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How to Translate Value to Executives Using an Outcome-Driven Mindset

An IT project is never an end in itself, but a means to attain a business objective. In this day and age, when leaders and decision-makers are exposed to buzzwords, frameworks, and tech trends constantly, it is more important than ever to take a step back and reflect on the business goal before deciding on the technological way to get there.

Decades after the advent of information technology, the challenge remains the same: to successfully apply IT practices that improve revenue streams and unlock new DevOps opportunities. Organizations urgently need to establish frameworks to manage information systems and apply them to daily operations, contributing to delivering business value and improving economic performance.

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Agile Coaches Without Technical Knowledge: How to Overcome the Paradox

Agile coaches play a vital role in helping companies implement Agile into their ways of working. Coaches may be internal employees of a company, or contractors providing these services on an on-demand basis. In both cases, their goal is to help clients diagnose organizational and interpersonal challenges, and make suggestions on how to use Agile to overcome them.

The day-to-day of an Agile coach depends largely from coach to coach and organization to organization. Sometimes, their tasks involve teaching new techniques to large teams; other times, they might help set objectives for an organization, or mentor managers.

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5 Keys to Successfully Implement Team Topologies in Your Organization

Effective software teams are essential for any organization to deliver value continuously and sustainably. But this effectiveness is, oftentimes, hard to attain. 

In their book “Team Topologies,” Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais present a “practical, step-by-step adaptive model for organization design and team interaction, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve together with technological and organizational maturity.”

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Software Development Trends for 2022: Remote Work Is Here to Stay

In March 2020, the working world changed forever. By April 2020, about half of all companies reported that more than 80% of their employees worked from home because of Covid-19. Most never went back to the office—remote work is here to stay.

Forced to take life online, technology became of primal importance. Digital transformation is now a basic requirement for any organization wanting to keep up. Technology workers, already in high demand before, are now even more sought after to help build a world where we all rely on technology for the most basic activities.

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Slow Build Pipeline? Build Faster by Building Only What You Need

In today’s fast-paced software world, organizations need to deliver fast, as fast as multiple times per day. Agile methodologies and DevOps culture have contributed to enabling this constant delivery. Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) is an almost basic requirement for any company that wants to remain competitive in the market.

CI/CD allows the delivery of code changes more frequently and reliably by automating the required steps to take a working piece of software to a production environment. This automation comprises a set of steps to compile, build, and deploy code is called a “building pipeline.” 

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5 Reasons Why Your Software Value Stream Is Broken and How to Fix It

Teams are continuously discovering how every layer of the software production process affects the outcome, leading to software development model experimentation to achieve efficiency.

Subsequently, methodologies like DevOps have emerged, targeting greater speed of software product improvement by increasing the synergy between development and operations teams. As much as 70% of organizations are expected to be using value stream management by 2023.

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Agile Adoption Patterns: 6 Common Breaking Points and How To Fix Them

A few years ago, when companies started embracing Agile, they would bring in a consultancy firm to help come up with a strategy for the shift. They would hire some Scrum Masters, provide basic training to their teams, and proudly declare: “We are Agile now.”

But that statement couldn’t be further from the truth. More than a methodology, Agile is a philosophy, and adopting it means that everyone involved should get on board with a complete and profound transformation. A transformation that, oftentimes, fails.

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How to Avoid the Ice Cream Cone of Test Automation

The testing process is key to delivering quality software. But as the demand for faster delivery increases, it becomes harder for human teams to keep up. Luckily, test automation can help cover tasks.

And DevOps can further help position testing efforts within the software development cycle. But when dealing with larger software products that have constantly evolving functionality, test automation gets trickier.

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Scaling Agile Frameworks: Creating Solutions or Problems?

When the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001, it brought together several lightweight methods under one umbrella term. Agile methodologies have since been widely adopted across technology companies, as they bring effective benefits in guiding the development and delivery of high-quality, working software.

However, Agile methodologies were designed for small teams, often between five and nine members. So what happens when companies take over massive projects that require dozens or even hundreds of people working towards one common goal? How can you apply Agile methodologies to such an environment? And how do you do it while maintaining both the quality of your output and the best practices within your team?

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How to Build a Cross-Functional Team

In a conventional organization, multiple departments are dedicated to specific functions — marketing, finance, human resources, operations, and so on. A lot of the time, they work separately, only sharing information when it concerns more than one department.

However, the modern demands of building and delivering software require an ability to solve numerous problems at a high speed. With that comes a need to have an entire team that reflects the variety of expertise that goes into providing solutions. This is where cross-functional teams come in.

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Top 5 Lessons for Every DevOps Leader

One thing about the DevOps route is that it comes with a lot of range. Two organizations may be using a DevOps approach, but differ considerably in how they apply it. Ultimately, different organizations will succeed or fail at DevOps for different reasons. Naturally, DevOps leaders implementing specific and widespread changes are caught in the middle.

Regardless of your organization’s structure, from a leadership perspective, there are several boxes you must check if you’re to succeed at DevOps. We are going to look at five of the most prevalent lessons that a leader can draw from executing a DevOps strategy.

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Tips on Using DevOps Maturity Assessments to Manage Change

For many IT organizations, the digital transformation trend has spurred continuous changes in how to approach developing software systems that meet ever-evolving business needs. One of the more common efforts is the switch to Agile methods, which often segues into DevOps.

This path makes perfect sense since collaboration between development and operations teams often results in faster iterations and improvement of product features in comparison to conventional software development models.

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How to Improve Value Stream Performance with Automation

There are many ways an organization practicing DevOps can capture value with a software product or service. These range from giving it amazing features to providing troubleshooting tips and instant in-built support when a software system malfunctions.

DevOps brings development and operations teams together to deliver maximum value in the shortest time possible. As this string of activities eventually benefits the customer, they can be considered a value stream.