Top DevOps Voice

This is my 3rd Top Voice badge awarded by the LinkedIn Community as a Top DevOps Voice. As a developer and an advocate of digital transformation by peopleware, I began including DevOps engineers as team members for my projects in 2018. Initially, I organized teams as UI/UX designers, front-end developers, back-end developers, quality assurance, and DevOps engineers for applications such as smart device management systems, adaptive learning management systems, and video-on-demand inventory systems.

Beginning 2019, I realized that engineers are more than tech-stack and tech-layers, and that project development is more than ‘agile’ and its determined iterative cycles for design, build and test. With cloud computing and open source code management becoming more prevalent and interoperable, I restructured the team to manage intersecting layers in more dynamic and adaptive iterative cycles. The all-encompassing required expertise is DevOps, for members who develop and operate. The sub-groups of DevOps are the DataOps for data management, DevSecOps for security management, CloudOps for multicloud management, ChainOps for blockchain management, AIOps and MLOps for AI and Machine Learning innovation management, and then the SREs, the SDETs, the QAs for QI/QC, the business analysts and legal, the ServerOps for server management, the NetOps for network management, the ITOps for device management. Altogether the DevOps wherein management is the planning, coding, building, testing, releasing, deploying, operating, and monitoring. The abovesaid explanation is self-explanatory and widely understood among many technologists and developers.

Now what makes my DevOps 2.0 different is in the visual representation of what is DevOps. The current DevOps depiction (DevOps 1.0) is an infinite loop, a Bosium strip that illustrates how DevOps is different from waterfall or agile management. On first viewing, the DevOps infinite loop look different from Agile, because agile is a sequential cyclical process. In contrast, the current DevOps is a looping process that is twisted in the middle. The question that has been vexing me since 2021 is that, how does the infinite loop not look sequential? If I were to hold this Devops infinite loop / bosium strip, and untwist it – will it not revert back to a cyclical loop? Is the DevOps loop a sequential loop unraveled?

By 2022, I reconfigured the DevOps loop, perhaps refine it. In my 2022 e-Book titled “DevOps: The Peopleware Method from Digital Transformation to Innovation”, I presented various visual and graphical representations on digital transformation and DevOps methodology. The DevOps methodology I structured, which I coined as “Agile DevOps 2.0”, is more than just an infinite loop. DevOps 2.0 is an interconnecting of 4 infinite loops, with Continuous Integration at its core. Version Control, Continuous Build, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment are the 4 peripheral stages constantly and continuously integrated to the core. I added Compile for its functions between Build and Test, and Secure for its functions in hardening throughout Operate and Monitor, such as by SIEM and SOAR (explained in more detail in my mentioned e-book).

Furthermore, DevOps culture of DevOps 2.0 does not remain within the DevOps cycle. On (continuous) project research and revisions, agile becomes a dynamic cycle that encircles all the 4 infinite loops. In fact, the Agile loop for project research and revisions emphasizes on the dynamic changes and variations from the application objectives and functions requirements perspectives; because end-users and stakeholders do change during the DevOps 4 stages. For example, in one occasion the end-users opt for a private-permissioned blockchain decentralized app for their intended use-case, but then after decided to just develop a progressive web app. From a tech perspective, it might entail change from say Python to ReactNative, but from the operations perspective, project research, planning and revisions become more integrated in the DevOps 4 cycles.

Further to the Agile loop, is the Continuous Monitoring loop that encircles all. By DevOps 2.0, continuous monitoring involves BOTH the DevOps 4 tech cycles, and the agile project loop that negotiates the tech cycles.

Altogether, the DevOps 2.0 visual graphic presents a bigger picture of more intersecting life cycles.

I did not coin DevOps. As a laggard, I abide to its culture relatively late. By 2022, I merely attempt to revise DevOps to be more agile and intersecting.
As an analogy, the current DevOps is like the beginner 1980’s Scalextric 8 loop toy car track. The cars go forwards sequentially, but never go to intersecting lanes.
The DevOps 2.0 maintains the infinite loop fidelity, with intersecting lanes, maintaining a central loop core, and venturing into peripheral lanes.

#devops #devops2 #agiledevops #digitaltransformation