ idea to Devops? Let’s try and see how the idea of protocols can help us improve the adoption of a Devops culture.
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Devops and The Lean Startup

by on July 19, 2012 · 0 comments

Nibbler vs. Krypto (306/365)
Creative Commons LicenseJD Hancock

The Lean Startup teaches us to focus on learning about what really works for our customers. It advocates using the scientific method for running data driven experiments in very short cycles. But, continuously running end-to-end experiments need the total cooperation of the entire business. Truly cross-functional teams are required which is also one of the goals of Devops. Let’s take a look how the ideas of The Lean Startup and Devops enrich each other to successfully create product development flow.
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