AXA DevSecOps Conference Reflections

Introduction

Recently, I was privileged to have been invited to an event held by the AXA engineering, business, and delivery teams. This was an event focused on driving improved alignment between Development, Security, and Operations teams toward the next generation journey of the organizational transformation.

 

This event was held in June, 2018 in Cologne, Germany. I believe the diverse team members that participated in this event made for a rich, and very productive dialogue as AXA works through the early stages of their transformation to a more fully DevSecOps, Cloud and Next Generation Delivery Organization.

 

During the conversation, we discussed the importance of a few key items within the transformation. In particular, the concurrent technology and cultural transformation journeys. Driving this dual transformation is what it means to drive an effective transformation, but the overall key to the journey is to place the business value, the customer and their experience, at the center of the transformation rationale. Lastly, we discussed the importance of the transformation stages. While, at any point, we want to drive energetic, substantial change, it is important to balance this change within the context of the organization’s culture; move too fast, and both transformations will falter. Managing the transformation within the context of the organizational culture will ensure long term and lasting success.

 

It is important to remember that the entire purpose of transformation is to drive additional value to our business case, customers, and customer experience.

 

A Tale of Two Transformations

During the first part of the conversation with the global AXA team, one of early items on which we focused was the concept of the two transformations required in order to truly drive an organization to the next level. The first of these transformations involves the technology journey that must align the concrete objectives, driving standards of sharing and re-use. The second is that of the cultural transformation, one aligned to the product and customer journey, and one that must fully evolve in lock-step with the technology transformation.

 

Driving an effective transformation requires a concurrent focus on the technology and cultural transformation.

 

Driving a Technology Transformation. Often when we speak of transformations, we discuss revolutionary or iterative change in terms of agile, devops, cloud, and common platforms. These are the most common transformation paradigms. Normally these are underpinned by a comprehensive go-to-cloud strategy, and an architecture paradigm restructure, including a data access strategy, often taking on the characteristics of a micro-service and micro-component oriented transformation.

 

In this case, while the technology transformation is critical to drive each of the items listed above, the key to a next generation technology journey must focus on the value it brings to the engineering life-cycle. That is, building common platforms, within a cloud available context is important, and driving a comprehensive micro-service strategy is foundational. However, the most critical aspect of the technology transformation is to ensure that all greenfield and legacy systems are holistically and comprehensively brought along the journey.

The most critical aspect of a successful technology transformation is to ensure a holistic and comprehensive transformation across greenfield and legacy systems.

 

The technology must focus on the build-out of a comprehensive, bi-model roadmap that ensures that all new system components (front ends, API tier, cluster data) are built within a cloud and DevOps (DevSecOps) context. Equally as important, legacy applications must also be built and federated into the common orchestration engine, driving a deep focus on dependency management and comprehensive application integration wherever that may foster an exceptional customer experience. Only in doing this can the transformation drive and take on the characteristics of a customer-centric journey.

 

“Transformation is not made up solely of those newer, easy-to-attack technologies, but rather by the entire delivery ecosystem, comprised of greenfield and legacy application suites.”

 

 

Driving a Cultural Transformation. Concurrent with the technology transformation, the appropriate delivery culture must be created in order to foster a constant focus on technology in service to the customer, and the customer experience.

 

"Agile ceremonies (at scale), iteration planning, and iteration demo’s must necessarily focus upon the delivering value to the customer faster, and of consistently increasing quality."

 

It is important to note, however, that this transformation is not about ceremonies, agile, devops or a move to public cloud. Rather, it is about finding and driving value to the customer. This will be an incremental and iterative process that will continue indefinitely. A culture is not defined by the ceremonies of agile, or the automation of devops, but rather by the consistent focus on the customer, and an ever-improving customer experience.

 

Back to Basics: Velocity & Quality

 With a culture and constant focus on delivering value to the customer, an engineering culture must concurrently be established as one driving always-improving speed to market (velocity) and high fidelity products and features (quality).

  

While the softer side of value must be measured through the constant improvement of the business case, the concept of clear visibility across the spectrum of velocity and quality must be established, and made visible, across all of our engineering teams.

Establishing these metrics, and their global visibility now gives both a credibility and a reality to engineering, ensuring that products are delivered and that this same delivery is measured (and improved over time). The value of those features can then be demonstrably experienced through constant, iterative demonstrations (agile ceremony or otherwise), and measured in accordance with the evolving business case.

 

Driving Customer Centricity. At the center of the transformation journey is the customer. Transforming and driving next generation technology is important. Driving a culture that is open, agile, and driving consistent value to the customer remains the objective. The customer must be at the center of this journey. Only by ensuring and focusing upon the higher level purpose of the transformation can the next-level changes be brought about with consistency.

 

Driving the technology change and the concurrent cultural change must occur. However, a constant communication message, as to the rationale and reasoning for the transformation, must remain focused upon the customer. The dialogue must surround the value that the organization will bring to that customer through the many experiences they will have interacting with the organization. It is only in service to the customer that the organization demonstrates the purpose of the transformation: driving high value products to the customer rapidly, and on a continuous basis.

 

“Customer centricity means focusing upon the customer, and constantly delivering value, and with ever-improving quality.”

  

The Phases of Transformation. In my discussion with the AXA teams, one of the final themes we focused upon was the transformation phases of the journey. This discussion surrounded both the timing and pace of the transformation. Most importantly, this centered upon the ability to drive change in phases that help to align the organizational culture, technology and processes.

Process and Culture. During the first phase of transformation, the focus remains on the basic foundational concepts of the journey. That is, in order to drive transformation to the manner in which delivery occurs, an organization must first write down the current process, and (from there) begin iterating. This focus allows for a holistic view of the organizational processes, and drives focus both on streamlining and automating those same processes.

 

A warning on executing these processes. It is important to not overthink this first stage. In many cases, organizations will be inclined to over-analyze processes, and over-prescribe perfect end-to-end delivery. However, it is far better to begin simple and iterate, rather than strive to draw what is, in many cases, a very complex end-to-end process in one, single iteration.

 

Engineering and DevOps. Once the early processes have begun to take on deeper definition, and early automation has begun (basic automation and visibility of key delivery milestones), the organization now moves into a second phase. During this phase, a focus upon engineering foundations, and also a focus on changing the manner of collaboration across delivery areas, takes center stage. This is often the early stages where full scale agile and devops begin to take a more definitive and prescriptive shape.

 

During this second phase, central platforms (cloud, API gateway, common component delivery elements, devops ecosystem), will begin to emerge. It will be important to ensure that these are built iteratively, without an intention to fully create an end-to-end delivery ecosystem and platform in one single effort. Building a delivery ecosystem across a large, complex organization will take time, and must iterate in order to accommodate the differences in global and local (business and geography) needs. However, during this phase, the focus will be placed upon creating these common ways of working, and common tools of execution.

 

Technology and Culture Alignment. The final stage of transformation is that of the alignment between the technology and cultural transformation. During the prior stages, there remained a focus on the processes, and later the engineering and platforms. During this phase, a maturity now begins to drive coherence within the organization in order to align the technology platforms now beginning to mature and the culture (agile, devops, cloud) that is beginning to take shape.

 

By focusing now upon the overall organizational alignment, concurrent with the processes, and underpinned by the tools, a more holistic transformation now begin to take hold.

 

It is important to note in this transformation, however, that these phases are not prescriptive, but rather evolutionary in nature. That is, as the organization places the right processes, platforms, and cultural context in places, each serves as the building blocks for the next, and each change must iterate until those changes take hold (i.e. teams begin using the devops ecosystem, teams are executing in an agile train structure, teams are using established cloud services). In doing so, the measurement of these changes measures the right pace, corresponding to the organization’s tolerance for change throughout this journey, and the ability to adopt these changes iteratively over time.

 

Conclusion

During my conversation with the AXA team in Cologne, Germany, we discussed the importance of driving a dual transformation, one that balances technology and culture. The central conversation focused on the stages that help define a successful transformation. The main message driving the conversation, and in fact an effective transformation, remains that the organization must maintain focus upon the purpose and rationale of the journey, which is to drive business value, with the customer and their experience at the center of this journey,