Agile and DevOps at USPTO

Briefing for ACT-IAC Partners

June 23, 2016

Agile

• Agile – is a lightweight, lean framework used for the development of software based on the 2001 Agile Manifesto.

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Agile versus Waterfall

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Why Agile?

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“DevOps”

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DevOps

• DevOps - rapid IT service delivery through the adoption of agile, lean practices emphasizing people (and culture), and seeks to improve collaboration between operations and development teams. DevOps implementations utilize technology — especially automation tools that can leverage an increasingly programmable and dynamic infrastructure from a life cycle perspective.

• The term “DevOps” originated with the 2008 Agile Conference discussion of “Agile Infrastructure” and has become popular in the last seven years due, in part, through DevOps Days meetings, conferences, Meetups, etc. The first two DevOps Days DC (2105, 2016) conferences were hosted by USPTO.

• “DevOps solves the most important business problem of our generation, [which is] how organizations make the transition from good to great.” - The Phoenix Project, Gene Kim

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DevOps Benefits - Survey Says….

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The Agile – DevOps Connection

Agile ScrumContinuous Rapid Development

DevOpsContinuous Rapid Deployment

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The Agile – DevOps Connection

DevOps was implemented at USPTO to solve a problem. How do you deliver the value to customers of continuous rapid software development if production deployments are waterfall? That is, the enterprise infrastructure people, processes, tools and culture were put in place based on a need to deploy new or enhanced products only once or twice a year. We needed DevOps to deliver the value of agile iterative development.

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USPTO Road To DevOps

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Agile DevelopmentScaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

Automated Testing

CICM Deployment Pipeline

Production Monitoring

USPTO DevOps Journey

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• Average of 1000 automated builds per week

• Build time < 15 mins including unit tests and static code analysis

• One click deployment (2-10 min duration) to all target environments, including hybrid cloud deploy

• 28+ projects auto deploying• 37+ projects auto building• 28+ Cloud Forms deployments• 7+ Ansible deployments• All NextGen projects on CICM

Top Organizational Challenges for DevOps Adoption*

• Fear of FailureFrom an executive point of view, managers often wonder whether the implementation of DevOps practices will be successful. Will they yield positive results that are transparent to both the customer and the organization?• Legacy ProcessesSoftware and technological processes are constantly evolving, and it is imperative that firms improve their processes in order to gain or maintain a competitive advantage. Topo Pal pointed out that once you start implementing new processes some of the perceived challenges do not materialize.• Bureaucracy: The Walls of Separation Between TeamsA majority of enterprises, especially older more conservative ones, organize workers into different, independent teams with the expectation that these specialized teams will work more efficiently. But today, some of the most innovative companies are discovering that cross-functional teams spanning the usual silos actually increase business efficiencies.

*Gene Kim, renowned author, researcher, speaker and DevOps evangelist, Tapabrata (Topo) Pal, Product Manager for Capital One, and Andrew Phillips, VP of DevOps Strategy at XebiaLabs, met online for a 2015 retrospect about scaling DevOps and Continuous Delivery in the enterprise. During the webinar the trio also covered the top organizational challenges for adoption and offered suggestions on how to overcome them.

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How to Overcome the Challenges

• Start small, one step at a timeStep 1: Create a tiger team. Or stir new patterns within existing ones.Step 2: Find some form of success that can highlight how value was added using the principles of DevOps.Step 3: Show the added value and proof of success to top level executives and garner their support. This will help to create a reversal within the organization where the executives will begin to push DevOps practices from the top level down.

According to Topo Pal, “The way to remove that skepticism is to find a tiger team and make them successful. Or try to create new patterns within a few tiger teams. And then go out in the enterprise and talk about it and demonstrate what you have achieved and encourage other teams to become tiger teams. And that way, you can scale.”

• Draw a Connection Between Management’s Goals and Something That Can Be Improved by DevOps

A common executive goal is to increase operational efficiency. This is usually accomplished by shorter task times and lowering costs. If you want to influence senior management and the way your entire organization operates, phrase your proposal in a way that speaks to management’s goals and is in line with their objectives.

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