Post on 21-May-2020
Five Steps to Build a Process-Centric IT Organization
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When most people reach a fork in the road, they move
forward in one direction or the other. But when a Fortune
2000 retail firm embarked on changing its software release
process to a continuous delivery model, its IT department
had no such luxury. The ITIL initiatives which had driven a
large portion of investments over the last decade had paid
significant rewards.
But the software development lifecycle was in need of
an overhaul. Buyer engagement across mobile and web
platforms was growing faster than consumer visits at
physical stores. The retail firm gained an entirely new level
of understanding about its customers through e-commerce
metrics, but the data was only as valuable as the resulting
business decisions. Major software releases occurred a
measly three times a year, and they needed to occur at high
velocity to factor in the continuous market feedback and
drive revenue.
The firm formalized its strategy by announcing a digital
transformation initiative, and enabling its Enterprise
Architect with the discretionary and personnel budget to roll
out a continuous delivery model. The Enterprise Architect
invested in products across the DevOps toolchain, built out
a Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team, and allocated a
portion of developers’ time toward managing an operational
workload.
While these are classic DevOps plays, the changes brought
their own set of challenges. IT faced increased complexity
in its managed technology stack with the new product
investments. Product teams began to use their own DevOps
tools with minimal oversight. While teams became more
agile and moved faster, they also became decentralized.
Collaboration across teams waned. With all this taking place,
the IT organization found itself in quite a dilemma. It had to
balance agile initiatives designed for faster service delivery
with existing initiatives focused on compliance, performance,
and reliability. In such a scenario, how can IT be expected to
manage mounting business objectives, maximize technology
investments, and effectively position itself for the future?
The preceding customer story is indicative of broad
changes in the IT market. Gartner, Inc. states that by 2020,
50% of enterprises will entirely replace the tools they use
to support core IT operations management functions
with those originally used by DevOps teams. This makes
sense—because just like the IT team at the retail firm, IT
organizations across the board are tasked with moving
faster. And DevOps, at its core, is a culture shift to release
Reliability & Compliance
Agility & Velocity
A Unique Fork in the Road
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xmatters.com | 35 STEPS TO BUILD A PROCESS-CENTRIC IT ORGANIZATION
products and services with agility and velocity. In fact,
Puppet stated in its State of DevOps report that high
performing organizations deploy multiple times per day
and have less than an hour of lead time for changes.
The challenge today is that IT is in the midst of its
“awkward teenage years.” IT operations can’t be expected
to embrace DevOps principles entirely when organizations
are still in the midst of DevOps adoption. According to
the 2017 xMatters and Atlassian DevOps Maturity report,
66% of respondents ranked at or below the intermediate
level of maturity. What’s preventing organizations from
maturing in DevOps adoption? People issues were isolated
as the biggest inhibitor to DevOps adoption by 50% of
respondents in a recent Gartner survey. To be specific,
resistance to change was the biggest barrier to embracing
DevOps, followed by skills gap and failure to collaborate.
So when you have resistance to change within an
organization, simply investing in tools won’t necessarily
affect business outcomes. In the xMatters and Atlassian
DevOps Maturity survey, 75% of respondents are
monitoring critical areas. Yet 50% of respondents reported
that code issues are still hitting production. It’s fair to ask:
if organizations don’t fully understand how to execute on
continuous delivery and DevOps, how can IT be expected
to support it?
xMatters has been working with customers and helping
them collaborate across all of IT for many years. This
experience has given us the blueprint for the best, most
proven method for IT operations to enable continuous
delivery (DevOps) while still supporting legacy initiatives
like major incident management (MIM) and ITSM.
The concept is simple: Map out the business processes
required to meet your stated IT objectives. Use the processes
to hone in on the data, tools, people, and teams required to
optimize existing workflow and drive change. Let users work
within their preferred systems as much as possible to minimize
change management. Benefits from doing so include:
• Better tool investments
• Structured and consistent collaboration
• Stakeholder alignment
• Elimination of redundant and overlapping work
• Subject matter engagement, without taking
unnecessary time away from “day jobs”
IT’s Awkward Teenage YearsBASE BEGINNER INTERMEDIATE ADVANCED EXPERT
30%
20%
25%
35%
10%
05%
15%
00%
15%
26%
19%
25%
15%
BASE BEGINNER INTERMEDIATE ADVANCED EXPERT
DevOps Immaturity: 66% of organizations ranked intermediate or worse in a 2017 xMatters-Atlassian survey of DevOps maturity adoption.
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5 Steps to Build a Process-Centric IT OrganizationIntrigued by the benefits that can materialize from
optimizing processes managed by IT Operations? It’s
important that you follow a defined method to make your
IT team process-centric:
Most organizations are already doing the first three.
Let’s go over all five in detail.
1 Map Out Essential Business Processes
IT teams often make the mistake of purchasing (what
they think is) a checklist of tools and then trying to figure
out what do with it. And sometimes it’s hard to know where
to begin when evolving IT to support continuous delivery.
Without a proper business process strategy, it’s a lost cause
to integrate and automate tools and ensure collaboration
and data sharing between teams. Map out your essential
processes by defining business objectives, supporting
activities, managed entities, and response types.
Business objectivesDefining business objectives is the most critical, yet most
overlooked step to place processes at the nucleus of
your IT organization. Align with business and technical
stakeholders in your organization to hone in on what
matters. Prioritize the objectives to align with the IT
operations roadmap and progression path. Common
business objectives in the market include:
• Support multiple product deployments
over a given interval
• Reduce the number of major incidents
affecting customers
• Lower change failure rates
• Minimize lead time for product changes
• Maintain SLA standards of uptime
• Reduce developer time spent on unplanned work
Supporting ActivitiesAfter locking in your business objectives, map the
required set of supporting activities to each. Let’s see
how this works for “Maintaining SLA standards of uptime.”
Maintaining uptime requires issue detection early in the
software delivery pipeline and aggressive, rapid resolution.
Map out essential processes
Identify and connect process ecosystems
Operationalize steps for collaboration and resolution
Automate and curate manual work
Extract and archive contextual information
3
2
1
5
4
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“Efficient curation is ideal for tasks
that have a defined set of triggers,
but can’t be fully automated
because they require a human to
determine next steps.”
The xMatters take: Some collaboration platforms want to house all your data and manage your workflows, which forces
you to choose only certain integration products. xMatters invites you to use the tools, processes, and workflows that you’re
comfortable with, and use the xMatters Integration Platform and Communication Plans to help them work better.
Supporting Activities: Each stage of the business process has specific activities.
1 Issue Identification Issue Resolution
Monitor application performance
Monitor infrastructure performance
Log application events
Detect anomalies
Detect symptoms and indicate possible causes
Bypass second-tier teams and engage technical teams
Engage available subject matter experts
Collaborate on problem to expedite resolution
Align internal and/or external stakeholders
Archive relevant learnings for future issue resolution processes
Raise flag to stakeholders
Isolate relevant information required for resolution
Issue Tracking and Management
2 Identify and Connect a Process Ecosystem
After mapping out your business processes,
you need to build a connected ecosystem to drive them
forward. This ecosystem consists of data, tools, people, and
teams. Similar to the previous section around identifying
supporting activities, you need to define and connect a
process ecosystem for each process that supports your
business objectives list. Let’s see how this works for the
example process we’re using around early issue resolution
to maintain SLA standards of uptime.
DataWhen it comes to data, understand the different types of
contextual information required for the managed process.
In our example, this includes:
• Monitoring insights • Anomaly information
• System logs • Issue status
• Issue collaboration • Remediation strategy
• Stakeholder communication
It’s important to understand that the above list consists of
both structured data (i.e. issue status) as well as unstructured
data (issue collaboration). We’ll dig into this subject later.
2 3
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ToolsAfter solidifying the data requirements, choose the
required tools necessary to manage the process and data
flow. In our example, this includes:
• Application performance management
(New Relic, AppDynamics, Dynatrace)
• Event correlation (Moogsoft, BigPanda)
• Log management (Splunk)
• Anomaly detection (SolarWinds, ScienceLogic)
• Issue tracking (Jira)
• ChatOps (Slack, Stride, HipChat)
• Manager of Manager tools (Moogsoft, Datadog)
After you have the list of tools down, it’s important to
understand the respective entities they use for data
management and storage. In this example we have the
following:
• Exceptions
• Bugs
• Issues
• Chat channels or rooms
• External blogs (StatusPage)
• Internal blogs (Confluence)
When you manage complex processes that span multiple
systems, it’s critical to transfer the necessary information
across systems and between entities to keep processes
moving. An application exception that gets escalated into
a managed issue requires context from every system that
can provide visibility into the situation at hand. Taking a
process-centric approach lets the tools across your tech
stack speak the same language.
PeopleFor each managed process, isolate the people that need
to be involved. Use the following criteria to make sure
you’re engaging the right individuals:
• Skillset
• Geography
• Availability
• Languages
• Workload
• Business Interest
Be mindful of a few subtleties within the above list. Subject
matter experts will require a much deeper level of contextual
alignment when compared with business stakeholders. And
often, it’s necessary to make compromises on the preferred
level of expertise for people based on availability and existing
workload. That’s OK, as long as you have a structured way of
going to options B, C, and beyond.
TeamsTeams within the Development, Operations, and Support
functions need to collaborate in order to manage processes
to completion. The challenge is getting them to work with
other teams when they have their own established ways of
getting things done. The trick is to let team members work
the way they want to, so that they collaborate with other
functions without feeling like it’s outside of their day-to-day
flow. This way a developer can stay within Jira, while a help
desk manager can work out of ServiceNow on standard and
cross-functional processes.
The xMatters take: With more than 200 built-in integrations
and many hundreds of packaged integrations, xMatters
can connect any cloud-based services to your ecosystem,
freeing your teams to work the way they want.
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Connected Processes: Releasing quality, innovative software quickly and providing outstanding support requires teams across the enterprise to share information across tools and work toward a common goal.
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TOOLS TEAMS TASK
Log management n/a Log management tool sends application socket exception error
Log management, IT alerting Application Team or First Level SupportContact appropriate and available application team resource(s) to address problem
Log management, IT alerting Application Team or First Level Support Send application team resource(s) context to assess problem
IT alerting, issue tracking Incident Team or First Level SupportAfter confirming that it’s an important situation, application team resource creates an issue within tracking system to manage it
IT alerting, issue tracking Incident Team or First Level SupportApplication team member places details of problems within issue tracking system
IT alerting, issue tracking Incident Team or First Level Support Notify incident management team resource(s) to address issue
Issue tracking Incident Team or First Level SupportIncident management team resource takes ownership to manage issue
Issue tracking Incident Team or First Level Support Incident owner aligns with application team on next steps
Issue tracking, IT alerting, ChatOps
Incident Team or Network TeamIncident owner engages subject matter experts from Network team on issue via ChatOps
Issue tracking, IT alerting, ChatOps
Incident Team or Network TeamAvailable network engineer gets up to speed on situation and begins work on resolving
Environment dependent Network Team Network engineer resolves problem
Issue tracking, IT alerting Incident Team or Network TeamIncident owner verifies resolution and updates issue tracking system with status
Network, application, etc n/aAll systems for post mortem, internal and external status updates, and logs are updated
3 Operationalize Steps for Collaboration and Resolution
After establishing the ecosystem required to
support your set of IT processes, define the steps required
to facilitate collaboration and drive resolution. Doing so
will improve both consistency and efficiency each time a
given process comes into play. Let’s use our issue resolution
process as an example:
After solidifying the tasks, add the associated tools and teams
as detailed in the table. We can see that the process requires
engagement from the application team, incident team, and
network team. It needs a log management, IT alerting, issue
tracking, and ChatOps tool to be utilized. Mapping out the
rest of your processes in a similar manner is an effective way
to define the necessary technology investments.
The xMatters take: xMatters Communication Plans enable
you to build rules to manage your processes. Create
triggers for targeted messages to the appropriate people
to resolve issues and share data between systems so
people have access to the information they need. Let
workers subscribe to alerts and unsubscribe from others
to maintain information flow and reduce alert overload for
efficient and effective incident resolution.
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4 Automate and Curate Manual Work
Operationalizing processes improves efficiency to
a certain degree, but you need to do even more to maximize
what’s possible. This is where automation and curation of manual
work is needed. For each managed process, drill down at the
task level to determine whether you can:
Fully Automate: Ideal for tasks that have a defined set of triggers
and can use software-driven logic to determine and execute on
next steps
Efficiently Curate: Ideal for tasks that have a defined set of
triggers but require a human to determine next steps
The following table drills into tasks from our issue resolution
example so that we can gauge levels of curation and automation.
It also shows associated triggers and response types.
The xMatters take: Automating your more routine processes is a
critical element of business efficiency, but automating everything
is not realistic. With xMatters, it’s simple to make changes on the
fly from individual and group scheduling to inviting more people
to collaborate to using more tools to solve a problem.
AUTOMATION LEVEL TRIGGER TASK RESPONSE
TYPES
Fully automatedException level in log management tool
Socket exception error routed to available and appropriate application team resources via email distribution list or chat
n/a
Efficiently curated Notification from IT alertingApplication team resource applies remedial action
Accept, Reject, Create Issue
Fully automated Notification from IT alerting Issue created within tracking system n/a
Fully automated Notification from IT alertingDetails of problems placed within issue tracking system
n/a
Fully automatedNew issue within issue tracking system
Notify available and appropriate technology team or first level resources to address the issue
n/a
Efficiently curated Notification from IT alertingIncident management team resource takes ownership to manage issue
Accept, Reject, Escalate Issue
Fully automated Notification from IT alertingUpdate issue tracking info with owner, producing unstructured data
Fully automated Notification from IT alertingIncident owner aligns with application team on next steps, pulling structured and unstructured data together
Efficiently curatedNotification from IT alerting and ChatOps invite
Incident owner identifies and engages subject matter experts from Network team on issue via ChatOps
Join ChatOps space
n/a n/a Network engineer resolves the problem n/a
Efficiently curated ChatOps communication
Incident owner verifies resolution and updates issue tracking system with status - collaboration involves verification of resolution, updates, engagement
Escalate Issue, Post to ChatOps, Resolve across systems
Fully automated Verification of resolutionAll systems for post mortem, internal and external status updates, and logs are updated
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STRUCTURED DATA
UNSTRUCTURED DATA
Managed Issue objects
Application logs
Managed IT notifications ChatOps
FYI communications
Customer notifications
5 Extract and Archive Contextual Information
As you plan, optimize, and execute on your
business processes, it’s important to maintain a repository
of information for a number of reasons. First, you need
to have a complete perspective on any given process as
it progresses. Second, it’s important that you don’t re-
invent the wheel when faced with similar situations. Third,
stakeholders need access to different pieces of information
throughout the business process. The key to maintaining an
information repository is understanding the unstructured
and structured data types managed within each process.
Once you’ve identified unstructured and structured data
types, you need to map unstructured data into structured
data. Application log details need to be placed within the
managed issue and relevant IT notifications. The ChatOps
conversation should be placed within a structured data
source such as the issue so that any remediation insights
can be leveraged again for similar application exceptions.
The rule of thumb for aligning stakeholders is that business
and external (i.e. customers) stakeholders require data
from structured sources. They’re looking for information
around status and business impact. On the other hand,
subject matter experts that are directly involved in moving
processes forward often rely on unstructured data. They
need in-depth insights from system and application logs,
performance metrics, and other essential data points to
help them assess, resolve, or manage situations.
The xMatters take: Too often organizations close out an
issue, only to lose the chat conversations and steps taken in
various systems to reach closure. All that information could
be used to see the good and not-so-good decisions, build
a knowledge base, and improve performance over time.
With xMatters, you can preserve chat conversations, task
histories, and other information in the systems of record you
choose, to always be improving.
Sorting Data: In our issue resolution example, stakeholders need structured
data, while anyone moving processes forward needs unstructured data.
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The conclusion of this paper should be the beginning of your
journey toward building a process-centric IT organization.
Figure out which processes you can fully automate and
which need human intervention, and let your employees
work in the systems they know and trust to help ease
resistance to change.
Next, extract and archive contextual information to help
technical teams take immediate action without having
to triage issues at every step in resolution processes. As
the xMatters-Atlassian DevOps Maturity survey shows,
organizations are gaining massive amounts of data from
their monitoring systems, but they are struggling to use the
data effectively.
Learn how xMatters can help make your IT organization
process-centric. As you define your business processes and
associated ecosystems, you’ll need a catalyst to manage
workflow and connect your data, tools, people, and teams.
xMatters delivers integration-driven collaboration that relays
data between systems while engaging the right people
for any business process. xMatters helps to automate and
operationalize business processes through trigger-based
communication plans. Actionable responses help team
members efficiently curate key tasks.
Enriched notifications provide subject matter experts with
the insights they need to effectively engage. In-depth
integrations allow unstructured data such as ChatOps
conversations to be placed within structured entities like
service desk tickets. Communications can be tailored for
various stakeholders and templated to ensure consistency.
Next Steps for Making your IT Team Process-Centric
Integrated Service: Integrating a collaboration platform like xMatters with a communication tool like Slack helps the service desk work with other parts of the organization.
COMMENTS
SERVICE DESK TICKET #1034
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Copyright 2018 xMatters. All rights reserved. All other products and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
xMatters is a toolchain communication platform that relays data between systems while engaging the right people to resolve incidents. The platform automates,
operationalizes and contextualizes communications within key DevOps processes, fundamentally altering the way business units work together. xMatters also
supports enterprises through major incident and change management, alerting the right people on the right channels to time-sensitive events and problems
like network outages, supply-chain disruptions, natural disasters and medical emergencies. Founded in 2000, xMatters is headquartered in San Ramon, CA, with
additional offices worldwide. For more information, please visit xmatters.com.