This talk explains a proven approach to assessment SRE practices for an organization. The approach uses a 9 pillar model and 7 step transformation blueprint to determine current state of SRE practices and to set a roadmap to improve SRE practices towards industry best practices.

1. Marc Hornbeek
a.k.a. DevOps_the_Gray esq.
CEO and Principal Consultant
Engineering DevOps Consulting
Author – Engineering DevOps
mhornbeek@engineeringdevops.com
Rapid Strategic SRE Assessments
A common approach for Rapid Strategic DevOps / QA / DevSecOps / SRE Assessments
https://devops.com/rapid-strategic-sre-assessments-accelerate-it-transformations/
mybook.to/engineeringdevops

2. Enterprise, Manufacturers, Service Providers and Institutions
DevOps / QA / DevSecOps / SRE
www.engineeringdevops.com
mhornbeek@engineeringdevops.com
Training and
Certifications
DevOps, DevSecOps QA, SRE
Assessments
DevOps, DevSecOps, QA, SRE
Strategic Planning
Agile plans for 26 topics
Speaking Engagements
Conferences, Events,
Onsite or Online
Advisory Services
Workshops, mentoring
Content Writing
Blogs, White papers, eBooks
Webinars
Content and delivery
Engineering DevOps Consulting

3. www.engineeringdevops.com
What you will learn
• SRE Blueprint
• 9 Pillars of SRE Practices
• Assessment methodology
• Roadmap your Journey
• Self-Assessment tools and resources

4. 4
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
DevOps Institute

5. 5
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Blueprint – 9 Pillars
Value Stream
Plan Continuous Improvement (CI) Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CD) Operate
Culture – Shift
Left Wisdom
of Production
Toil Reduction
and
Automation
Measurements
And
Observability
SLAs / SLOs / SLIs
and Error
Budgets
Anti-Fragility
Fire Drills, Chaos
Monkey and
Security
Work Sharing
and
Incremental
Technical Debt
Deployments
using Blue-
Green, A/B
and Canary
Performance
Management
of Apps and
Infrastructure
Incident
Management
& Blameless
Retrospectives
DevOps Institute

6. Seven-Step Transformation Blueprint
1. Visioning
2. Alignment
3. Assessment
4. Solution
5. Realize
6. Operationalize
7. Expansion

7. 7
Align organizations around shared
understandings and deliver a roadmap
towards more mature DevOps,
DevSecOps & SRE
• Leadership and teams
• Measurable actionable goals
• Gaps priorities for improvement
• Value stream workflow efficiencies
• Cultural readiness and barriers to change
• Tools and Toolchains
• Rapid Strategic Assessments focus on model applications
Assessment Objective

8. 8
Multiple Alignments Are Needed
SRE Practices
• Culture
• Work Sharing
• Toil Reduction
• SLAs/SLOs/SLIs
• Measurements
• Anti-Fragility
• Deployments
• Performance Management
• Incidents Management
DevOps Practices
• Leadership
• Culture
• Design
• Continuous Integration
• Continuous Testing
• Continuous Security
• Continuous Monitoring
• Continuous Security
• Elastic Infrastructure
• Continuous Delivery
Three Dimensions
1. People
2. Process
3. Technology
Three Axis of Variations
1. Applications
2. Pipelines
3. Infrastructure
Five Maturity Levels
1. Chaos
2. Continuous Integration
3. Continuous Flow
4. Continuous Feedback
5. Continuous
Improvement

9. 9
Rapid Strategic Assessment
Kickoff
Meeting
Discovery
Surveys
Solution
Mapping
Workshops
& Interviews
Recommended
Solution
Follow-up
Typical duration 21 days
Quick, affordable
assessments
and
re-assessments

10. 10
Define / evaluate your strategic vision
and prioritized goals for your
transformation.
Using the Engineering
DevOps/DevSecOps/SRE Assessment
Tool:
• Collect and organize your vision
• Define & prioritize performance goals
• Goals may be different for different
applications
Strategic Vision / Goals Workshop

11. 11
Determine Gaps of your practices against industry practices.
• Assign a capability and
importance score for
each practice and
category of practice,
culminating in a
calculated GAP score
• A GAP score of 7.5 or
higher is considered high
priority
Capability Assessment Workshop

12. Example SRE Practices Assessment Survey - Input
Survey tool is located on www.engineeringdevops.com
Survey Input
Individual, or combined team
SRE Practices Surveys
• Culture
• Work Sharing
• Toil Reduction
• SLAs/SLOs/SLIs
• Measurements
• Anti-Fragility
• Deployments
• Performance
Management
• Incidents
Management

13. The calculated Scores
determine the Rank
indicating which
practices are most
important to improve
to meet the
DevOps/SRE
Transformation goals.
Example SRE Practices Assessment Survey – Output
Survey tool is located on www.engineeringdevops.com
Output Analysis

14. 14
Captures current state DevOps/SRE value streams inclusive of
people, process, and technology.
Using Engineering DevOps Value
Stream Model:
• Educate value stream approach
• Understand the current state value
streams relative to specific goals
• Identify bottlenecks, gaps and
opportunities
• Prioritize improvements
Engineering DevOps / SRE Value-Stream Workshop
Template is located on
www.engineeringdevops.com

15. 15
Individual opinions regarding recommendations and priorities.
Methodology:
• Starting with Candidate
Recommendations
• One-on-one or small team
• Identify top three priorities
• Allow new
recommendations
• Prioritize feedback
Strategic Alignment Interviews

16. DevOps / DevSecOps / SRE - RoadMap
Actionable Workstreams
Epics, User Stories, Tasks, Dependencies,
Technologies, Balanced workloads

17. DevOps Adoption Blueprint
Leadership / Culture Initiative
Model Application m
Application m + 1
• Adoption goals
• Leaders training
• Organization preparation
• Model project selection
• Investment (team &
tools)
• Architecture team
• Monitoring and
incentives
• Team and organization
• Training (CI/CD practices)
• Goals, Assessment, Value Stream
• Tool chain with ARA backbone
• Automate CI and QA automation
• Automate CD , containers, G/B, A/B
• DevSecOps, SRE practices
• KPIs, SLOs and monitoring tools
• Site Reliability Engineering
• Optimize (Kaizen)
• App Selection
• Self contained product teams
(squads, tribes, SREs)
• Proactive sharing or practices
(Yokoten)
• Info sharing (Chapters and Guilds)
SCALE !
Systematic, measured, adoption progression
POC MVP
2nd
Way
1st
Way
3rd
Way
Application m + 2
Application m + n
. . .
DevOps / DevSecOps / SRE Adoption Blueprint

18. The final step in the Rapid Strategic Assessment ensures
alignment with the results, roadmap and next steps.
Methodology:
Analysis of workshop and interviews
results in the following deliverables:
• Future state Value Stream
• Executive summary
• Recommendations
• High level Roadmap
• Progress Monitoring
Checkpoints
• Next steps
DevOps / DevSecOps / SRE Strategic Alignment

19. 19
Assessment Variations
Deep Dive Strategic
Assessment
9 Pillars + 10 topics
including DevOps,
DevSecOps and SRE
Continuous QA
Assessment
9 Pillars + Test
Management, Test
Tools, Test Scripts
Continuous Security
(DevSecOps)
Assessment

20. 20
Customer Impact Stories
Customer Goals & Challenges Assessment Discovery, and Solution
Recommendation
Large Network Storage
Company, cloud-based storage
solutions, enterprise business
applications.
Client desires a DevOps approach
to migrate a large group of
business applications to a cloud
structure with DevOps as a
service.
Assessed 26 topics for DevOps pipelines, SRE and
Cloud infrastructure. Recommended blueprint for
two-year strategic plan including agile plans for
implementation.
US Government Public Agency:
resident and business services,
500k residents, public safety,
recreation, tourism applications
Client desires a DevOps approach
to reduce software release lead
times and increase frequency
safely with visibility of costs and
release process.
Identified deployment pipeline bottlenecks and
high priority improvements. Provided an
engineering blueprint to reduce delivery pipeline
from 9 weeks to 2 weeks safely while improving
visibility and reducing manual bottlenecks.
Large Church Organization,
records management
applications for 33Million+
members
Client desires to accelerate their
DevOps initiative and needed
direction.
Current state discovered bottlenecks.
Recommended future state value stream map
included pipeline and continuous testing blueprint
solutions and engineering practices to reduce lead
time from week to hours.

21. 21
Summary / Key Takeaways
There is no “standard” SRE assessment approach in
the industry.
The Rapid Strategic SRE Assessment approach has
been tried and proven with large and smaller
organizations. It is quick, affordable and useful for
checkpoint re-assessments also.
Comments are invited regarding this approach and
the SRE best practices.
Refer to www.engineeringdevops.com for more
information regarding the Strategic SRE Assessment
approach, templates and useful tools.

22. DevOps / DevSecOps / SRE
Tools
Blueprints, Scorecards, Engineering
Practices, Assessment tool,
calculators, templates
DevOps / DevSecOps / SRE
Services
Assessments, Strategic
Planning, Training, Content
www.EngineeringDevOps.com
DevOps / DevSecOps / SRE
White Papers & Book