Manu Varshney & Jason Lenny of the Product Management Team at XebiaLabs give their presentation on scalable DevOps at the DevOps Leadership Summit in Boston MA.

1. Is your DevOps ready to scale?
Challenges and Solutions for the Enterprise
Manu Varshney & Jason Lenny
Product Management, XebiaLabs

2. 2
• Director of Technical
Product Management for
XebiaLabs
• 20 years experience in
change, release
management, and release
engineering
• Nike, Riot Games,
Electronic Arts, and more..
Jason Lenny

3. 3
• Product Manager for
XebiaLabs’ XL Release software
• Deep experience driving
software projects, having held
a range of roles, from product
owner and business analyst, to
software developer
• Specialties include Agile
methodologies and driving the
alignment of application design
and development with
business vision
Manu Varshney

4. Challenges with Scaling DevOps

5. 5
Challenges with Scaling DevOps
Management +
Business Needs
Visibility/ Analytics
Decision Support
Risk Assessment
Feedback
Enterprise
Requirements
Integrations
Process
Complexity
Compliance
Standardization/
Repeatability
Scale
Security
Dev + Ops
Needs
Automation
Efficiency
Speed
Error reduction

6. 6
• Speaking different languages
• Communication gaps (or flood)
• Compliance and security
• Capacity to track change at scale
• Heterogenous process and tools
Challenges with Scaling DevOps

7. 7
• DevOps brings in new
roles
• Misunderstandings all
too common
• Tools focused on
developers, leaving out
business
Speaking the Same Language

8. 8
• Less permanent teams
• New solutions like
Slack, Hipchat, and
others
• Centralized planning is
diminished by design
Communication Gaps

9. 9
• Speed and governance
historically at odds
• Complex and evolving topics
• Missing experience on team
• Building trust is challenging
• Cultural change is hard
Compliance and Security

10. 10
• Constant delivery is goal
• Small components work best
• But.. making sense of it all is
challenge
• Dependencies
• API Versions
• “Where is my feature?”
Faster, Smaller Releases

11. Heterogeneous Process / Tooling
11

12. Heterogeneous Process / Tooling
• Always new tools/ideas
• Experimenting with tech and
process is good
• Mature at different rates
• Complex and constantly
evolving landscape
12

13. Solutions

14. Speaking the Same Language
14
Business Experts Code Experts
• XFile
• API
• Custom tasks
• Custom tiles
• Plugins
• Drag and drop GUI
• Reports
• Notifications
• Risk Intelligence
• Calendar view, et
"XL is 'Approachable to traditional team members and 'code only tech heroes' alike'"

15. Speaking the Same Language
15
Release template vs Xfile

16. 16
Chatops
• Chatops
features to
inform the
teams about
task progress -
be informed in
real time
Email Customization
• Customize emails in
your preferred way!
• Priority flag and
configurable email
content
• Configurable
recipients per task
and release event
Communication Gaps

17. Communication Gaps
17

18. Communication Gaps
18

19. Communication Gaps
19

20. Communication Gaps
20
Watchers
Watchers on tasks to subscribe
people if they want to follow a
task

21. Communication Gaps
21
Reminders
Task due soon notification which
pulls people in real time to
remind what’s next?

22. 22
• Compliance sees:
• Cowboy culture
• Speed over thoroughness
• Lack of respect
• Lack of understanding
Compliance and Security

23. 23
• Developers see:
• Doesn’t “get” it
• Old fashioned
• Lack of respect
• Lack of understanding
Compliance and Security

24. 24
• Nobody opposed to going
fast
• Actually opposed to: playing
loose with rules
• Rules help ensure success
• Bring them in to the team!
Compliance and Security

25. Compliance and Security
25
• Task oriented view understandable to compliance
• Interaction point usable by business users
• Single source of truth for execution

26. Compliance and Security
• Task activity log available with every release
• Logs available permanently
26

27. Compliance and Security
27
• Blackout periods can be enforced in XL Release
• Edited via UI, enforced through automation
• Quarter/year end, marketing, or product launches
CCB

28. 28
• Release definitions in
source control
• Provides tech interface
for compliance:
• Diffs
• Versioning
• History
• Automation
Compliance and Security

29. Faster, Smaller Releases
29
• One of the first scaling issues
• If you have many releases:
• Where do you pay attention?
• What just changed?
• Who is doing what?
• When is feature x live?

30. 30
• Risk score brings focus
• Flags, failures, retries,
overdue dates, etc.
• Always useful, but
indispensable in fast
environments
Faster, Smaller Releases

31. Faster, Smaller Releases
31
• Associate releases with tags
• Flexible Perspectives:
• Technology
• Organization
• Feature delivery
• Customer experience
• And more

32. 32
• Innovations being built:
• Feature delivery context
• Advanced relationships
• Risk intelligence
Join our User Panel to help
us build these features!
Faster, Smaller Releases

33. 33
Heterogeneous Process / Tooling
• Experimentation is smart
• Take advantage of our plugins

34. • Balances tech and
process without
sacrificing either
• Understandable
framework
• Experiment, but with
consistent pipeline view
34
Heterogeneous Process / Tooling

35. Heterogeneous Process / Tooling
35
• XL Deploy offers
model-based view:
• Applications
• Environments
• View relationships
• Abstract tech from
state

36. Heterogeneous Process / Tooling
36
• Understand flow
• Demonstrate value
• Gather insight
• Make diversity a source of
learning!
Join our User Panel to help
us build these features!

37. In Closing..

38. 38
MITIGATED BY
• Flexible Interaction Points
• Smart Awareness & Targeting
• Clarity of process/enforcement
• Intelligent relationship tracking
• Common framework
CHALLENGE
• Speaking different languages
• Communication gaps (or flood)
• Compliance and security
• Capacity to track change at scale
• Heterogenous process and tools
In Closing..

39. 39
In Closing..
Questions?

40. 40
In Closing..
Thank you!