DevOps has an automation problem, while agile[1] has an identity problem. Both face organizational problems. These two, intertwined methodologies -- or philosophies, if you will -- will make the difference in the march toward digital transformation in the year ahead, but organizations still have a great deal of finessing to make things work. The goal is to have everyone on the same page, moving in the same direction, delivering quality software quickly. In this next of a series on the year before us, I canvassed industry leaders about the prospects for DevOps and agile,
The challenge going forward with DevOps is there are still too many manual processes. "Usually what's missing is complete automation," says Eric Newcomer, CTO of WSO2[2]. "A CI/CD pipeline tool provides the capability to fully automate the application build and deploy process. But because many organizations separate these functions -- build and deploy -- the build process often gets automated but the deployment doesn't."
Automation is key across the board, agrees Kief Morris, principal cloud technologist at ThoughtWorks[3]. "We are looking at low-code tools with AI assistance baked in as a real game changer for cloud-native computing. Secure API management and governance are other very important tools in the toolbox to help make sense of the proliferation of microservice-based development models and ensure they are providing consistent business value rather than engendering chaos."
The slower-than-desired pace of automaton stems from "organizations prohibiting developers from accessing production environments, probably because developers made changes in production previously that caused production problems," says Newcomer. "It's hard to change that kind of policy, especially when incidents have occurred. Another reason is simple institutional inertia - processes and procedures are difficult to change once fully baked