Agile meets ITIL


Agile development is all the rage in IT these days. In simplistic terms, it is a way of developing software that takes a much more a modular and iterative approach to delivering value to customers and end users. Developing code in bite-size chunks and releasing lots of iterations of an application provides customers with much more regular opportunities to ‘feedback’ as the software is being developed. Arguably this more modular approach also reduces the risk of application owners sinking more money than necessary into the development of applications that customers and end users just don’t want.

However, Agile development practises put a huge amount of strain onto IT Operations and Design teams. Rolling out new applications every couple of weeks -let alone every day- is risky business. Change is always risky and application owners who rely on their applications to serve customers and generate revenue are constantly balancing the need to innovate/change with the need for stable operations. Moreover, it is IT Operations that are responsible for production systems and if application changes are unsuccessful, it is IT Operations that are left holding the proverbial ‘screaming baby’.
Because of this hesitation to keep up with aggressive release cycles, IT Operations and Design teams have been getting a bit of bad rap, whether it be for inflexible and/or slow change management processes or because their infrastructure platforms are not designed with enough elasticity and/or openness. Either way, there is tension because of agile application developers and lines of business want a faster pace of change, whilst IT Operations and Design teams desire stable platforms.

ITIL is a framework or a set of practices for IT service management that focuses on aligning IT services with business needs. Most people who work in IT will be familiar with ITIL and this is because it is a useful guide (the emphasis here is on the word ‘guide’) to delivering reliable IT services that the business needs. ITIL goes wrong when IT Organisations try to implement it in its entirety without any consideration for the uniqueness of the business that it is intended to support. Like any successful system or set of practices that have been in circulation for long enough, ITIL has also suffered from its fair share of poor implementations and bad press. Poorly implemented ITIL practices create friction between IT and the business as well as between IT design and operations functions. Conversely, when implemented in the context of the business, ITIL can speed up the time to value for agile applications. The key to marrying Agile and ITIL is in having a well thought out and active Continual Service Improvement process.

If your organisation is embracing change and driving innovation faster than operations can handle, take some time to think about how ITIL and Agile can come together to deliver quality IT services. I have noticed a lot of agile development shops take a step back from the ‘change’ fad and work out how to bring change and stability together to produce value through the ITIL Continual Service Improvement process. These organisations are building out full stack automation capabilities from infrastructure to application and workloads and then integrating these capabilities into their existing service support and application development teams to bring everyone onto the same page.

If you work in IT operations and you support agile developers, take to the time to really understand how you can simplify and de-risk your change management process– not just from a technology level but from a people and process standpoint. Lastly, and by no means least, develop self-service capabilities that can face off to application developers and lines of business. Self-service is the final layer on top of all the hard work behind the scenes to streamline operations. Self-service will get IT operations back on the front foot and do wonders for IT's branding within the business....... which helps when asking for more funding :-)

Thanks for Reading and DON'T BE SHY, leave your comments below. 

Chancey

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