2016.06.23 ACT-IAC Partners #GovDevOps: PTO - agile - and DevOps -- presentation by Kevin Hamer

1. Agile and DevOps at USPTO
Briefing for ACT-IAC Partners
June 23, 2016

2. Agile
• Agile – is a lightweight, lean framework used for the development of
software based on the 2001 Agile Manifesto.
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3. Agile versus Waterfall
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4. Why Agile?
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5. “DevOps”
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6. DevOps
• DevOps - rapid IT service delivery through the adoption of agile, lean
practices emphasizing people (and culture), and seeks to improve
collaboration between operations and development teams. DevOps
implementations utilize technology — especially automation tools that
can leverage an increasingly programmable and dynamic infrastructure
from a life cycle perspective.
• The term “DevOps” originated with the 2008 Agile Conference
discussion of “Agile Infrastructure” and has become popular in the last
seven years due, in part, through DevOps Days meetings, conferences,
Meetups, etc. The first two DevOps Days DC (2105, 2016)
conferences were hosted by USPTO.
• “DevOps solves the most important business problem of our
generation, [which is] how organizations make the transition from good
to great.” - The Phoenix Project, Gene Kim
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7. DevOps Benefits - Survey
Says….
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8. The Agile – DevOps Connection
Agile Scrum
Continuous Rapid
Development
DevOps
Continuous Rapid
Deployment
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9. The Agile – DevOps Connection
DevOps was implemented at USPTO to solve a problem. How do you
deliver the value to customers of continuous rapid software
development if production deployments are waterfall? That is, the
enterprise infrastructure people, processes, tools and culture were put in
place based on a need to deploy new or enhanced products only once
or twice a year. We needed DevOps to deliver the value of agile
iterative development.
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10. USPTO Road To DevOps
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Agile Development
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
Automated Testing
CICM Deployment Pipeline
Production Monitoring

11. USPTO DevOps Journey
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• Average of 1000 automated
builds per week
• Build time < 15 mins including
unit tests and static code
analysis
• One click deployment (2-10 min
duration) to all target
environments, including hybrid
cloud deploy
• 28+ projects auto deploying
• 37+ projects auto building
• 28+ Cloud Forms deployments
• 7+ Ansible deployments
• All NextGen projects on CICM

12. Top Organizational Challenges for
DevOps Adoption*
• Fear of Failure
From an executive point of view, managers often wonder whether the implementation of
DevOps practices will be successful. Will they yield positive results that are transparent to
both the customer and the organization?
• Legacy Processes
Software and technological processes are constantly evolving, and it is imperative that firms
improve their processes in order to gain or maintain a competitive advantage. Topo Pal
pointed out that once you start implementing new processes some of the perceived
challenges do not materialize.
• Bureaucracy: The Walls of Separation Between Teams
A majority of enterprises, especially older more conservative ones, organize workers into
different, independent teams with the expectation that these specialized teams will work
more efficiently. But today, some of the most innovative companies are discovering that
cross-functional teams spanning the usual silos actually increase business efficiencies.
*Gene Kim, renowned author, researcher, speaker and DevOps evangelist, Tapabrata (Topo) Pal, Product Manager for Capital One, and Andrew
Phillips, VP of DevOps Strategy at XebiaLabs, met online for a 2015 retrospect about scaling DevOps and Continuous Delivery in the enterprise.
During the webinar the trio also covered the top organizational challenges for adoption and offered suggestions on how to overcome them.
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13. How to Overcome the Challenges
• Start small, one step at a time
Step 1: Create a tiger team. Or stir new patterns within existing ones.
Step 2: Find some form of success that can highlight how value was added using the principles of
DevOps.
Step 3: Show the added value and proof of success to top level executives and garner their support.
This will help to create a reversal within the organization where the executives will begin to push
DevOps practices from the top level down.
According to Topo Pal, “The way to remove that skepticism is to find a tiger team and make them
successful. Or try to create new patterns within a few tiger teams. And then go out in the enterprise and
talk about it and demonstrate what you have achieved and encourage other teams to become tiger
teams. And that way, you can scale.”
• Draw a Connection Between Management’s Goals and Something That Can Be Improved by
DevOps
A common executive goal is to increase operational efficiency. This is usually accomplished by shorter
task times and lowering costs. If you want to influence senior management and the way your entire
organization operates, phrase your proposal in a way that speaks to management’s goals and is in line
with their objectives.
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