Lean Devops: A Practical Guide to on Demand Service Delivery

Agile practices like Scrum and Kanban have jumped the chasm and become widely accepted throughout the IT industry. Sometimes, they are even mandated. However, these methodologies are mute on how to run and manage functioning software. The DevOps movement arose in response to this omission, but it has offered IT managers insufficient actionable guidance for their day-to-day challenges. In Lean DevOps, Robert Benefield fills this crucial gap, offering a practical, complete, and proven approach to driving value from DevOps.

Moving beyond tools and hype, Benefield draws on decades of in-the-trenches experience building and leading IT teams in organizations of all types and sizes, from startups to giant multinationals, including the first software-as-a-service providers, leading investment banks, and highly regulated telecom and energy utilities. Benefield shows how to use agile and lean manufacturing techniques within a DevOps context to dramatically improve business speed and quality, and gain crucial insights for outmaneuvering your competition. Using real-world examples, he shows how to:

• Successfully establish DevOps throughout your organization
• Improve the speed and quality of IT services
• Strengthen IT teams' transparency and effectiveness by using visual management techniques
• More effectively manage unplanned work and work in progress
• Integrate IT run practices with Agile and Kanban software practices
• Deepen understanding and engagement between IT and customers
• Leverage continuous improvement techniques throughout IT, and more

Since DevOps was first conceived, it has promised powerful competitive advantage. Whatever your role in delivering IT services or support, Lean DevOps will help you transform that promise into reality.

Lean DevOps offers a practical approach for implementing the principles and practices you need to enable DevOps within organizations large or small.

Robert Benefield draws on decades of in-the-trenches experience building and leading IT teams from start-ups to giant multinationals, including the first software-as-a-service providers, leading investment banks, and highly-regulated telecom and energy utilities. Using real world examples, he shows how applying agile and lean manufacturing techniques within a DevOps context can dramatically improve speed, quality, and business insight for outmaneuvering the competition.

You'll learn how to respond to the transformational impact of companies like Amazon and Netflix, who are offering services faster, cheaper, and with higher quality and innovation, while disrupting foundational concepts of IT infrastructure, software, and service delivery.

Benefield shows how to apply agile practices such as Scrum and Kanban in running and managing software, offering actionable advice for integrating popular agile practices such as continuous delivery with DevOps, and gaining more value from all of them. He shares both the "Big Picture" to help you plan and begin your journey, and specific tips to use every step of the way.

"

Deliver Any Service Far More Effectively, Based on What Customers Really Want

As service stacks grow more complex, it becomes even tougher to deliver on-demand IT services that meet customers' expectations for speed, consistency, reliability, security, privacy, and value. Layering on new cloud technologies, architectural approaches, or methodologies can aggravate the problem by widening the gap between what delivery teams think they're delivering and what customers actually experience. In Lean DevOps, technical leader Robert Benefield helps you escape this spiral, reverse bad habits, and regain the situational awareness you need to deliver the right services in the right way.

Writing for delivery team members and their leaders, Benefield shows how to improve information flow throughout your organization, so you can move toward your customers' target outcomes. He identifies problems arising from traditional approaches to managing teams, debunks excuses often used to prevent progress, and offers realistic recommendations for everything from requirements to incentives.

* Understand key dynamics that impact service delivery, and avoid focusing on the wrong issues
* Give your delivery teams stronger abilities to learn and improve
* Improve team maturity and implement prerequisites for effective use of automation and AI/ML
* Optimize key service delivery elements, from instrumentation to queue masters and cycles
* Organize and manage workflows more effectively
* Handle governance associated with internal controls and external legal/regulatory requirements
* Leverage the power of Lean and Mission Command to accelerate innovation, empower subordinates, and drive the outcomes you want

Introduction

1. Understand the Customer

2. Understand Constraints

3. Understand the Lifecycle: Walking the Gemba

4. Engagement and Compliance