Over the last two decades, IT Service Management (ITSM) has evolved with transparent processes and procedures for IT services. Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has established itself as the most prominent industry standard guideline for IT operations all over the world. However, there is an increasing adoption rate for a new methodology in DevOps, which is changing the way we provide our IT services that align with organizational strategies.
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An Introduction to DevOps:
DevOps is a combination of both development and operations, where the main objective is to help IT services to align themselves directly to the business operations and the customers, in order to create better value with those involved.
DevOps is one such initiative that helps to increase organizational efficiency that aims to release applications and services to the market at a much faster pace. For instance, the initiative addresses service-oriented architectures, software quality improvement, lean, agile processes, and more. However, all of the DevOps initiatives predominantly focus on the speed of development. These initiatives are key parts that assist in the brisk development of applications, which eliminates waste and errors during the development stages.
With its strong compatibility with Agile and Lean approaches, DevOps can be implemented as an extension of Agile, which says one to work in close collaboration with customers, developers, product management teams, and QA to quickly iterate towards a better product. But DevOps says “it is important to offer service delivery and how the application and systems interact are fundamental to the value proposition for the customer, and the product team should include these concerns as a top-level item. In this aspect, DevOps is expanding the boundaries of Agile principles of “the code” to the entire delivered service.
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ITIL with an Operations Perspective:
The ITIL 2011 edition is the latest version which has five volumes, out of which four volumes talk about operations, providing in-depth knowledge about applying standard procedures for managing IT services in an efficient manner. It is, however, in the third volume of ITIL Service Transition where we see the impact of DevOps with regard to change management, release, deployment, and monitoring.
For example, in most cases in well-controlled IT environments, we tend to go through long release cycles where only a couple of major application releases happen in a year. It is due to the overabundance of requirements and changes along the way. It is during development, testing, production, and disaster recovery that we slowly start to test and gradually roll out each release across the product landscape’s duration.
It is during the process of change management that helps us understand the impact of what we are doing, and helps us to roll back services in the event of an issue by using ITIL processes from volume four in incident and problem management. The new release features here will be managed by accompanying planned service outages, which IT has inflicted upon businesses in the past.
Today, there is a new technology paradigm in the IT services industry, where customers are giving smaller outsourcing contracts to multiple service providers, and we are seeing the widespread development of Service Integration and Management (SIAM) across Europe.
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When Different Methodologies Come Together:
When both ITIL and DevOps or any other ITSM approaches come together, the development process focuses more on delivering services at a faster pace; operations are more focused on a stable production environment. In fact, DevOps is a direct result of the shortcomings of the ITIL V2 which were not correctly addressed in the ITIL V3. DevOps acts as an excellent, valuable and important implementation detail for the ITIL framework. So there is no justification for why many industry experts believe ITIL will become obsolete in the future. In fact, it provides a strong foundation from which IT services and other processes can work together to provide greater efficiency.
The main objective of DevOps is to bring operations into the development process and vice versa. In fact, one can combine both to ensure they are focused better and there is a devoid of communication barrier. When you combine both operations and development teams together, they get to know each other’s necessities and work in harmony during the development process.
Not only that, during DevOps approaches, enterprises implement Kanban techniques on a regular basis to manage the workload of continuous releases for small incremental changes to address the demands of the business. This kind of agility helps to deliver real value right into the mix of the production environments where one can automate certain technologies to give a higher degree of consistency and efficiency.
The collision of different types of management approaches is a common occurrence in enterprises around the world. One certain area where collision is prominently seen is when the DevOps application is deployed on traditional hosting services. Or when lightly-managed Kanban is combined with a robust ITIL change-managed network and hosting infrastructures.
But, enterprises need not worry about the rigidity of the management systems that might hamper IT services. There are already some technologies in place that enables this combination of different management approaches through software-defined networks such as OpenFlow, OpenShift, and OpenStack.
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The Evolution of IT Service Management:
In today’s time, IT Service Management needs to evolve to cater to the needs of this ever-changing business landscape. Along with the evolution of ITSM, even job roles in the ITSM space should evolve. For instance, a service manager not only should they perform their traditional job roles but also work towards the development process and deliverables by showcasing proficiency in responding to the change in business demands.
Enterprises can no longer rely on monthly reports and attend once-in-a-month service management meetings – it has to be a continuously streamlined process with daily interactions which meet the demands of the business.
IT professionals would have experienced that they just cannot drape old-world techniques to new methodologies and expect them to work. For example, a traditional waterfall approach will be unsuitable with DevOps and Kanban. The same can be applied to the CAB (Change Advisory Board), held on weekly and sometimes daily in busy schedules. This can be replaced by automated testing, approval, and release techniques.
Also in an enterprise, the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) contains all the information such as service desk, ticketing, and service monitoring tools; when DevOps dynamically changes the environment within, then this critical information needs to be captured on the CMDB too. -
Enterprises are combining ITIL with New ITSM approaches:
Enterprises are currently using ITIL and DevOps by combining open source tools and GitHub repositories, which brings agility into production. This helps to break down the barriers between the disparate development and operations teams in the enterprise. Though there are a few issues with combining management approaches as discussed above, then the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages to provide the right services in this complex business environment.
With enterprises opting for dynamic infrastructures to meet the next-gen business demands, the DevOps approach works well with an established ITSM approach in ITIL like a hand-in-glove. It is an interesting time for enterprises where several ITSM approaches are coming to the fore and taking control of the production environment which in turn facilitates the speed of delivery of IT services. ITIL and DevOps will have a few hurdles along the way, but both can work well together and enhance the overall services offered.
