DevOps is an enterprise software development term used to mean a type of agile relationship between software development and IT operations. The goal of DevOps is to create a better collaboration culture, however often a DevOps implementation results in the adoption of a collection of tools that are supposed to automate processes in software development and operation rather than a real change in culture.  Automating a crap process just enables you to create crap faster – that isn’t the goal that your company is looking for.

Automation of processes is an admirable goal – leading to greater efficiency, better resource utilization and increased responsiveness to changing business needs, however it represents only a part of the CIOs concerns.  CIO’s care about cost and speed, but they also care about safety, security, quality and the sustainability of deployed solutions. 

Adopting DevOps as a methodology isn’t a decision to be taken lightly – deploying a DevOps environment requires a considerable cost to setup and maintain and changing the organization’s culture is a large change management challenge.  DevOps is a strategic capability of the enterprise and should be approached just like your other strategic initiatives – with thoughtful planning, selection of the right set of supporting technology capabilities and the full buy-in of stakeholders. 

Integrating Architecture and DevOps

Many people see the goals of enterprise and solution architecture conflicting with the agile principles of DevOps.  This need not be the case.  In reality, a well-designed architecture can enable DevOps by providing a strategy and solution backbone for your DevOps teams to leverage in addressing specific business needs and opportunities. Integrating architecture in DevOps can enable: 

• Agile traceability between requirements – allowing you develop and deploy solutions faster
• Increased quality thanks to structured design, consistent policy adherence
• Cost-savings with the re-use of components
• Increased adoption by aligning solutions to strategic initiatives
• Lower risk of business disruption by seeing how a DevOps effort fits in the bigger enterprise picture.

How the Sparx Architecture Platform enables DevOps

In the context of DevOps, the Sparx platform provides capabilities to support the activities of design, build, test, business intelligence, database management and more.  

Sparx Enterprise Architect (EA) [link to EA Page] is the leading architecture modeling software on the market and provides robust capabilities for model driven software development. With over 850,000 users worldwide and an approachable price-point, Sparx EA gives your architects and designers the tools they need at a price any organization can afford. 

Pro Cloud Server [link to PCS page] enables organizations to integrate their Sparx EA repository with other systems involved in the DevOps processes, including: ITSM systems (like Service Now), agile requirements management systems (like Jira) and traditional engineering systems (like TFS).  By integrating the systems in your DevOps toolchain with Sparx, you give your architects full visibility into the operations side of the business and you give your DevOps engineers access to the enterprise architecture content they need to build better solutions. 

DevOps doesn’t stop with IT. To reach peak-effectiveness, you need to involve management and business stakeholders as well.  The Prolaborate [link to Prolaborate page] collaboration platform enables you to curate architecture content, along with information from your DevOps activities into interactive dashboards to provide actionable insights and interactive experiences to non-technical stakeholders across the organization.Sparx Services North America is the industry leading provider of architecture tools [link to EA Page], training [link to training page] and consulting [link to consulting page] to enable companies to model their architecture. Mapping out the connective tissue between strategy, people, processes, information and technology can help you surface the operational insights to increase the value and performance of your ITSM, GRC, portfolio management and Agile capabilities.  To discover more about how Sparx can help your company, contact info@sparxsytems.us