DevOps 05081015
- 1. DevOps The Nirvana in Software Engineering A perspective on Quality Engineering www.cigniti.com | Unsolicited Distribution is Restricted. Copyright © 2015 - 16, Cigniti Technologies
- 2. www.cigniti.com | Unsolicited Distribution is Restricted. Copyright © 2015 - 16, Cigniti Technologies DevOps - The Nirvana in Software Engineering Executive Summary The CXOs today are under immense pressure to deliver value to their customers - at lightening speed. The speed of delivery depends heavily on delivery by Development and Operations - two groups critical to the success of any modern enterprise. The third group evolving as the most critical in Business Assurance is the Quality Assurance Group. If the demand of the hour is rapid deployments, the need of the hour is Quality Engineering starting early within the Development lifecycle and stretching late into Post–Production. Traditionally CXOs rely heavily on Innovation within their Software Engineering groups for Agility and quicker time to market. Agile, or the various flavors thereof, are a fine example. On the other hand, the Infrastructure groups have assured CXOs of a scalable capacity and sustained performance through innovations of their own. A fine example of this is Virtualization in its various forms. Even through the evolution / innovation of both the groups, the execution gap in development and delivery at a high pace is evident. This lapse can be attributed to delays in QA, Release / Deployment Management, and Environment availability. DevOps is an essential link in an Enterprise’s Engineering armour to ensure continuous delivery with agility to respond to customer feedback. What DevOps is Not DevOps is not only a tool, culture, or a fancy title. What is it then? DevOps is an Ecosystem driven by Quality as the primary focus. An Ecosystem where System Architects, Development Teams, Infrastructure Teams, and Quality Assurance Teams are one big happy Family. DevOps is a natural extension to ensuring Continuous Deployments and Delivery, thus ensuring a better go to market. DevOps is the next logical step if you aspire to elevate Quality Assurance to be Quality Engineering. DevOps is the Nirvana in Quality Engineering
- 3. www.cigniti.com | Unsolicited Distribution is Restricted. Copyright © 2015 - 16, Cigniti Technologies Test Automation Center of Excellence (TA - CoE) DevOps Implementation Approach for Enterprises Agile principles with lean implementation practices across the delivery stream are the pre-requisite of an Enterprise organization aspiring to adopt DevOps. The lean principles are to be extended across the software / application supply value chain. Implementation of DevOps dramatically drives up the efficiency and productivity across the lifecycle through increased automation on all fronts (Development, Build, Testing, Deployment, Release, Infrastructure / Environment), accelerated feedback from customers, and significant reduction in rework / manual overheads. The approach to be adopted includes: 1. Continuous Planning / Agility 2. Collaborative Development 3. Continuous Testing 4. Continuous Deployment and Release 5. Operations Readiness Testing (Blue / Green Deployments) 6. Continuous Feedback 7. Feedback loop into Dev / QA cycles The Role of QA As Enterprises aspire towards DevOps, the role of QA teams in Quality Engineering becomes vital. QA teams ought to graduate towards Quality Engineering & that becomes possible through close collaboration. The collaboration has to be driven by QA teams and will be made possible by taking an Engineering approach. The conventional tester role has to be replaced by Software Development Engineers in Test. This ensures collaboration at the start of the cycle, a more test driven development approach upstream, automation of deployment, & release downstream. The role of QA teams in the ensuring continuous delivery includes: • Requirements / User Stories • Unit Test Automation • Test Driven Development • Functional Automation • Build Automation • Continuous Integration • Deployment Automation • Release Automation • Operations Readiness Testing • Post Production Monitoring • Continuous Feedback It is imperative for the QA teams to gear up for the challenge and support sustained innovation which is the need of the hour. Business Planning Test Strategy and Plan Requirements Review& Report Source Code Review & Test Case Design Functional, Automation, Performance & Security CI Framework Design& Unit Test Automated Configuration Management CI Regression Testing and UAT Production Support and Maintenance Requirements Management Development Build & CI Deployment in Production Pre-production Deployment Release and Change control Testing
- 4. www.cigniti.com | Unsolicited Distribution is Restricted. Copyright © 2015 - 16, Cigniti Technologies Test Automation Center of Excellence (TA - CoE) DevOps - Critical Success Factors Leadership Alignment: Development teams are measured on their ability to steer course rapidly & adapt to dynamic business needs - a.k.a Agility. Operations teams are often rated on their ability to ensure maximum uptime (Availability), more than required capacity (Scalability), and Stability. If both teams are managed separately, competing goals may lead to conflict of interest. Automation: Start early - Unit test automation, Test Driven / Iterative Development and Continuous Integration to ensure continuous deployment and continuous delivery Identify low hanging fruit: Automate repeatable tasks, eliminate wait times caused by manual processes & delays, eliminate tasks in the lifecycle not directly contributing to insights on customer needs Infrastructure / Environment: Automated environment management including deployment / release automation & ORT Post Production: Production Synthesizers, Real User Monitoring & Synthetic Monitoring to understand the production behavior patterns and feedback into Dev / QA cycles The Cigniti Advantage Cigniti DevOps practice brings a comprehensive strategy and several value additions including: 1. DevOps Acceleration Kit (Preparation and readiness Toolkit) 2. Continuous Integration Automation Framework 3. End to End DevOps Framework 4. Tool and Vendor Alliances About the Author Prasanna S Singaraju Practice Head DevOps & Emerging Solutions, North America Prasanna, Head of Solutions, Strategy, and Pre-sales at Cigniti, is responsible for leading strategic initiatives that focus on identifying and developing new options to increase corporate enterprise value. His primary focus at Cigniti is defining strategy for emerging technologies and trends in Quality Assurance. Additionally, he focusses on technology strategic relationships and collaboration opportunities. Prasanna may be reached at prasanna@cigniti.com About Cigniti Technologies Cigniti Technologies Inc. is North America's Largest Independent Testing Services Company. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Cigniti is recognized as a premier independent testing services organization by Fortune 500 companies and industry analysts. With over a decade of experience in the Software Quality Assurance industry, Cigniti IP-Led (SmartTools™) offerings have helped several clients “Shift-Left” and reduce the overall cost of quality.