DevOps Framework for Utilities

Introduction: Today majority of the companies in different industries are highly dependent on technology. Companies have evolved many folds because of adoption of technology, right from design to products to service to software solutions. Utilities are not different. Though slow adopters, Utility industry has always embraced Technology. With changing industry landscape, price volatility, low workforce efficiency & the customer expectations of on-demand services, utilities must reinvent themselves and develop their IT applications by collaborating between software developers & IT operations professionals. 

What is DevOps? A software development framework that stresses on communication, collaboration, integration, automation and measurement of cooperation between software developers & other information technology operations professionals. In DevOps framework, software developers, Quality Assurance & IT operations team work together to continuously develop, test, deliver, deploy, monitor & update applications/services in line with users’ needs. DevOps world is built on agile methodologies in which all the stakeholders i.e., Line of Business, Developers, Quality Assurance and IT operations collaborate to deliver software. A very basic need of DevOps is to Collapse departmental silos and improve alignment between Dev and Ops teams. 

Why DevOps? As expectations from internal & external customers increase and competition within the industry mounts, utilities must go past legacy approach to more agile methods. It is an era of 24X7 On-Demand service, where customer expects service on their terms. Even few minutes delay in response or increase in response time leads to abandoning by customers. Let us take the example of Blackberry which failed to adopt changing landscape as against Netflix & Amazon which adopted DevOps and tasted unprecedented success.

With multiple dependencies and processes, utility operations have become more complex and tricky than ever before. Being the National Infrastructure of a country Utilities require always-on-steady processes, and collaboration between multiple on-field, back-office support and development teams. Therefore, in this always connected world, DevOps is clearly the key to survival, and the only way forward. DevOps not just accelerate delivery, but also create new revenue streams & business models.

DevOps Framework for Utilities: True agility has many building blocks where the business and IT are in full alignment to achieve continuous service evolution. These building blocks are Organization & People, Process, Portfolio & Projects, Application Design, Resilient architecture, Continuous integration, Continuous delivery, Continuous operations, Automation & cloud, etc. Utilities must develop an environment which would comprise of collaboration and continuous integration of Agile methodologies, Development, Testing, Deployment, Infrastructure and Skilled resources.

Benefits of DevOps Framework: Increased velocity of releases, increased resultant value of IT, Enhanced business and IT alignment, Digitization & Simplification, Improved resilience and reduction of risk, Business agility, Empirical cost savings (30 – 40%), Faster pace of innovation, Elimination of waste & errors, Operations stability and Lower Time to Market

Conclusion: Today’s customers (internal & external), expect utilities to be nimble by combining speed & quality. The old batch models which run nightly batches are no longer relevant. As per an independent global survey, 73% of the Energy & Utility companies are undertaking DevOps frameworks. Utilities today are moving towards a future minded approach focused on merging development, operations & quality. Also, it is critical to understand that the DevOps Framework will not succeed unless there is Collective System Thinking, Stable Feedback Loops and Culture of continuous experimentation & Learning. To adopt such framework, Utilities will require a shift in culture, new ways of working, streamlining process & delivery, Automation and Adoption of new technologies through multiple models running in sync with each other at multi-speed. 

Disclaimer: The article is the independent opinion of the author and does not represent views of any organization