Beyond DevOps: Finding Value through Requirements

BEYOND DEVOPS
G A I L C . M U R P H Y  
U N I V E R S I T Y O F B R I T I S H C O L U M B I A  
 
@ g a i l _ m u r p h y
Finding Value through Requirements
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 
 
A more restrictive license has been selected
due to licenses on images

THE MESSAGE
DevOps
enables fast  
delivery of
FEATURES
RE community
can enable fast
delivery of 
VALUE

VALUE
Hello friends this is a simple
and easy to modify the slide
which is a fashion trend of
the template
Hello friends Glad you chose
him I wish you a happy life
“the importance,
worth, or
usefulness
of something”
“a person’s 
principle or
standards of
behaviour”
on-line dic;onary

CONTENTS
PART02
Value Streams
PART04
RE Connection
PART01
DevOps Today
PART03
The Gap

“A rosetta stone
for DevOps”
T H E T H R E E W AY S
- G. Hutch, Amazon customer review
Flow
Feedback
Con;nual learning and experimenta;on

BETTER QUALITY
THROUGH TEST
AUTOMATION
What companies say about DevOps…
https://dzone.com/articles/real-world-problems-solved-by-devops
FASTER RESPONSE
FOR BUG FIXES
HIGHER VELOCITY
OF DELIVERY
Icon credit: https://www.flaticon.com/authors/gregor-cresnar
https://www.flaticon.com/authors/smashicons
https://www.flaticon.com/authors/freepik"

Benefits “of DevOps
go beyond
financial results”
https://puppet.com/resources/whitepaper/state-of-devops-report
K E Y F I N D I N G S
Faster throughput and beer stability 
 
DevOps applies to all organiza;ons 
Automa;on is a huge boon

Beyond DevOps: Finding Value through Requirements

H o w w e d e p l o y 3 0 0 t i m e s a d a y
Z a c k B l o o m , H u b S p o t
hps://product.hubspot.com/blog/how-we-deploy-300-;mes-a-day
Nov 18, 2013
Small teams and projects 
Libraries 
Automated Builds
Versioning
Black box deploys
Gates 
No;ﬁca;ons 
Tes;ng 
Pull Requests
Integra;ons 
Conﬁgura;on 
Metrics 
Processes

EMPHASIS IS ON BACK END
SPEC CODE BUILD TEST DEPLOY
Con;nuous Integra;on Con;nuous Delivery| | | |
Time from check-in to deployment| |

FRONT-END: LEAN & AGILE
“Lean product management prac;ces help teams ship features that customers
actually want, more frequently. This faster delivery cycle lets teams experiment,
crea;ng a feedback loop with customers.”
— State of DevOps Report 2017
EPIC
USER 
STORY
DEFECT

FRONT-END: LEAN & AGILE
“Lean product management prac;ces help teams ship features that customers
actually want, more frequently. This faster delivery cycle lets teams experiment,
crea;ng a feedback loop with customers.”
— State of DevOps Report
EPIC
USER 
STORY
DEFECT
Claim: 
implicit, unreﬁned
no3on of “value”

Value
Stream Maps
Lean management method to
op;mize taking a product or 
service from beginning through
to the customer
hp://courses.washington.edu/ie337/Value_Stream_Mapping.pdf

Value Stream Maps in SE
Poppendieck & 
Poppendieck

Value Stream Maps in SE
Need to capture informa;on ﬂow
Need to analyze and visualize
Need to connect real data
FLOW-assisted value stream mapping in the early phases
of software development, JSS, 2016
Poppendieck & 
Poppendieck

surviving the  
“Turning Point of the
Age of Software”
F L O W F R A M E W O R K
- M. Kersten
Focus on end-to-end sokware value stream
ﬂows to enable correla;on
to business outcomes
Available Nov 2018

© Tasktop Technologies, Inc. 2017-2018. All rights reserved.
Integra;on Model
Ac;vity Model
Product Model
End-to-end metrics 
& business outcomes
F L O W F R A M E W O R K

Flow Items
A ﬂow item is “a unit of business
value pulled by a stakeholder in
the so@ware delivery process.”

Products may be
customer-facing, APIs,
etc.
Ac;ons by people and
tools change ar;facts

Integra;on between
tools enables the
tracking of ac;vi;es
and links to ﬂow items

toolchains
are often
heterogeneous
BUT…

Connect
Visualize
Measure
Integration Hub

Mul;ple diﬀerent 
ways to record and
manage requirements
How do the 
requirements relate
to units of value?

KUBERNETES
F I R S T E X A M P L E
Open source system for  
automa;ng deployment, scaling and  
management of containerized 
applica;ons
68,000 commits 
33 branches
415 releases
1,760 contributors 
2,200 open issues

188 labels in use
K U B E R N E T E S
kind of item  
(e.g, feature, bug, api)
priority
area of system
…

K U B E R N E T E S
Version
(Closed issues)
v1.8 
(1,059)
v1.9 
(616)
v1.10 
(606)
bug 118 41 104
feature 24 6 17
technical debt 5 1 0
area/security 6 6 3

Labelling
Largely manual; 
Value implicit and
inconsistent
K U B E R N E T E S
Feature
Designation
Challenges
THE GAP

MOODLE
S E C O N D E X A M P L E
Open source learning plauorm 
 
90,002 commits 
24 branches 
303 releases
447 contributors
8,990 open issues

M O O D L E
134 open epics 
1095 open features
no clear links between
epics and features
multiple mechanisms
to choose work, including 
user association makes
proposals and votes
on priority

Labelling
Largely manual; 
Value implicit and
inconsistent
Issue structure and
priori;za;on
Mul;ple approaches; 
Value implicit
and inconsistent
K U B E R N E T E S
Feature
Designation
Challenges
M O O D L E
THE GAP

FIREFOX
T H I R D E X A M P L E
Open source web browser
that needs no introduc;on
It’s big

F I R E F O X
choose experiments you
want to help test
e.g., Snooze Tabs
58,000 users; 400K sessions

Labelling
Largely manual; 
Value implicit and
inconsistent
Issue structure and
priori;za;on
Value implicit and
inconsistent
(Testpilot) 
Unclear how relates
to feature tracking
Value implicit and
inconsistent
K U B E R N E T E S
Feature
Designation
Challenges
M O O D L E
F I R E F O X
THE GAP

THE GAP
consistency in “feature”
ability to track features
We lack:
or risk or defect or debt…

“Much of current software engineering practice and
research is done in a value-neutral setting, in which every
requirement, use case, object, and defect is treated as
equally important”
these are not new ideas

“Key Finding 1: Product features are seen as the core of value creation.”
“Focusing on features and launching them as fast as possible
can cause problems from the perspective of customer value.”

“the life cycle of customer data—collection, analysis and
return to the customer if needed—poses a number of
difficulties”
REFSQ 2016

R E n e e d s t o p l a y a c r u c i a l r o l e

EMPHASIS NEEDS TO BE ON VALUE FLOW

customer 
&
organiza;on
value

customer 
&
organiza;on
value
features
tech debt
risks
defects

customer 
&
organiza;on
value
features
tech debt
risks
defects
Needed…

customer 
&
organiza;on
value
features
tech debt
risks
defects
Automa;cally iden;fy work categories
Ability to track work through development
Connect work to value (telemetry, focus groups, etc)
Predict/nego;ate value
Predict/connect value to eﬀort
Needed…

M O O D L E
What if we could… 
 
validate that these are all features 
(semi-)automa;cally assign them a representa;on of value 
assess whether value is delivered by tracking usage 
periodically re-assess if value con;nues or delete feature

customer 
&
organiza;on
value
features
tech debt
risks
defects
RE is key to idenffying, linking and tracking features to customer value
or risk or defect or debt

THANKS
TO…
Mik Kersten and the
great minds at Tasktop
awesome grad students
organizers of RE 
2018

DevOps
enables fast  
delivery of
FEATURES RE community
can enable fast
delivery of 
VALUEThere is work to do…. 
 
Connecting features to value
Predicting and negotiating value
Tracking value delivery
Reassessing delivered value @ g a i l _ m u r p h y
BEYOND DEVOPS: 
Finding Value in Requirements 
A u g u s t 2 0 1 8

Beyond DevOps: Finding Value through Requirements

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