Episode 43: Forrester’s Diego Lo Guidice Welcomes the “Age of DevOps”

DevOps Radio’s original host, CloudBees vice president of marketing, Andre Pino, is joined by Diego Lo Guidice, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, to cover everything from agile to testing in Episode 43 . At Forrester, Diego helps clients build better software, faster, so organizations can achieve a successful DevOps transformation .

With more than 50 percent of organizations now claiming they are doing DevOps, Diego says we are officially in the "Age of DevOps." However, there is still confusion over the definition of DevOps vs. agile. Diego explains that DevOps and agile are actually two sides of the same coin that often work together because it's cultural and not just what some consider automation only.

Based on Forrester’s own research, organizations leveraging both agile and DevOps see functional quality increase from 47 percent to 72 percent, thanks to lean thinking that maximizes value and eliminates waste. Agile tears down the wall with business, while DevOps tears down the wall with operations, to ensure organizations have end-to-end agility.

The first step in ensuring a successful DevOps transformation is to visualize the journey by using value stream mapping to define the process, data and tools. This not only helps identify where the inefficiencies lie, but also delivers one of the most important objectives of DevOps: automating governance. As Diego says, stakeholder visibility is important. Through the data-driven approach to DevOps, value stream mapping offers the insights the business needs to justify the investment development teams are putting into agile and DevOps.

Quality must become part of the strategy for winning the race, to ensure a great end product. Organizations must also ensure that quality-at-speed happens, which requires testing to be made a priority for everyone.

Diego also lends valuable guidance for organizations getting started with DevOps measurement. He advises not to benchmark against competitors, but rather to benchmark against your own business. Align DevOps goals with what the business wants and needs by setting a baseline and then improving upon it.

As the podcast wraps up, Andre encourages Diego to attend DevOps World | Jenkins World in Portugal in 2019. Turns out, Diego has already sent his RSVP in forDevOps World | Jenkins World, Portugal 2019 so join him at the forthcoming conference. To hear the full podcast, go to DevOps Radio. You can also subscribe to the podcasts now via iTunes or Spotify .

Additional resources

• Download the free eBook about continuous governance

• Read more about the importance of DevOps

• Listen to the webinar about DevOps tools