development & operations (DevOps)

When Google published its Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) book — a detailed look at how it keeps production systems running — Forrester started getting a lot of questions. “Should I do this in my enterprise IT shop?” “I’m no unicorn — can I even do these things?” And perhaps most important: “What parts of the book are relevant?” To […]

AI, blockchain, chatbot, digital identity, etc. — there’s enough emerging technology in financial services to fill a whole alphabet book. And it’s difficult not to get swept off your feet by visions of bionic men, self-executing smart contracts, and virtual assistants that anticipate our every need. Investing in emerging technology is one of the main […]

In 2017 — although I suppose I should say in 2018, as it’s almost the end of December — it is simply unacceptable for any IT organization to focus on an Agile-only or DevOps-only journey. They are two sides of the same coin, and one completes the other. If your service provider tells you that […]

At Forrester, we have developed an assessment to help organizations understand their continuous deployment maturity. The assessment should take 10 minutes or less to complete with the outcome identifying where you are in your continuous deployment journey. DevOps teams should focus and build four critical competencies including: process, structure, measurement, and technology. Your honest assessment […]

Agile is still alive and well and in demand, according to Forrester’s Agile adoption panel. This year, our biannual survey tracking the health of Agile initiatives focused on the main challenge: Agile at scale. As software teams get further along their Agile transformation, they find that, despite some improvements, scaling vertically and horizontally remains their biggest […]

2017 is the year of DevOps! The team here at Forrester is seeing this momentum grow every day with increased inquiries, solution proliferation and a growing number of calls from executives on scaling from DevOps pilots to the enterprise. Enterprises are accelerating to deliver on the promise of Digital Transformation – they have no choice. […]

When I look back at my time as a CIO, I often say it was only half-Dickensian. I bet you can guess which half! Legacy was rampant. Ops models and operating frameworks were based on dated theories. Just as folks felt like they were getting a handle on things, what happens but this thing called […]

Earlier in the year, we declared 2017 to be the year of DevOps and I am pleased to say, “We were right!” With our data confirming that 50% of organizations are implementing DevOps, DevOps has reached “Escape Velocity.” The questions and discussions with clients have shifted from “What is DevOps?” to “How do I implement […]

As the importance of DevOps grows in modern enterprises, Forrester seeks to define clear metrics and benchmarks for successful DevOps. I&O is responsible for the continuous deployment of software and services.  This means they own the final step before end-users or customers “use” what was developed.  We believe that there are three pillars of KPI’s […]

I am seeing more and more inquiries focused on driving business transformation where the transformation depends on software and business technology.  ING is a model for digital transformation, and Ralph Hamers, CEO, has publicly reinforced the bank’s transformation. Hamers stated “We have to recognize that technology is what Banks do”[i]. Every business today must focus […]

I get a lot of inquiries from I&O pros on configuration management. It’s a broad topic. Tools such as Chef and Puppet solve configuration management problems: what is the intended state of a given resource? There’s general agreement that this form of configuration management is essential. However, my inquiries also cover the Configuration Management Database […]

DevOps is no longer the new kid on the block; all industries are adopting it. Despite this adherence to principles of speed, velocity, and agility, release frequency appears to be lagging. Continuous deployment can help: Organizations leveraging an integrated continuous deployment tool set are able to make the dream of continuous releases to production a […]

As our clients know, I’ve been writing a lot about strategies for recruiting and retaining developers, and building shop cultures where they can thrive. In the U.S. we’re currently in a sellers market when it comes to development talent. According to the BLS, firms will need to find almost half a million developers between 2014 […]

Do you wonder what other organizations are working on?  Do you feel challenged around topics such as DevOps, hybrid cloud, infrastructure transformations and how to enable your workforce?   I took a look at 1,270 user inquiries/questions that the Forrester’s I&O research team received between April 1, 2016, and March 31, 2017.  The results are: Financial […]

Every day I hear more about the pressure I&O organizations are under to accelerate the delivery of applications and services and the pressure it is placing on the existing resources.  As organizations transition, DevOps, formally the purview of unicorns, is now transitioning to mainstream.  DevOps, which started as a grassroots approach by development organizations who […]

Infrastructure is increasingly software-based with rapid container growth, composable infrastructure[i], and of course the consumption of cloud.  Additionally, as the velocity of change increases – and will continue to increase – the premise that we can continue to manage these systems with our traditional methods is no longer true. The management of your estate mandates […]

This year I’m excited to be teaming up with Amanda LeClair on the biannual Forrester Agile At Scale Adoption Survey. For the 2017 study, we’ve added a few more questions in areas that we see organizations struggle with. So in addition to successful Agile team practices, alignment with business stakeholders upstream and downstream with testing […]

Change Management is a hot topic lately on my social media channels. Like my friend Jon Hall, I also am a long time veteran of the classic Change Advisory Board (CAB) process. It almost seems medieval: a weekly or bi-weekly meeting of all-powerful IT leaders and senior engineers, holding court like royalty of old, hearing […]

Automation gets a bad rep these days, what with public fear that robots will take over jobs (an invalid assumption – we will be working side by side with them). However, if you asked the most diehard Luddites if they were ready willing to give up the following: Depositing a check using a mobile app […]