Posts Tagged ‘Michael Cote’
Code2Cloud: Bigger than a Disruption in ALM
Update, October 22, 2010: Watch this excellent demo of Code2Cloud!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ALM.svg
Figure 1: A Representation of the Application Lifecycle Management Concepts
VMware’s Code2Cloud announcement a couple of days ago is intriguing. According to this announcement, the whole development infrastructure is delivered as a service with no setup, no hardware or software to manage. The tedious and time consuming task of setting (and as appropriate modifying) the environment within which coding is carried out is done by Code2Cloud, not by the programming/testing team. As pointed out by colleague and friend Michael Cote, Code2Cloud might have the potential to be quite a disruption in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM):
“The software development tool chain has always been tedious to setup and integrate,” said Red Monk analyst Michael Cote. “While cloud-based development promises to make application delivery, deployment, and use easier, I haven’t seen excellent unified application management approaches that take full advantage of cloud. VMware’s SpringSource Code2Cloud is an ambitious step towards moving much of the development management stack into the cloud and hopefully vacuuming up those tedious application management tasks. It’ll be fun to watch this idea evolve as more and more people and applications start taking advantage of cloud computing.”
Important that such a disruption in the ALM space might be, I believe the main significance of the Code2Cloud announcement is in demonstrating so vividly how powerful the Everything as a Service (EaaS) paradigm could be and probably will be. IMHO Code2Cloud is another proof point to the power of the confluence of Agile, Cloud, Mobile and Social. It is a virtuous cycle of unprecedented impact – in technology delivery, in the structure of markets, in society and in the patterns of living we are accustomed to.
© Copyright 2010 Israel Gat
Figure 2: The Virtuous Cycle of Agile, Cloud, Mobile and Social
The Code2Cloud announcement is primarily about the {Agile –> Cloud} link in Figure 2. The {Cloud –> Mobile}, {Mobile –> Social} and {Social –> Agile} are just as powerful. For example, the {Social –> Agile} link, in conjunction with Cloud and Mobile, opens the door for highly efficient Testing as a Service.
Think of the Code2Cloud as a great example of Everything as a Service. Many other examples of such services are forthcoming. The common denominator of all these examples to come is their transformative power. Not in the tactical sense of “transformative”, but in the deep strategic meaning of the word.
Action item: Start a pilot to evaluate Code2Cloud. Expand rapidly if it meets your development needs. Tie at the earliest point in time to your plans for application delivery, deployment and use in the cloud.
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Extending the Scope of The Agile Executive
For the past 18 months Michael Cote and I focused The Agile Executive on software methods, processes and governance. Occasional posts on cloud computing and devops have been supplementary in nature. Structural changes in the industry have generally been left to be covered by other blogs (e.g. Cote’s Redmonk blog).
We have recently reached the conclusion that The Agile Executive needs to cover structural changes in order to give a forward-looking view to its readers. Two reasons drove us to this conclusion:
- The rise of software testing as a service. The importance of this trend was summarized in Israel’s recent Cutter blog post “Changing Playing Fields“:
Consider companies like BrowserMob (acquired earlier this month by NeuStar), Feedback Army, Mob4Hire, uTest (partnered with SOASTA a few months ago), XBOSoft and others. These companies combine web and cloud economics with the effectiveness and efficiency of crowdsourcing. By so doing, they change the playing fields of software delivery…
- The rise of devops. The line between dev and ops, or at least between dev and web ops, is becoming fuzzier and fuzzier.
As monolithic software development and delivery processes get deconstructed, the structural changes affect methods, processes and governance alike. Hence, discussion of Agile topics in this blog will not be complete without devoting a certain amount of “real estate” to these two changes (software testing as a service and devops) and others that are no doubt forthcoming. For example, it is a small step from testing as a service to development as a service in the true sense of the word – through crowdsourcing, not through outsourcing.
I asked a few friends to help me cover forthcoming structural changes that are relevant to Agile. Their thoughts will be captured through either guest posts or interviews. In these posts/interviews we will explore topics for their own sake. We will connect the dots back to Agile by referencing these posts/interviews in the various posts devoted to Agile. Needless to say, Agile posts will continue to constitute the vast majority of posts in this blog.
We will start the next week with a guest post by Peter McGarahan and an interview with Annie Shum. Stay tuned…
The Concise Executive Guide to Agile
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The IEEE Computer Society Press published today a ReadyNote[1] that I authored entitled The Concise Executive Guide to Agile. It is available through the IEEE Computer Society Store. A Kindle version will be published in June.
I had two main objectives in writing the guide:
- Provide the know-how for approaching Agile in a concise manner that requires minimal investment of time and effort by the reader. The ReadyNote does so by summarizing most Agile topics in a page or two. Detailed coverage of a topic is left for follow-on reading in the selected references that accompany each topic and in the Further Reading appendix.
- Be accessible to any executive — R&D, Marketing, Sales, Program Management, Professional Services, Customer Support, Finance, or IT. The only assumption I make is that the reader has a conceptual grasp of software and software engineering as well as an interest in learning about Agile. No deep knowledge, let alone technical knowledge, about software engineering is required for comprehending the guide.
There is no fluff in the guide. Every paragraph has been written to satisfy the “And therefore what?!” criterion. It is my intent to drive a point home and make it clear to the reader what he/she could do with the information in as few words as possible.
A simple acid test for the guide is your successful assimilation of it in entirety during a flight in the continental US. Something has not quite worked if you need to fly all the way from the US to Europe or vice versa in order to comprehend the guide…
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Michael Cote, Michael Mah, Hubert Smits and to the fourth reviewer (whose identity I don’t know) for their many helpful insights and suggestions. I am also deeply indebted to Linda Shafer and Kate Guillemette of the IEEE Computer Society who got me to write the guide and supported the writing and editing process along the way.
Enjoy reading!
Footnotes:
- “ReadyNotes are short e-books that are tightly focused on specific topics” [IEEE Computer Society Press].
OpsCamp Through an Internet-scale Lens
Like Agile Roots in Salt Lake City in June 2009, OpsCamp in Austin last week demonstrated how powerful grass roots conferences can be. We might not have had big names on the roster, but we sure had a productive dialog on the tricky issues lurking in the cusp between software development and IT operations in Cloud environments.
The conference has been amply covered by Michael Cote, John Willis, Mark Hinkle, and Damon Edwards (to name a few). This post restricts itself to commenting on one fundamental aspect of the cloud which IMHO does not get the attention it deserves. It might be implied in various discourses on the subject, but I believe it needs to be called out as a fundamental assumption for just about anything and everything one might consider doing with respect to the cloud. I am referring to economies of scale.
As pointed out in a forthcoming book on Cloud Computing by colleague and friend Annie Shum, the cloud phenomenon is fundamentally driven by substantial economies of scale in very large data centers. The operational costs of running such data centers are close to an order of magnitude lower than these prevailing in small and mid-sized data centers. User benefits are primarily derived from these compelling economies of scale.
I will be asking Annie to write a detailed guest post on the subject for readers of The Agile Executive. Until her post is published here, I would recommend we primarily consider the Cloud as a phenomenon that only becomes meaningful at scale. In particular, Private Clouds are not likely to yield Internet-scale efficiencies. Folks who regard their company’s conventional data center as a private cloud might be missing up on the ‘secret sauce’ of cloud computing.
The various agile system administration schemes discussed at the Austin OpsCamp are essential to attaining the requisite economies of scale in cloud services. Watch out for follow-on OpsCamps in other cities for developments to come in this all important space.
Agile Infrastructure
Ten years ago I probably would not have seen any connection between global warming and server design. Today, power considerations prevail in the packaging of servers, particularly those slated for use in large and very large data centers. The dots have been connected to characterize servers in terms of their eco foot print.
In his Agile Austin presentation a couple of days ago, Cote delivered a strong case for connecting the dots of Agile software development with those of Cloud Computing. Software development and IT operations become largely inseparable in cloud environments. In many of these environments, customer feedback is given “real time” and needs to be responded to in an ultra fast manner. Companies that develop fast closed-loop feedback and response systems are likely to have a major competitive advantage. They can make development and investment decisions based on actual user analytics, feature analytics and aggregate analytics instead of speculating what might prove valuable.
While the connection between Agile and Cloud might not be broadly recognized yet, the subject IMHO is of paramount importance. In recognition of this importance, Michael Cote, John Allspaw, Andrew Shafer and I plan to dig into it in a podcast next week. Stay tuned…
And Now the Bottle-neck is in Operations
In his forthcoming Agile Austin presentation, colleague and friend Michael Cote will be discussing velocity in Agile development vis-a-vis velocity in IT operations. To quote Cote:
Technologies used by public web companies and now cloud computing are looking to offer a new way to deliver applications by addressing deployment and provisioning concerns. Agile software development has sped up the actual development of software, and now the bottle-neck is in operations who’re not always able to deploy software at the same velocity that Agile teams ship code. What do these technologies look like, are they realistic, and how might they affect your organization?
The topic is important from a few perspectives, such as the new business models it enables. With Agile infrastructure, a closed loop is formed between vendor and customer. This loop operates on the basis of close to real-time feedback. The new functionality in the software deployed in the afternoon could be in response to a specific need that was brought up in the morning. Hence, the business focus and the business design change from software that has already been developed and tested (‘done done’) but not yet delivered, to one that has been developed, tested and deployed (‘done done done’) in ultra fast way.
It should also be pointed out that the line between developing content and developing software gets really blurry nowadays. From a company perspective both software and contents are entities that are being made available for dissemination. If you accept the premise that the generation of content and development of the corresponding software should be done under a unified Agile model, the desirability, the power and the benefits of managing development and delivery in unison become obvious. When applied to both content and software, an agile infrastructure paradigm could easily transform the publishing industry, and others.
In short, the business benefits Agile Infrastructure begets trump the (very significant) operational benefits it enables.
Between Agile and ITIL – Part II
The July 2009 post Between Agile and ITIL introduced the application of Agile principles to system management with the following words:
You do not need to be an expert in Value Stream Mapping to appreciate the power of speeding up deployment to match the pace of Agile development. By aligning development with deployment, you streamline “production” with “consumption.” The rationale for so doing is aptly captured in the first bullet of the Declaration of Interdependence: “We increase return on investment by making continuous flow of value our focus.”
Yesterday’s press release about the acquisition of Phurnace by BMC validates the projection given in the afore-listed post. Colleague and friend Michael Cote puts his finger on the heart of the acquisition in his post in People Over Process:
The interesting part is also that this is automation – I’m assuming – at the application layer, where as most automation talk in past and present is at the infrastructure layer. Of course, the thought leaders in this area – folks like Reductive Labs (Puppet),OpsCode (Chef), and in a more general sense cloud management outfits – are doing a helpful job of blurring the distinction between traditional IT layers like application and infrastructure with their dev/ops angled automation. Check out this white paper done by Reductive Labs and dto solutions on the topic for a nice toe-dip. And, I’d expect to see more application layer automation from VMWare/SpringSource. Older automation portfolios like BMC’s Blade Logic line need to keep a close eye on these developments, hopefully, taking in the proven parts of that work.
One can, of course, automate IT tasks without embracing Agile. The fundamental question to be answered is whether one considers ITIL as an “empirical” process control model or as a “defined” process control model (or possibly a hybrid).
Make the Hairs on the Back of Your Neck Stand Up
Cote sent me the recent CIO Magazine article entitled ERP’s Paralysis Problem and the Repercussions for Business Everywhere. The article discusses the findings from a December 2009 study conducted by IDC and sponsored by ERP vendor Agresso, as follows:
A couple of verbatim responses from respondents should make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up: “Capital expenditure priorities are shifted into IT from other high-payback projects” just to perform necessary ERP changes, noted one respondent. Said another: “Change to ERP paralyzes the entire organization in moving forward in other areas that can bring more value.”
To make doubly certain the message gets across, the article finishes with the following “nocturnal” paragraph:
As the sun finally sets on the first decade in the new millennium, it’s high time we say good night to ERP. A new day will be starting soon, and the blemished legacy and failings of ERP’s nearly four-decade-long reign will be a distant memory.
Maybe. While ERP systems no doubt have their own particular twists, the sorry state of affairs described above is true of various industries that have developed complex software systems over prolonged periods of time. Just in the past few months I have witnessed such situations in banking and health care. In previous life I had been exposed to more of the same in other industries. The software decayed and decayed but technical debt had never been reduced. Consequently, the cost of change, any change, today is horrendous. As Jim Highsmith‘s chart below indicates, “once on the right of the curve, all choices are hard.”
In Estimating Software Costs, author Capers Jones quantifies five-year cost of software application ownership (for the vendor). He examines three similar applications, each of nominal size of 1000 function points, as a function of the sophistication of the corresponding projects. The respective life cycle costs are as follows:
- Lagging projects: $2,316,000
- Average projects: $1,860,000
- Leading projects: $1,312,000
Jones goes on to issue the following stern warning:
All known compound objects decay and become more complex with the passage of time unless effort is exerted to keep them repaired and updated. Software is no exception… Indeed, the economic value of lagging applications is questionable after about three to five years. The degradation of initial structure and the increasing difficulty of making updates without “bad fixes” tends towards negative returns on investment (ROI) within a few years.
Enough, indeed, to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up…
Predicting the Year Ahead
Cutter Consortium has published predictions for 2010 by about a dozen of its experts. My own prediction, which examines the crash of 1929, the burst of the “dot-com bubble” in 2000 and the financial collapse in 2008, is actually quite bullish:
I expect 2010 to be the first year of a prolonged golden age. Serious as the various problems we all are wrestling with after the 2008-2009 macro-economic crisis are, they should be viewed as systemic to the way a new generation of revolutionary infrastructure gets assimilated in economy and society.
In addition to the techno-economic view expressed in the Cutter prediction, here are my Agile themes for 2010:
- Agile moves “downstream” into Release Management.
- Agile breaks out of Development into IT (and beyond) in the form of Agile Infrastructure and Agile Business Service Management.
- SOA and Agile start to be linked in enterprise architecture and software/hardware/SaaS organizations.
- Kanban starts an early adoption cycle similar to Scrum in 2006.
Acknowledgements: I am thankful to my colleagues Walter Bodwell, Sebastian Hassinger, Erik Huddleston, Michael Cote and Annie Shum who influenced my thinking during 2009 and contributed either directly and indirectly to the themes listed above.
The Agile Executive 
