Program management, at least of an IT-focused effort, can and should be an integral part of your DevOps effort. In the case of the Disciplined DevOps workflow of Figure 1, you would support the Disciplined Agile® Delivery (DAD) process blade with program management. Program management would coordinate the efforts between the team of DAD teams as well as any development efforts by people representing from other process blades.
Figure 1. The Workflow of Disciplined DevOps. Click on a process blade for more information.
In organizations with a Disciplined DevOps strategy in place it is very common to see program teams taking on the responsibilities of operating and supporting their own systems in production, and of doing the work to release their solutions into production. In organizations without a strong DevOps mindset (yet), you are likely to find that operations, support, and release management are done by separate groups outside of your program team. Context counts, and it’s good to have a process tool kit that is flexible enough to support the situation that you find yourself in.