Release Management

Explaining a simple, yet profound, technique that has proven to have a huge impact on improving (DevOps) flow.

The DevOps lesson teaches about the impact of reducing your batch size in DevOps. It explains that most DevOps problems are fundamentally workflow problems and we do not necessarily need innovative technological tools to solve them, there are simple, yet profound, techniques that have proven to have a huge impact on streamlining the batch flow in DevOps. We learn that working in small batches improves the workflow by lowering product-related risks during development and reducing the cycle time, among other merits. Check out the article for more information about DevOps small batches and their benefits.

Using DORA metrics for the wrong reasons will result in poor outcomes. Here's why - and what you can do about it.

The DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) metrics are popularly considered a way to measure software development. The metrics are the indicator of how software delivery efforts are progressing for continuous delivery. However, when the DORA metrics are wrongly used or applied to things involving people, the metrics do not yield good results and turn out to be complex thus requiring constant vigilance and adjustment to prevent adverse side effects. The article covers how the DORA metrics are increasingly being used for the wrong purposes by mainstream organizations - for example being leveraged as OKRs goals instead of outcomes and what companies should improve when using DORA metrics to thrive as high-performing organizations.

Achieve the performance potential that DevOps has to offer by following these nine pillars of practices.

Marc Hornbeek talks about Nine Pillars of DevOps practices, giving examples for each one. In the "Leadership Practices" pillar for DevOps, one of the practices well explained is that leaders intellectually stimulate the team by encouraging them to ask new questions and question basic assumptions about the work. On the other hand, the "Collaborative Culture" practices pillar, an explained practice is that the DevOps system changes follow a phased process to ensure the changes do not disturb the current DevOps operation. Examples of implementation phases include the proof of concept (POC) phase in a test environment, limited production, and deployment to all live environments.

DevOps offers plenty of efficiencies, but it’s no guarantee of business success. Here are three common challenges that require more than just a solid DevOps strategy.

Take your first step towards a fearless organization. And it doesn't have to mean "resign from the one you are in right now".

Using Feature Flags to safely test in production without fear of breaking something or negatively affecting the customer experience.

What qualities and skills define a future-ready DevOps engineer? Hint: It's about people, not code deployment

DevOps leaders will face big changes in tools and architecture. More importantly, they’ll need to help team members develop a more collaborative and transparent mindset.

Don’t risk losing agility by following processes too slavishly and making everything you do too rigid and inflexible.

The benefits of making development teams responsible for building, shipping and operating their applications.

Before you even touch the keyboard it’s a good idea to think about a few points of strategy to ensure success.

To get the best from DevOps, tackle your open source strategy in two dimensions: horizontal and then vertical. Consider this advice on tools and approaches that work .