In Episode 66 of Razorleaf’s Stay Sharp podcast, The Essential Components of DevOps Explained, Jonathan Scott is joined by occasional co-host Juliann Grant and Razorleaf Solution Architect Stephen Binstock. In addition to a background in computer graphics technology and PLM, Stephen is also the tech lead for Razorleaf’s team that supports the Aras Innovator Enterprise SaaS PLM platform. Jonathan, Juliann, and Stephen have what Jonathan terms a “meta” conversation about how DevOps—development and operations—can help enterprises deploy, update, and maintain the technology systems that support the enterprises’ core manufacturing goals.
DevOps Components and Benefits
Stephen begins by outlining the three major capabilities of DevOps systems: capturing requirements definitions, ensuring traceability between requirements and system functionality, and executing tests to vet requirements against that functionality. He explains that most enterprises will have at least three environments—development, testing, and production—for their enterprise platforms. While those systems might start in the same state, they won’t stay that way for long. “There are new features and maybe bug fixes that need to be introduced,” Stephen says. “They will be created in one [environment], vetted in another, and then ultimately deployed for end user utilization. That implementation lifecycle is where DevOps starts to really get itself into view.” DevOps is the mechanism for tracking and managing those different environments and the evolution of your enterprise software.
Historically, requirements definitions, as Jonathan says, “have been done for years, but not done well. Not in a connected way.” Mostly they’ve been captured in spreadsheets. But now that technology is more robust, Stephen notes, “The technology really tries to tie all of the development portion of the lifecycle, as well as the operations, into a single system where traceability is further enhanced.”
DevOps’ additional ability to tie those defined requirements to customizations, enhancements, or fixes made to your platform allows for full system definitions. “Let’s take these off the shelf softwares like we’re talking about, PLM, MES, that kind of thing. We know that there are a lot of them are configurable, but you can also customize and extend them,” Jonathan says. “You need to know exactly what version of which pieces of code are in play, where, and what configurations have been set, what switches were flipped in what ways.” What also comes with this DevOps capability is a repository for your system code, which means there’s no more wondering what changed, because you have version control, change control, and traceability for your code and therefore your configurations.
The third major DevOps component is documenting your testing procedure. Stephen explains how they work together: “With those three, the holy trinity of what I think is beneficial from a DevOps platform, I can say, on this date, I introduced a requirement. A week later, here’s the code that fulfilled that requirement. And did it meet the user’s interaction with the system? I logged in using steps one through five, and I got the expected results. Now, those three all play hand in hand with traceability and ensuring that the system is behaving up to expectation.” Together, Jonathan says, the capabilities reduce confusion, minimize non–value added tasks, get people on the same page, and help them collaborate.
Beyond DevOps Basics
Stephen mentions another tool available as part of DevOps that is becoming popular: automated integration or deployment. He calls it the fourth major component, though he makes clear that it’s something to do once you’ve gotten DevOps’ platform and process up and running. He also covers some of the organizational change that will have to happen to first, collect information from a variety of sources to get the platform set up, and second, to change the company mindset from “me working on my files” to collaboration with shared files.
The trio goes on to discuss different scenarios that might indicate when an organization should consider DevOps, including if you’re hearing “it worked in one environment, but not the other” too often, or if team collaboration isn’t happening smoothly. Stephen tells business leaders to watch out for when email isn’t getting the necessary collaboration done, if your technical team is taking a long time to do a deployment, and if they find it difficult to diagnose an issue after that deployment—that’s when to look into DevOps processes.
Learn More About DevOps
The full podcast contains more discussion and details on a variety of topics, including what the use of DevOps looks like on a typical day, what Stephen’s university capstone project taught him about the importance of DevOps practices, what platforms he recommends you start looking at if you’re interested in DevOps capabilities, and more.
Check out the full conversation in Stay Sharp Episode 66: The Essential Components of DevOps Explained, and join us each week for a new podcast.
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