Most ops groups can’t give developers what they need. Ops is limited by traditional service delivery mindset and tools. Stability & reliability are now table-stakes when you are releasing software daily. What developers need now from ops is innovation. Operations has rarely taken this innovation-driven, product approach to providing services, & instead focuses on delivering to specification & limiting SLAs. As with development, ops creates value with continuous operations, product managing their platforms and releasing frequently. This talk covers how ops groups are transforming from a service delivery mindset a platform-as-a-product approach. With examples from Discover Financial Services, Rabobank, the US Air Force, & others the talk covers the concept, technologies & tools commonly used, & ops tactics needed to kick-off a platform-as-a-product strategy.

1. 1
Platform Operations
&
Platform as a Product
@cote

2. 2
Coté
@cote | http://cote.io

3. Modern operations is for developers: platform as a product
29% of developers say wait time is their top blocker, only 6% of executives say the same
Source: State of Kubernetes Survey, 2020. Pic: based on James Watters VMworld 2019 keynote; concept to ka-ching, Edwards and Willis.

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5. Ops’ roles and responsibilities are about developer
productivity, platform creation
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- Starts around 3 to 5 dev teams.
- Constant bottleneck removal
- Always reduce variability.
- Centralize, standardize.
- Developer tools, architecture.
- Build dev DevOps know-how.
- Automate security, governance.
- Still: capacity management;
infrastructure building, ownership.
- Study and adapt ☞ Small Batch

6. Selection of common bootstrapping/scaling tactics

7. Further analysis of just high and
elite performers shows the
following use profiles:
• 46% - Communities of Practice,
Grassroots, and PoCs
• 23% - Grassroots efforts and
Communities of Practice
• 22% - all by Big Bang and
DOJOs, but inc. PoC but stall
• 9% Centers of Excellence,
Communities of Practice, and
Training Centers
Start small & steady, expand by seeding & winning trust
Sources: "Accelerate State of DevOps 2019," DORA, August 2019; “From 0 to 1000 Apps: The First Year of Cloud Foundry at The Home Depot,” Anthony McCulley, The Home
Depot, Aug 2016; “Cloud Native at The Home Depot, with Tony McCulley,” Pivotal Conversations #45; USAF presentations and write-ups.

8. Consulting, internal marketing, branding, etc.
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Sources: Talanx; Duke Energy; Allstate; "Take DevOps to 11 and Sprinkle Cloud on it with Rainbows and Unicorns," Matt Curry, s1p
2017; customer discussions.

9. Use metrics to track value delivered, not (just) status
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Source: "Measuring ROI and Driving Adoption of TAS in an Enterprise," Nuz Mahmood & Daryl Dwyer, Sep 2020.

10. Thanks!
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http://cote.pizza
cotem@vmware.com | @cote

11. Modern software development: speed, flow & feedback
● Frameworks (e.g., Spring) for
standard, quick patterns
● Containers for smaller profiles,
removing waste
● Eventing, microservices & a
service mesh for architecture,
security, & performance
● Kubernetes for architecture,
runtime, multi-cloud consistency
● PaaS for removing operations
concerns, enforcing policy
● CI/CD

12. Starter platform as a product discovery questions
● What do developers need in terms of runtime platforms, CI/CD tooling and middleware?
● What is lacking now in their current platforms?
● What is causing bottlenecks in getting systems to production?
● What self-operating capabilities are they lacking, such as monitoring?
● What other internal and external dependencies are slowing them down?
● What different environments and geographic locations are needed for the platform?
● What repeated activities are their greatest operational drain?
● What would they like to automate but don’t have time for?
● What would they love to do if they had the skills or knowledge on the team?
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Source: “Strengthen Your DevOps Capability With Platform Ops,” Richard Watson and Gary Olliffe, Gartner, Oct 2018.