Ramblings of an Automated Mad Man (A Blog Series)
By Jerry Maldonado –VP of Automation, Customer Lifecycle Solutions
So being the automation mad man, my mantra is give me Automation or give me long drawn out error prone processes that frustrate and drive people crazy. It is no wonder that I look at the world with a unique eye as to how to automate things and have them flow better. I look at how the Application economy and how application development is in the flux of major and rapid change to help streamline the flow of development from the mind of the coders to the hands of the end-users. There are many twists and turns involved in getting a new application to inception, to the inevitable first support call, and how and where one could start to automate in order to make things more streamlined.
DevOps, as this process is termed, is a journey for every organization partaking in the world we live in today. Whether you want to believe it or not, if you are coding you are on a DevOps trek. Every organization on the planet wants and needs to be competitive. They need to get their name out first and deliver the new killer app. But the old way of doing it, the one that takes a year or more to get it to the market is not going to cut it.
Today folks are used to the 80% rule. If you are not familiar, this if the rule that says if it does 80% of what I think I need, then I am ok. More and more folks are more focused on how to get their feet wet or solve a single problem than they are at looking at the entire picture. In other words, the perception has changed. If you can do these five things really good, I will look at you. But I expect you to be working on the other 30 items I think I need, and you need to do it often.
The concept of continuous improvement is more alive today than ever before.
Take for example a simple app that you may use today. This app shows you your bank account information and lets you transfer dollars from one account to the next. Every 30 days or so you get a notice that the app has been updated and each time you open it, you see that it is faster , has less issues, and more little things pop up . Every once in a while a new item pops up like check scanning for instant deposit over your phone , or account balance preview so that you log into your phone and then the app provides a summary of your account right there for you . Now 45 days later, an easy way to say do apple pay or some other payment scheme, 30 days later a new user interface that’s brighter and quicker to navigate. Sounds familiar?
So where does automation fit in? Well anywhere you can define a repeatable predictable process means automation can exist. Yes, you can automate it! In the world of DevOps this can be seen in everything from a developer loading the final code build into a repository all the way thru to the final push to get your apps to the endpoint. (By the way the apps to the endpoint, I have a blog for that). If we look at the lifecycle of an application being created and updated ( most people refer to this as the SDLC ) there are many steps taken from the second a developer writes the first line of code to the time it gets put out in the world for use. In fact, most of the process could be thought of as a great conveyor belt that is similar to the ones used to build planes, trains or automobiles. As you automate different stages in the process, you decrease the time and increase the quality of the application. What may seem like little changes, for example the automating of the actual build process, from code to executable is a major step in the DevOps process. Another example could be automating the way the application might get to a series of endpoints like ATM’s kiosks, or mobile devices. These points are typically wrought with issues on delivery and configuration but with today’s automation tools can be setup so that most critical endpoints can be deployed quickly and efficiently.
The need for automation during the DevOps process is a necessary!
No longer can manual steps be taken to build or test an application. The need for a continuously flow of new applications is what the world is looking for these days. Look at companies like Facebook who make small continuous changes to their applications daily, and update their mobile apps roughly every 14 days. Facebook does this automatically. Now there are many many parts of the story for delivering an application to the world, and just as many for making sure the application is constantly undergoing change and improvements, but there is one thing for sure, without automating the process, the time line goes up and the amount of change goes down, and for most organizations, that means the end of time is near.
So I ask you. Is your Application Development Process Automated ?
Follow the Ramblings of an Automation Mad Man every Wednesday. Did you miss last week’s post? Read it here: Education in a Connected World