Software Delivery Management Is the Key to CI CD and DevOps Success

Continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD) and DevOps have the power to drive digital transformation, changing the way we work and innovate with faster delivery speeds, greater feature responsiveness and increased team productivity. But how do you measure the success of CI/CD and DevOps? 

You need the data on your software delivery processes — quality metrics, business metrics, metrics tying technical outcomes to business results. And now, with more teams than ever touching DevOps processes – developers, IT, ops, infrastructure, management, leadership, stakeholders – you need that data available for everyone. And that means Software Delivery Management. 

At CloudBees, we always say you cannot improve what you cannot measure. Recently, we talked to some of our customers, including a leading bank in Canada, and uncovered some interesting insights. According to the bank, despite being ahead in its sector in terms of DevOps implementation and modernizing dev and delivery practices, it will lose the edge in the market if it doesn't have better visibility into its product pipelines.

Organizations with mature DevOps practices still battle to mitigate friction between teams, tools, people and processes. Indeed, developers are often concerned with questions like:

•    Am I building the right feature or capability for the customer?
•    Where does the feature or capability fit in the product?
•    Why am I building this product? Who is my customer/user?

These blockages occur due to fragmented data and the use of multiple standalone tools, instead of an integrated solution that establishes connectivity all across the organization.

Engineering teams need to connect to business objectives and customer requirements in the same way as product and marketing teams do.

To be able to function and flow in a seamless, connected manner throughout the organizational hierarchy from stakeholders to product, dev, QA and ops, your software delivery should revolve around the following key pillars:

1.    Common data and information around software delivery processes shared in a consolidated view
2.    Universal insights derived from the shared data
3.    Enablement of a unified connected processes for software delivery orchestration
4.    All functional areas across the organization collaborating and focused on delivering value

These four pillars form the foundation of what we call Software Delivery Management, a model that can help you transform software delivery into a core business process. CloudBees' platform for Software Delivery Management extends this picture by providing a unified view of product builds, pipeline repositories, contributors, release frequencies and more. It collects data from your different enterprise tools (e.g., GitHub, JIRA) and surfaces insights that make sense to you and your team.

The CloudBees platform for Software Delivery Management acts as a software delivery visibility and orchestration layer that sits on top of your DevOps toolchain, bringing together all the information from scattered sources in a single dashboard so that your cross­functional teams are on the same page. The platform offers end-to-end visibility into your software development and delivery lifecycle from a product and engineering perspective. You can also gain the visibility you need to:  

•    Determine how well your teams are performing based on efficiency metrics
•    Figure out efficient ways of rolling out a feature with the help of CloudBees Feature Flags
•    Define product policies as recommended by recommendations engines.

From this single dashboard, you can see the features under development, get up-to-the-minute status of software delivery at any stage and uncover any blockers or issues that need to be addressed. All this contextual information in one place enables you to establish a complete and useful feedback loop.

CI/CD matters more than ever – see why CloudBees, with power of Software Delivery Management, is the unconditional leader in enterprise DevOps.