This new series offers a preview of the DevOps Fundamentals: Implementing Continuous Delivery (LFS261) course from The Linux Foundation. The online, self-paced course, presented through short videos, provides basic knowledge of the process, patterns and tools used in building and managing a Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. The included lab exercises provide the basic steps and configuration information for setting up a multiple language pipeline.
In this first article in the series, we’ll give a brief introduction to DevOps and talk about the habits of high-performance organizations. Later, we will get into the DevOps trinity: Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment. You can watch the introductory video below:
High-performance organizations make work visible. They manage work in process (WIP). And, they manage flow, of course, which is the Continuous Delivery part. For successful DevOps flow, you have to foster collaborative environments. And the way you do that is through high-trust work environments, and then by learning how to embrace failure and making failure part of your habits and your culture.
The DevOps Survey, which is run by Puppet Labs and the IT Revolution that I work with, has worked out the real science of this. The results of the survey found that high-performing organizations were both faster and more resilient, and we saw this in four variables.
The first is that high-performing organizations tend to deploy 30 times more frequently than low-performing organizations. Second, they had 200 times shorter Lead Times. Third, they also had 60 times less failures — like change failures. And, the fourth variable is that their mean time to recover (MTTR) was a 166 times faster.
So, we see this kind of Continuous Delivery where you are fast and reliable, and you have deployment automation, and you version control everything. And, all this leads to low levels of deployment pain, higher levels of IT performance, higher throughput and stability, lower change failure rates, and higher levels of performance and productivity.
In fact, there is also some data showing that this approach reduces burnout, so it is really good stuff. In the next article, we’ll talk about the value stream and lay the groundwork for Continuous Integration.
Want to learn more? Access all the free sample chapter videos now!
This course is written and presented by John Willis, Director of Ecosystem Development at Docker. John has worked in the IT management industry for more than 35 years.
