Standard and Frameworks for CM/DevOps

Industry best practices are always helpful in driving us in the right direction. Most CM practitioners are well aware of the benefits of continuous integration and many of my colleagues are furiously marching towards continuous delivery and continuous deployment. While I encourage a cautious approach - mindful of the cost versus benefits - there is no doubt that our practices are evolving, improving and  clearly helping to drive successful endeavors from the development of medical devices to large scale online market places. Configuration Management and DevOps are driving the automated deployment of complex systems to success. While many of us blog and write articles sharing our experiences and best practices, there are other more formal sources of wisdom and guidance.

The IEEE, ISO and other respected standards bodies provide mature industry standards that provide detailed guidance that will even survive the rigors of legal and contractual review. Equally well respected are the frameworks including ITIL from the itSMF and Cobit from ISACA. Truth be told, I have heard some of my colleagues suggest that these standards and frameworks are not very useful or necessary. The funny thing is that it usually turns out that my friends have written off these documents as not being useful without actually investing the time to read and study them. So my question is, would you want to go to doctor who does not know medical protocols? Obviously good doctors improvise all the time, but they also know published studies and AMA approved procedures. Well are we doctors now? The answer for many of us is a resounding yes because software drives most medical devices. Software is critical to our financial systems, transportation, military defense and just about any complex system that matters.

In my opinion, it is time for Configuration Management professionals to take industry standards and frameworks more seriously. Our work impacts critical infrastructure and the practices described help to create reliable and secure systems. The IEEE 828 standard describes Configuration Management IT controls. ITIL v3 describes release control and validation (RCV). There are many more standards and frameworks and most of these standards organizations are always looking for volunteers to get involved in creating the next generation of standards. I am starting to put together a working group to create a DevOps standard.

Drop me a line and get involved!

Bob Aiello, Technical Editor
[email protected]
http://www.linkedin.com/in/BobAiello