The document discusses the importance of software operability and its foundational role in DevOps practices. It outlines various concepts and strategies to improve operability, focusing on collaboration between development and operations teams to enhance the efficiency and reliability of software systems. Ultimately, it emphasizes the need for organizations to shift their IT investments towards innovation to gain competitive advantages in an increasingly complex technological landscape.

1. OPERATIONS IDEAS DELIVERED
OPERABILITY: A
DEVOPS
CORNERSTONE
1st July 2014

2. WELCOME
2

3. WEBINAR OUTLINE
3
INTRODUCTION
Marco Abis
CEO of HIGHOPS
2-5 minutes
SOFTWARE
OPERABILITY
Matthew Skelton
CNO of HIGHOPS
35-40 minutes
Q&A
15 minutes
#OPERABILITY

4. ABOUT HIGHOPS

5. OPERATIONS IDEAS DELIVERED
The first Operability-minded blend of Developers and Operations
professionals in the market, uniquely positioned to provide both
Professional and Managed Services for the full tech stack.
• We believe the challenges in delivering innovative solutions are almost
never about the technology. They are about the people.
• Standardising on reliable, predictable platforms takes the technical
discussions off the table and lets companies focus on their real issues:
spending time and mental energy solving business-changing problems.
• Shift your IT investments from maintenance to innovation: we help you
transform your operations from a cost center to a competitive advantage.
We enable your software development teams to work faster and ship more
often while making your operations resilient, reducing your operating costs
and making it scale more effectively.
5

6. GET THE EBOOK
• Free eBook from HIGHOPS
• http://bit.ly/OperabilityEbook
• 6000 words, with full
references & further reading
6

7. MATTHEW SKELTON
• Building, deploying, and operating
commercial software systems since 1998
• Sectors: finance, healthcare, insurance,
medical, oil & gas, travel, telecoms, …
• Research/study: cybernetics, neuroscience
• An engineering approach to software
systems
• Author of HIGHOPS eBook
‘Operability: a DevOps Cornerstone’
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8. TODAY • What is software operability?
• Core operability concepts
• Why a focus on operability is so crucial in
2014
• How operability relates to DevOps
• How we can improve operability in our
software
8

9. WHAT IS SOFTWARE OPERABILITY
9

10. OPERABILITY
• Relates to the Latin verb ‘to work’
• Operate: to make something work
• Operational: a state of ‘working’
• Opera: a [musical] work
• Cooperate: work together
• Interoperability: separate things working together
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11. BENEFITS OF GOOD OPERABILITY
• Fewer operational problems
• Reduced cost of ownership
• Software is easy to:
– Deploy
– Test
– Interrogate
• Simpler failure modes
• Rapid fault diagnosis
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12. INCLUDE OPS PEOPLE IN USER STORIES
12

13. OPERABILITY
• A measure of how well the software system
works in Production
• Must work well for both:
– End-users
– Operations team
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14. CORE OPERABILITY CONCEPTS
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15. EXAMPLE OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES
• Deployment
• Monitoring
• Diagnostics
• Debugging
• Check current state
• Reconfigure
• Inspect and determine dependencies
• Clear down data
• Capacity planning
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16. 16
HOOKS TRACEABILITY

17. 17
RELIABILITY RESILIENCE

18. 18
LOGGING CONFIGURABILITY
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,817 |
DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.java | 86 | Loading bean
definitions
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,848 | AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.java |
185 | Loaded 5 bean definitions from location pattern [samContext.xml]
INFO | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,848 | XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java | 323 |
Loading XML bean definitions from class path resource [tmfContext.xml]
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,848 | DefaultDocumentLoader.java | 72 |
Using JAXP provider
[com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.DocumentBuilderFactoryImpl]
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,848 | BeansDtdResolver.java | 72 | Found
beans DTD [http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd] in
classpath: spring-beans.dtd
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:44,864 |
DefaultBeanDefinitionDocumentReader.java | 86 | Loading bean
definitions
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:45,458 |
AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java | 411 | Finished creating
instance of bean 'MS-SQL'
DEBUG | 2008-09-06 10:51:45,458 | DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java |
213 | Creating shared instance of singleton bean 'MySQL'

19. WHY A FOCUS ON OPERABILITY IS SO
CRUCIAL IN 2014

20. BUSINESS DEMAND FOR CHANGE
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21. COMPLEX, DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS
21

22. HOW OPERABILITY RELATES TO
DEVOPS
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23. WITHOUT DEVOPS?
• Painful deployments
• Application restarts
• Load-balancer
workarounds
• Poor performance under
load
• Difficult to find and
diagnose errors
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“I want change!”
“I want stability!”

24. DevOps
• Development + Operations teams (+ others) collaborating closely
• Shared goals and incentives
• CAMS
– Culture
– Automation
– Measurement
– Sharing
• Lack of ‘blame culture’
• Learning through iteration
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25. CAMS PILLARS
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26. CAMS SUPPORTS OPERABILITY
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27. HOW WE CAN IMPROVE OPERABILITY
IN OUR SOFTWARE
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28. TREAT OPERATIONS AS HIGH-SKILL
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29. TALK ABOUT ‘OPERATIONAL
FEATURES’, NOT ‘NON-FUNCTIONAL
REQUIREMENTS’
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30. AVOID A SEPARATE ‘PRODUCTION-
IZATION OR ‘HARDENING’ PHASE
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31. AVOID PRODUCTION-SPECIFIC
TOOLING
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32. HAVE DEVELOPERS AND PRODUCT
OWNERS ON CALL
32

33. THE DEV TEAMS WRITE A DRAFT RUN
BOOK
33

34. MAKE OPS PROBLEMS VISIBLE
34

35. TEST FOR OPERABILITY IN A
DEPLOYMENT PIPELINE
35

36. REVIEW
36

37. WHAT IS SOFTWARE OPERABILITY?
A measure of how well the software system works
in Production
Both for end users and for Ops users
37

38. CORE OPERABILITY CONCEPTS
• Operational hooks
• Traceability
• Reliability
• Resilience
• First-class logging
• Configurability
38

39. WHY A FOCUS ON OPERABILITY IS SO CRUCIAL IN 2014
• ‘Cloud’ (software-defined infrastructure) has enabled
much more rapid rollout of infrastructure
• Businesses are demanding more rapid and
successful changes to software systems
• The potential for error is increased as systems
become more distributed and complex
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40. HOW OPERABILITY RELATES TO DEVOPS
• DevOps: Development + Operations in close
collaboration
• DevOps can lead to improved operability
• The CAMS pillars of DevOps support better
operability
40

41. HOW WE CAN IMPROVE OPERABILITY IN OUR SOFTWARE
• Treat Ops as high-skill
• ‘Operational Features’ not NFRs
• Avoid a separate ‘hardening’ phase
• Avoid Production-specific tooling
• Dev teams and Product Owners on call
• Dev teams write a draft Run Book
• Make Ops problems visible
• Test for operability in a CD deployment pipeline
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42. SUMMARY
• What is software operability?
• Core operability concepts
• Why a focus on operability is so crucial in 2014
• How operability relates to DevOps
• How we can improve operability in our software
42

43. Q & A
#operability
43

44. THANKS & PARTING THOUGHTS
• http://bit.ly/OperabilityEbook
• @gotHighOps
• info@highops.com
• We’re hiring!!! http://highops.com/jobs/
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