ITIL and DevOps: pragmatic approaches to better collaboration
Introduction
In many organisations, ITIL and DevOps teams still work in silos and miss opportunities to deliver greater value. But when brought together effectively, they can become a powerful driver of business success.
As her job title suggests, Cheryl Budaj is responsible in her company for combining the different approaches of IT service management (ITSM) via ITIL and DevOps.
While she recognises how the collaborative approach of Dev and Ops teams is necessary for an efficient software lifecycle - from development through operations - Cheryl also acknowledges that some organisations struggle to merge the two teams. Indeed, realising the benefits of Dev and Ops is possible without the respective practitioners occupying the same team. This is where practices like ITIL and DevOps play an important role in helping organisations align and deliver value.
Here, she offers suggestions to ensure ITIL and DevOps deliver what the business wants ultimately: value and results.
Like it or not, the debate about whether ITSM and DevOps practitioners can collaborate is still a live one.
Despite having common customers and essentially common goals – i.e., providing a service to the business with the utility and warranty to achieve its goals – the respective teams often lack shared outcomes and fail to recognise their interdependence.
This isn’t helped by each group having its own framework and inward-looking metrics that focus on outputs but miss the big picture and often don’t align with overall business objectives.
For example, a success factor such as a “go live” is not the ultimate business goal; it’s a milestone. And fixating on such measures can mean forgetting what the business really needs to achieve and why ITSM and DevOps teams need each other to get there.
ITIL and DevOps – a foundation for success
Recognizing IT metrics alone tends to foment a frustrating conversation with the wider business, which is looking for evidence of value delivered in business terms: reduced labour overheads or cost savings, for example.
ITIL 4 provides a good starting point to shift the conversation, by supporting technologists to speak to the business in business language. Meanwhile, the DevOps approach can enable the business to get what it needs to co-create value.
In bringing ITSM and DevOps together, there are several pragmatic approaches I recommend to get the best from this combination:
People, process and technology
The right people and culture need to be in place: that means having the right personalities and skills; creating shared goals with transparency so people learn to trust each other and build a supportive team without a culture of blame.
However, the team needs to acknowledge that it’s not a silo; there are other teams to collaborate with and processes are necessary to support what people are doing, such as
checklists and handoffs, for example. Yes, technology tools are needed but don’t lead with them and DevOps teams should create automation because it’s the right thing to do, not just because they can.
Give people space to know each other, develop mutual respect and the tools to work together transparently.
Getting the best from best practices i.e., ITIL and DevOps
When adopting multiple best practices, teams should ensure each plays to its strengths.
For example, DevOps and other agile methods highlight culture and flexibility – emphasising that teams of people are “all in this together” with a common goal, which also means collaborating, recovering from setbacks and allowing people to experiment and learn from failure. Meanwhile, ITIL brings practices, processes, roles and responsibilities which provide people with a guide of what to do and when. Agile-leaning people and teams can misinterpret this process structure as inflexibility.
Demonstrating business value from ITIL/DevOps synergies
If IT is not doing something of value for the business, why is it there? ITIL and DevOps practitioners need to think in these terms and should be able to articulate what value and ROI they deliver to the business. This is also good for morale when people understand how their work is connected to the wider organisation.
Selecting the most meaningful metrics to report
Pick performance indicators that show how ITSM and DevOps activities are supporting the journey to an end business goal. It’s not necessary to measure everything but a small set of indicators that track progress or identify when a team is on or off-track.
The positive in what I’m seeing today is people delivering value for the business. I’m optimistic, especially because of the emphasis on culture in agile-related training, that there is now more collaboration and mutual respect among team members.
By climbing down from the ivory towers and calling a truce on the framework “wars”, Dev and Ops gain a better understanding of each other’s value and lead to a more collaborative working environment focused on helping the business achieve desired outcomes towards a common, customer-centric goal.