DEVOPSdigest

DevOps experts — analysts and consultants, users and the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, and sometimes controversial predictions on how DevOps and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2018. Part 4 covers Agile, CD and the development process.

Start with 2018 DevOps Predictions - Part 1

Start with 2018 DevOps Predictions - Part 2

Start with 2018 DevOps Predictions - Part 3

DEVOPS BECOMES PART OF ALM

DevOps methodology matures and becomes part of enterprise ALM (application lifecycle management) frameworks and is embraced by ITSM practitioners.
Alex Popov
Cloud Enablement and Continuous Delivery, Barclaycard(link is external)

AGILE CONTINUES

Based on IT Central Station user reviews of DevOps solutions, in 2018 we can expect to see the continued trend for solutions that support Agile methodologies, as well as DevOps solutions that provide ROI in terms of saving resources, or that provide multiple functionalities. Users are looking for DevOps tools that make their work more productive, and need fewer resources to manage.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station(link is external)

Agile will continue to move from a development/ IT initiative to a broader business one. That means that Agile and Scrum will be applied across the entire software delivery team to include operations and security to help cross functional teams deliver their complex work. It will also affect more traditional functions such as HR, purchasing, marketing and governance. Organizations will continue to wrestle with the disconnect of what being Agile means to their structures, roles and processes. This will lead, in part, to a realization that adopting Agile is a complex problem, which should therefore be approached in an Agile manner — incrementally, adapting as they go, driven by the customer and focused on the team!
Dave West
CEO and Product Owner, Scrum.org(link is external)

Digital leaders will rely more and more on Agile development methods — short sprints, scrum teams and user feedback loops — to accelerate the design, development, testing and acceptance of new applications. With its emphasis on rapid iteration and continuous improvement, Agile methodologies are quickly becoming a proven way for companies to churn out new innovations quickly.
Chris Wiborg
VP of Product Marketing, Alfresco Software(link is external)

LEAN PRINCIPLES

In the last 2-3 years we saw a big adaptation of agile practices at scale and a lot of organization are becoming more mature when it comes to the agile methodologies. We already see a lot of talk in agile teams about improving their performance and providing immediate value to customers. For 2018 the focus will be on lean principles such as reducing waste (for example inefficient ceremonies/meetings) and continuous delivery, where a team can release to customers even on a daily base.
Daniel Stangu
Agile Transformation Guild Master, Softvision(link is external)

CONTINUOUS DEPLOYMENT

Although continuous integrations (CI) is mature in many organizations, continuous deployment (CD) is not. Pipelines are highly customized as is application infrastructure, but in 2018 we will see more standardized pipelines and more simplistic ways of deploying orchestrated container infrastructure. These new products and services driven by better feedback loops will help ship quality software faster.
Jonah Kowall
VP of Market Development and Insights, AppDynamics(link is external)

FLOW TIME

In 2018 organizations will look at flow time as the key measure of delivery speed, measuring the time it takes to deliver a new feature or product from the first customer request through to completion. Previous measures like lead time and cycle time have tended to focus on code commit to deploy, and have helped to increase speed in sections of the delivery process, but aren't adequate when trying to become more predictable with customers. Flow time allows organizations to quantify the probability of completing x% of work in so many days.
Neelan Choksi
President and COO, Tasktop Technologies(link is external)

AUTOMATION EXPANDS

Release automation (RA) will evolve from deployment automation to deliver automation across every aspect of the DevOps tool chain — from Dev to test to production.
Chris Boorman
CMO, Automic Software(link is external)

ARA CONSOLIDATES

Application Release Automation (ARA) tools will provide consolidated offerings. ARA tools are often split in two, but the market prefers to pay for one. Vendors will respond to this and provide a single ARA SKU for customers.
Scott Willson
Product Marketing Director, Automic Software(link is external)

AUTOMATE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK LOOP

2018 is the year that companies and agencies start to look to automate the customer feedback loop of DevOps. As a reminder, the goal of delivering faster (through Agile and DevOps practices) is to get customer feedback fast so you can respond and adjust quickly. As long as the process is manual and siloed, all the benefits of automation, Agile and DevOps are stunted.
Neelan Choksi
President and COO, Tasktop Technologies(link is external)

LOW CODE

The future of coding is less code. The demand for new digital solutions is growing at an amazing rate, and the reality of today is that traditional development just can't keep up. In the immediate future, the market will see an increased adoption of low-code platforms to accelerate development and creation of digital solutions. In the not so distant future, code will be generated by AI-driven algorithms that create new digital solutions on the fly.
Malcolm Ross
VP of Product, Appian(link is external)

MAINFRAME AND DEVOPS

2018 will be the Year the Mainframe Becomes an Integral Part of the DevOps Toolchain. In 2018, adoption of DevOps practices will begin to proliferate across mainframe teams. Speed of the business does not exclude the mainframe. While many think the mainframe is a black box running by itself in the basement, this platform is essential to 92 of the top 100 banks worldwide, 23 of the top 25 US retailers, all 10 of the world's 10 largest insurers, and 23 of the world's 25 largest airlines. IT leaders are faced with several challenges in supporting the mainframe platform. For many large IT organizations, the mainframe is the system of record and is becoming a major constraint in delivering at the speed of the business. Furthermore, with the baby boomers retiring, mainframe infrastructure and operations support will be severely impacted. In 2018, IT leaders will look to DevOps practices such as Continuous Delivery to satisfy the need for speed and reduce dependencies on manual labor.
Mark Levy
Director of Strategy, Micro Focus(link is external)

There' a prevalent attitude that terms like mainframe, agility and DevOps do not belong in the same sentence. This is simply untrue. This year we expect to see more stories coming to light in terms of organizations successfully integrating their mainframes into the continuous delivery pipeline. As a result these organizations have gained significant velocity and competitive advantage, and they've got the statistics to back it up. We believe 2018 will be the year that message finally becomes crystal clear — the mainframe is not going anywhere, and modernizing the mainframe for a DevOps world is no longer a desired state of being, but a must-do for business survival.
David Rizzo
VP of Product Development, Compuware(link is external)

Read 2018 DevOps Predictions - Part 5, covering APIs and containers.