DEVOPS PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Importance of DevOps and Project Management

Visible Work Flow 

Visibility in DevOps refers to the extent to which teams understand the flow of work from business through to customers. Developing a visible workflow involves working in smaller batches, team experimentation, and visibility into customer feedback. Teams can use these characteristics to predict software delivery and organizational performance. 

To create a visible workflow, teams need to have the following characteristics:

  • Understand how work moves through the organization.
  • Have visibility into the flow of this work.
  • Show the flow of work on dashboards and other visual displays. 
  • Have access to information about the flow of development work across the whole value stream. 

Scrum Masters or Project Managers can help put in place the measures required for workflow visibility. 

Managing Change Collaboratively 

There is often an association between change management in IT organizations and bureaucracy, painfully long approval processes, and manual effort. This is the antithesis to DevOps. DevOps is a continuous and iterative approach where speed and efficiency are critical. 

In this day and age, technology is changing fast. Therefore, organizations have to adopt DevOps principles by ditching the old change management processes for a more modern, fast-paced model. 

A Scrum Master or Project Manager can empower DevOps teams to collaborate at high velocity. That way, they can respond to business changes and deliver outstanding Customer Experiences fast. 

Daily Stand-ups

A daily stand-up or scrum is a critical part of a sprint. In essence, it’s a meeting involving the core development team meant to keep teams on task. This team includes owners, developers, and a scrum master. Each meeting answers the following questions:

  • What work was completed yesterday?
  • What are we working on today?
  • What issues are blocking progress?

Answering these questions helps to identify team blockers. It also strengthens the team since everyone shares the progress and contributes to the joint team goal. Daily stand-ups can help keep everyone excited about the team’s overall contribution to the organization’s goals. 

Feedback Loops

The analysis and optimization of software and system delivery hinges on your organization’s ability to set up feedback loops. Lack of proper feedback loops can result in a pileup of unsolved problems and delayed information sharing. 

So, what are feedback loops?

Feedback loops are simply an internal review of how your end-users utilize the new software/features/functionality.  

Feedback loops in DevOps help enforce project goals and priorities. 

As with all tools, feedback loops are only as good as their implementation. The right Project Manager or Scrum Master can help your organization develop powerful feedback loops intra-sprint so that no defects are passed on in the software delivery process.  

This helps ensure quality delivery instead of your customers, providing you the feedback/insight required to get it right.

Conclusion

Need some guidance and support in your DevOps project? For more than 20 years, Gibson Group has blended hands-on technical DevOps know-how and project management skills to give organizations a real return on investment. Get in touch today.