ITSM VS DevOPS: Truce between ITSM and DevOps
Since its advent, DevOps has been pitted against IT service management (ITSM) and its ITIL framework. Some say "ITIL is under siege," some ask you to choose sides, while others frame them as complementary. What is true is that both DevOps and ITSM have fans and detractors, and each method can influence software delivery and overall corporate culture.
In this article, I thus give my point of view as to why DevOps won’t replace ITIL, and how it could, and should, improve – and add more agility to – some ITIL processes.
What ITIL and DevOps Are
Before explaining why DevOps is not a replacement for ITIL, it’s a good idea to first understand just what ITIL and DevOps are.
In the last decade, the DevOps approach has become incredibly popular in reducing software delivery times by enhancing the collaboration and productivity of development and operations teams and automating the test, release, and deployment of operations. DevOps is now driving the digital transformation of many organizations by adding greater agility and automation, and using Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) in the software development lifecycle.
So, DevOps is defined as a software development methodology designed to reduce the organizational friction between Dev (Development, QA, and Design teams) and Ops (Operations and Support teams) to speed up the time to market.
ITIL, on the other hand, is described as the most-widely adopted ITSM framework, which aims to align IT services with business objectives. The latest version (THANK GOD ITIL V4 came just on time) of ITIL describes 35 practices covering the stages of Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement as part of Service Value Chain. It covers far more than the scope of DevOps.
Clash of cultures
The heart of the DevOps and ITSM culture clash comes down to ITSM being process-intensive, to the point of hindering business when organizations build more people- and technology-intensive processes to launch products and services. Small to midsize enterprises sometimes drown in the minutiae of ITSM, while large enterprises can overbuild when the bureaucracy ham-fistedly puts ITSM before customer delivery.
DevOps brings promises of agility and velocity for software delivery that are attractive to organizations of all sizes. The theme of continuous delivery paints a nice picture of internal transformation and rejuvenated customer focus for organizations still slogging through clunky and outdated waterfall and waterfall-derivative software development lifecycle (SDLC) processes
Resolving the culture clash
It's important to declare a truce between DevOps and ITSM, when you can, by doubling down on visibility into software development, operations, and support. Steer away from the "old vs. new" or "fast vs. slow" arguments that invariably erupt when teams argue over the virtues of DevOps and ITSM.
Reining the conversation to the project, software delivery, and the team can be difficult, depending on the personalities you're dealing with. In those cases, it's time to take the religion out of the conversation by focusing on collaboration, monitoring, and reporting. These are the principles that support product and services delivery, whether you follow ITSM or DevOps.
ITSM and DevOps Working Together
At the surface, ITSM and DevOps are seemingly at odds with one another. The former focuses on structure, governance and control of services while the latter avoids traditional controls to create more development changes at a faster pace. However, like most frameworks, the combination of ITSM and DevOps principles can yield benefits in all organizations in deploying faster changes without causing disruptions to operational environments. It simply takes a bit of compromise and understanding of the value offered in each.
The way in which ITSM and DevOps can handshake is a concept known as ‘shifting left.’* The concept of shifting left, is to take elements of ITSM processes and embed them into your DevOps workflow at a point earlier than they would be otherwise.
Conclusion
Organizations who have embraced ITSM can effectively transition to DevOps because there are so many similarities between the two frameworks. DevOps and ITSM cover the basic elements of design, release and deploy but in slightly different ways. DevOps relies on orchestration and automation to replace tasks which are of little value add or are subject to error and uses metrics and measurements to plan for future opportunities for improvement. However, the reality is the structure of these tasks still exist across ITSM workflows and are measured using KPIs as a part of continuous service improvements. They may or not be done in an automated fashion and are certainly controlled as a measure of risk mitigation. But because of these basic parallels, a mixture of ITSM and DevOps methodologies absolutely can work for your organization.
I consider DevOps to be simply ITSM re-imagined and re-branded for the modern IT era. Where DevOps builds onto and ultimately evolves ITSM is the importance of changing the hearts, minds and behaviors of IT staff to collaborate across IT departments. Building a culture and organizational structure aimed at breaking down barriers between resource and stakeholder groups is essential to making DevOps a reality, an investment equally as necessary as automation.
ITSM and DevOps can Coexist together!!!
CEO and Founder, with 25+ years in IT and global digital transformation. Expert in program assurance, recovery, and AI. Proven success in E2E Supply Chain Management using SAP Hana S4 and SCM Control Tower.
4 年Great article thanks for sharing. From experience and after reading this interesting article, this framework (ITSM) and methodology (DevOps) should be looked upon as complementing each other. The?program/project manager should be using common sense and pragmatism, discussing/agreeing the approach and the delivery with the Client. This will help define how much to use or follow of the DevOps and particularly of the ITSM content. In fact, if there is a comparaison to be made with DevOps it's probably looking at the way Scrum's work and deliver.
Senior Major Incident and Problem Manager | ITSM Consultant | ITIL Trainer |
4 年Beautifully written !!!