Disciplined Agile

Release and Realization

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Release realization

Release is in many ways the most important part. This is when value is realized. Unfortunately, very often this “last 2 inches” is often solid steel. But it doesn’t have to be. DevOps is only half the battle here. Whatever else it takes to realize value must also be done.  This includes any marketing and support working.

It is worth remembering that whatever needs to take place for release needs to be incorporated into the requirements of the MBIs being worked on.

A full description of DevOps is both beyond the scope of this book and unnecessary because there is much already written about DevOps. But it is worth noting the DevOps is nothing more than a special case of Flow and Lean-Thinking at this late part of the value stream.  Since DevOps is really about how dev and ops work together, the Guardrails during release and realization are of particular interest.

MBIs include what’s needed in ops and marketing for release

This is another aspect that must be included in MBIs – what will it take to release and realize value for a work being developed. This means that up-front we need to attend to this issue. This alone can stop a lot of problems in ops.

There are four general areas of ops to attend to:

  1. just being aware that work is coming
  2. working with development to ensure a smooth transition (DevOps)
  3. including all aspects required for value realization
  4. enabling continuous integration and deployment

Working With Development

Keeping the guardrail agreements mentioned above will go a long way towards this. But it goes beyond them as well. Ops needs to take a proactive attitude with development – guiding them in how they can improve.

  1. working with development to ensure a smooth transition (DevOps)
  2. including all aspects required for value realization

Include all aspects required for value realization

This is one area where MBIs are so important. Right up front we look to see what it will take for value realization for something being built. This includes ops, marketing, support and whatever else is needed.

Enabling Continuous Integration and Deployment

Without the ability to do CICD ops becomes a bottleneck of sorts. This is another area that ops can help dev (again DevOps) in that developers often need advanced environments to get their work done.