This document provides an overview of lean software development and DevOps practices. It discusses topics like continuous delivery, loosely coupled architectures, integrating security, lean management, and lean product development. The research presented found that organizations adopting these practices see benefits like improved software delivery performance, lower change failure rates, stronger organizational culture, higher productivity, and less employee burnout. Continuous delivery in particular was linked to increased organizational performance and commercial outcomes. The document advocates implementing technical practices like continuous integration, test automation, and deployment automation to achieve continuous delivery and its benefits.

1. ACCELERA
THE SCIENCE OF LEAN SOFTWARE
AND DEVOPS AT BETEASY
Duncan Ham

2. SHORT HISTORY OF MANAGEMENT
TAYLORISM LEAN AGILE
ECONOMIES OF
SCALE WASTE REDUCTION ADAPTABILITY
‣ DIVISION OF
LABOUR
‣ SPECIALISATION
‣ WORKERS AND
MANAGERS
‣ ANNUAL BUDGETS
‣ TEAMS OF
WORKERS
‣ CONTINUOUS
IMPROVEMENT
‣ FOCUS ON
QUALITY
‣ MANAGERS KNOW
THE WORK
‣ SOFTWARE
PRACTICES
‣ SMALL TEAMS
‣ CUSTOMER
CENTRIC
‣ NETWORKED NOT
HIERARCHY

3. “IF YOU
CAN’T
MEASURE
IT, YOU
CAN’T
IMPROVE
Peter Drucker

4. TARGETING AUDIENCE FOR THIS DATA
RUSSELL ACKOFF
“Managers who don’t know how to
measure what they want settle for
wanting what they can measure.”
“Most managers receive much more
data (if not information) than they can
possibly absorb even if they spend all
of their time trying to do so. Hence they
already suffer from an information
overload.”

5. ACCELERATE
ABOUT THE
AUTHORS
▸ Nicole Forsgren, PhD
▸ Management Information
Systems
▸ Jez Humble
▸ Author: Continuous Delivery,
Lean Enterprise, The DevOps
Handbook
▸ Gene Kim
▸ Author: The Phoenix Project, The
visible Ops Handbook
23,000 survey
responses, 2000 unique
organisations. State of
DevOps 2012 to 2017,
public financial records
Greenfield, Legacy,
Waterfall, tech
transformations, Agile,
DevOps
Government, Startups,
Finance, Healthcare,
Digital companies
Forward: Martin Fowler (chief scientist,
ThoughtWorks), Courtney Kissler (VP Digital
Platform Engineering, Nike)

6. OVERALL RESEARCH PROGRAM
ACCELERATE: THE SCIENCE OF LEAN SOFTWARE AND DEVOPS
https://itrevolution.com/ACC-transformation-practices

7. SIDE NOTE: HOW TO MAKE SURE YOU’VE GOT THE RIGHT
MEASURES
USEFUL GUIDE FOR MEASURES
CONFLICTING MEASURES REDUCE THE LIKELIHOOD OF GAMING THE
1. Measure competing things – its relatively easy to game a single metric, so its important to
measure the impact of moving one metric by showing the others. Help teams target moving one
metric and observe any negative impacts on others.
2. Trends not numbers are important – observing unintended drifting over time of metric
averages. Its about understanding something has changed, not how good or bad. Help teams
react earlier to often slow moving regression in a metric or two. Less effort in correction the
earlier it is detected.
3. Look for global or local trends – Comparing trends across teams is key to spotting system
level opportunities (every team is impacted) versus single team opportunities. Help teams
target improving things they can do without fighting a system level factors they are unlikely to
solve.
* Shamelessly taken from Troy Magennis site: http://focusedobjective.com/

8. ACCELERATE
MEASURING ORGANISATIONAL
PERFORMANCE
SOFTWARE
DELIVERY
PERFORMANCE
COMMERCIAL
PERFORMANCE
NON-
COMMERCIAL
PERFORMANCE
‣ Profitability
‣ Market share
‣ Productivity
‣ Quality of good and services
‣ Operating efficiency
‣ Customer satisfaction
‣ Achieving organisational goals
Organisations assessed fell into 3 categories, High, Medium and Low performers.
ORGANISATIONS WITH HIGH PERFORMING SOFTWARE DELIVERY
PERFORMANCE ARE TWICE AS LIKELY TO EXCEED COMMERCIAL AND
Twice as likely
to exceed
commercial
performance
goals
Twice as likely
to exceed non-
commercial
performance
goals
50% higher
market
capitalisation
growth over 3
years
WESTRUM
CULTURE
LEAN PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT

9. ACCELERATE
KEY METRICS TO MEASURE TECH’S
CONTRIBUTIONDEPLOYMENT
FREQUENCY
LEAD TIME
MEAN TIME TO
RESTORE
CHANGE FAIL %
WESTRUM CULTURE
THE TIME LAPSED FROM INITIAL
CODE WRITTEN TO BEING IN THE
PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT
THE TIME LAPSED FROM A CODE
DEPLOYMENT INTO PRODUCTION
TO A ROLLBACK OF THE CODE
THE NUMBER OF DEPLOYMENTS
THAT WERE ROLLED BACK IN
PRODUCTION
ARE THE TEAMS WORKING IN A
HIERARCHICAL BUREAUCRATIC
OR PERFORMANT CULTURE
THE NUMBER OF TIMES CODE IS
PUBLISHED INTO THE
PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT
These metrics are indicators to measure for Software Delivery Performance
SOFTWARE DELIVERY MEASURES CAN BE USED TO JUDGE THE

10. ACCELERATE
MEASURES AGAINST ORGANISATIONAL
PERFORMANCE
What the numbers mean to organisational performance
2017
High
Performers
Medium
Performers
Low
Performers
Deployment
FrequencyThe number of times code is published into the
Production environment
On demand (multiple
deploys per day)
Between once per
week and one month
Between one per
week and once per
month
Lead Time for
changes
The time lapsed from initial code written to being in the
production environment
Less than one hour Between once per
week and one month
Between once per
week and one month
MTTR
The time lapsed from a code deployment into production to a
rollback of the code
Less than one hour Less than one day
Between one day and
one week
Change Failure Rate
The number of deployments that were rolled back in production
0-15% 16-30% 31-45%
QUANTITATIVE SOFTWARE PRACTICE DATA CAN BE USED TO INDICATE

11. The Canadian blood
authorities ignoring
suspicions of HIV
contaminated supplies
resulting in over 1000
deaths
The fumbling that led to
the demise of Columbia
space shuttle shows
bureaucracy at its worst
The Apollo 13 space
crisis shows an
excellent example of a
generative response in
a crisis
ACCELERATE
WESTRUM ORGANISATIONAL
CULTURAL MODEL
THE WESTRUM MODEL IS A WIDELY PEER REVIEWED MODEL FOR HSE
Why the Westrum model
First developed to monitor the flow of information
within the Safety fields, in particular aviation,
nucular and increasingly medicine. The idea was
to characterise general ways of coping with
information, especially information that suggests
anomaly. Failures in information flow figure
prominently in many major accidents, but
information flow is also a type marker for
organisational culture. In some organisations,
information flows well, and elicits prompt and
appropriate responses. In others it is hoarded for
political reasons or it languishes due to
bureaucratic barriers.
WESTRUM MODEL
APPLICATIONS
GENERATIVECALCULATIVE Sturdy Memorial
Hospital identified 20
wrong prostrate
diagnoses as a result of
an internal 2 year audit
after a single failure
was discovered
GENERATIVEPATHOLOGIC
AL

12. ACCELERATE
IT’S ABOUT THE TEAM RIGHT?
GOOGLES RESEARCH MIRRORS THE THEORY OF THE WESTRUM MODEL
Other research supports the Westrum model
“What makes a team effective at
Google?”
200+ interview, 250 attributes of 180+ active
Google teams
Team effectiveness measured in 4 ways:
1. Executive evaluation of the team
2. Team leader evaluation of the team
3. Team member evaluation of the team
4. Sales performance against quarterly quota
“who is on a team matters less than how the team
members interact, structure their work, and view
their contributions” (Google 2015)
“Individuals on teams with higher psychological
safety are less likely to leave Google, they’re
more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas
from their teammates, they bring in more revenue,
and they’re rated as effective twice as often by
executives”
GOOGLES PROJECT ARISTOTLE

13. ACCELERATE
YEAH YEAH YEAH – HOW DO I GET THE
WESTRUM CULTURE?
CHANGING HOW WORK IS DONE CREATES THE GREATEST IMPACT TO
Building the right culture
Manufacturing sector learned throughout the 90’s
how to adopt a new culture to remain competitive
“what my … experience taught me that was so
powerful was that the way to change culture is not
to first change how people think, but instead to
start by changing how people behave – what they
do” Shook 2010
John Shook – How to change a Culture: Lessons
from NUMMI
LESSONS FROM LEAN
MANUFACTURINGCONTINU
OUS
DELIVERY
LEAN
MANAGE
MENT
WESTRU
M
CULTURE
MINDSET
BEHAVIO
R
ENVIRON
MENT
Reciprocal Determinism
Modifying the mindset is one of the hardest things
we as coaches can do, a more effective approach
is to recognize the relationship between the
mindset, behavior and environment. You can
observe the behavior reflecting the mindset and
modify the environment accordingly.
IE collaborative mindset absent as team members
don’t talk to each other – Remove desk partitions
– observe behavior
LESSONS FROM DARRYN
WEBSTER

14. OVERALL RESEARCH PROGRAM
ACCELERATE: THE SCIENCE OF LEAN SOFTWARE AND DEVOPS
https://itrevolution.com/ACC-transformation-practices

15. ACCELERATE TECHNICAL PRACTICES
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY

16. ACCELERATE IMPACTS OF CONTINUOUS DELIVERY
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY
CONTINU
OUS
DELIVERY
• Strong identification with the organisation you
work for
• Higher levels of software delivery performance
(lead time, deploy frequency, time to restore
service)
• Lower change fail rates
• A Generative, performance-oriented culture
OUTCOMES FROM
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY
SOFTWAR
E
DELIVERY
PERFORM
ANCE
ORGANISAT
IONAL
PERFORMA
NCE
WESTRUM
ORGANISA
TIONAL
CULTURE
IDENTITY
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY DIRECTLY LEADS TO ORGANISATIONAL
“Our research shows that the technical
practices of continuous delivery have
huge impact on many aspects of an
organization.”

17. ACCELERATE TECHNICAL PRACTICES
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY
Key Principles
• Build Quality in
• Work in small batches
• Computers perform repetitive tasks; people solve
problems
• Relentlessly pursue continuous improvement
• Everyone is responsible
Key Foundations
• Comprehensive configuration management
• Continuous integration
• Continuous testing
VERSION CONTROL
DEPLOYMENT
AUTOMATION
CONTINUOUS
INTEGRATION
TRUNK-BASED
DEVELOPMENT
TEST AUTOMATION
TEST DATA
MANAGEMENT
SHIFT LEFT ON
SECURITY
LOOSELY COUPLED
ARCHITECTURE
EMPOWERED
TEAMS
MONITORING
PROACTIVE
NOTIFICATIONS
CONTINU
OUS
DELIVERY
Do this:
Get this:
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY IS ACHIEVED BY TANGIBLE ACTIONS AND
“implementing these practices often
requires rethinking everything – from
how teams work, to how they interact
with each other, to what tools and
processes they use.”

18. ACCELERATE IMPACTS ON QUALITY
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY
CONTINU
OUS
DELIVERY
• Quality and performance of applications, as
perceived by those working on them
• The percentage of time spent on rework or
unplanned work
• The percentage of time spent working on
defects identified by end users
IMPACTS ON QUALITY
LESS
REWO
RK
LESS
DEPLOYMEN
T PAIN
LESS
BURN
OUT
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY INCREASES VALUE ADD WORK AND REDUCES
49%
38%
21%
27%
30% 35%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
120%
High Performers Low Performers
New vs unplanned work
New Work Unplanned Work Other work
For further reading: John Seddon, creator of Vanguard Method
talks about poor quality creating failure demand, ie driving up
unplanned work

19. ACCELERATE IMPACTS ON PEOPLE
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY
CONTINU
OUS
DELIVERY
• Work Overload
• Lack of control
• Insufficient rewards
• Breakdown of community
• Absence of fairness
• Value Conflicts
IMPACTS ON PEOPLE
LESS
REWO
RK
LESS
DEPLOYMEN
T PAIN
LESS
BURN
OUT
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY AND LEAN PRACTICES REDUCE DEPLOYMENT
“Maslach found that most organisations
try to fix the person and ignore the work
environment, even though her research
shows that fixing the environment has a
higher likelihood of success”
• Organisational Culture
• Deployment Pain
• Effectiveness of leaders
• Organisational investment in DevOps
• Organisational Performance
HOW TO REDUCE OR FIGHT
BURNOUT
LEAN
PRACTIC
ES
100 – 300%Of an employee’s salary plus damage to
company brand and employer brand

20. ACCELERATE CONTINUOUS DELIVERY TECHNICAL PRACTICES
WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T
ENSURE ENOUGH THINKING HAS BEEN PUT INTO CORE PRACTICES TO
Version
Control
Trunk
development
Continuous
Integration
Automated
deployment
Test Automation
Test Data
Management
“Keeping system
application configuration
in version control was
more highly correlated
with software delivery
performance than
application code”
Code and merge in short
cycles, rejecting code that
results in a broken build
allowing developers to fix
it quickly
“Having test automations
that are reliable: when
they pass teams a
confident the software is
releasable, when they fail
there’s a real defect”
“Successful teams had
adequate test data to run
their fully automated test
suites and could acquire
test data for running
automated tests on
demand”
“Developing off trunk/master
rather than on long lived feature
branches was correlated with
higher delivery performance”
“Results are independent of
team size, org size or industry”
Repeatable reliable
method to deploy code, or
an entire environment
provides Audit assurance
and can save on cloud
costs

21. ACCELERATE LOOSELY COUPLED ARCHITECTURE
ARCHITECTURE
SHIFTING FROM MONOLITH TO LOOSELY COUPLED REDUCES THE
Cathedral vs Bazaar
Monolith
Single purposes
Long to build
Difficult to change
Multiple small units
Serves a variety of needs
Quick to build
Easy to change
Low performers were more likely to say they were working on custom software created by another
company.
Low performers were also more likely to be working on mainframe systems
Working to integrate against a mainframe had no correlation
High performers could test without an integration environment & deploy independently of other services

22. ACCELERATE INTEGRATING INFOSEC INTO THE DELIVERY CYCLE
SHIFTING LEFT ON SECURITY
BUILDING SECURITY EARLY INTO THE DELIVERY PROCESS POSITIVELY
Bringing security – and security teams – in process
with software delivery rather than as a downstream
phase
Not a Product,
Not a Process,
Not a
Department, it’s
about building
the relationship
to learn
“integrating these security practices contributed to software
delivery performance”

23. OVERALL RESEARCH PROGRAM
ACCELERATE: THE SCIENCE OF LEAN SOFTWARE AND DEVOPS
https://itrevolution.com/ACC-transformation-practices

24. ACCELERATE LEAN MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
LEAN MANAGEMENT
LEAN
MANAGE
MENT
• Limit work in progress to increase throughput
• Visual displays of quality and productivity
metrics as well as status of work (Team wall &
Dashboard)
• Feedback from Production
• Lightweight Change Approvals
PRACTICES
WESTRUM
ORG
CULTURE
SOFTWARE
DELIVERY
PERFORMA
NCE
LESS
BURN
OUT
LIGHTWEIGHT CHANGE APPROVALS WITH AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT
“external approvals were negatively correlated
with lead time, deployment frequency and restore
time, and had no correlation with change fail rate”
“approval by an external body (such as a manager
or CAB) simply doesn’t work to increase stability
of production systems”
Vigorous use of source code repositories and
automated deployments provide compliance to the
letter and the spirit of regulations imposed on
organisations

25. OVERALL RESEARCH PROGRAM
ACCELERATE: THE SCIENCE OF LEAN SOFTWARE AND DEVOPS
https://itrevolution.com/ACC-transformation-practices

26. ACCELERATE LEAN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
LEAN
PRODUCT
MANAGEM
ENT
• Work in small batches
• Make the flow of work visible (team wall)
• Gather and Implement Customer Feedback
• Team Experimentation
PRACTICES
WESTRUM
ORG
CULTURE
SOFTWARE
DELIVERY
PERFORMAN
CE
LESS
BURN
OUT
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY REDUCES EMPLOYEE CHURN
“Improving your software
delivery effectiveness will
improve your ability to work
in small batches and
incorporate customer
feedback along the way”
ORGANISA
TIONAL
PERFORM
ANCE
“Software delivery performance predicts Lean
product management practices”
“Improving your software delivery capability
enables working in small batches and performing
user research along the way, leading to better
products. “
”Lean product management practices predict
organisational performance, measured in terms of
productivity, profitability and market share”

27. OVERALL RESEARCH PROGRAM
ACCELERATE: THE SCIENCE OF LEAN SOFTWARE AND DEVOPS
https://itrevolution.com/ACC-transformation-practices

28. ACCELERATE LEADERS AND MANAGERS
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
• Test Automation
• Deployment Automation
• Trunk-Based Development
• Shift Left of Security
• Loosely Coupled
Architecture
• Empowered Teams
• Continuous Integration
• Team Experimentation
• Work in Small Batches
• Gather & Implement
Customer Feedback
PRACTICES
LEADERSHIP MUST IMPLEMENT TECHNICAL PRACTICES SHIFT THE DIAL
“”
“we found evidence that leaders along cannot
achieve high DevOps outcomes”
“Leaders cannot achieve goals on their own, They
need their teams executing the work on [technical
practices]”
“by 2020 half of the CIO’s who have not transformed their
teams' capabilities will be displaced from their
organisations digital leadership teams”
• Vision
• Inspirational Communication
• Intellectual Stimulation
• Supportive Leadership
• Personal Recognition
LEADERSHIP

29. ACCELERATE LEADERS AND MANAGERS
THE ROLE OF MANAGERS
• Create space and opportunities for
learning and improving
• Establish a dedicated training budget
• Encourage staff to attend technical
conferences
• Set up internal hack days
• Encourage teams to organize internal ‘Yak’
days
• Hold regular internal DevOps mini-
conferences
• Give staff dedicated time, such as 20%
time
PRACTICES
MANAGERS PLAY A CRITICAL ROLE IN LINKING THE TECHNICAL
“Managers can do a lot to improve their teams
performance by creating a work environment
where employees feel safe, investing in
developing the capabilities of their people, and
removing obstacles to work”
• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose
“managers can improve matters by enabling
specific DevOps practices in their teams and by
visibly investing in DevOps and in their
employees’ professional development”

30. OVERALL RESEARCH PROGRAM
ACCELERATE: THE SCIENCE OF LEAN SOFTWARE AND DEVOPS
https://itrevolution.com/ACC-transformation-practices

31. “NOTHING IS
HARDER TO
TOPPLE THAN
A FACT THAT
SUPPORTS A
DEEPLY HELD
PREJUDICE
DENIED BY ITS
HOLDER.”Russell Ackoff