Dive Brief:
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DevOps is release management, it's just executed in a different way from the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) model, according to Jayne Groll, CEO of the DevOps Institute, while speaking at Service Management World in Orlando, Fla Tuesday.
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Users of the models need to be able to share tools, including GitHub, RedHat, Kubernetes, Splunk and Slack, to help streamline their codependency.
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Companies can avoid overprocessing by using agile methodologies to identify the "minimal viable process" to meet the requirements of an organization. Doing so helps improve and then release pieces of a process.
Dive Insight:
With the emergence of DevOps and after eight years without an update, some think ITIL has finally outlived its value. It's not hard to see why people think that.
But both models are reliant on each other. The ITIL model doesn't say processes can't be automated, which leaves room for ITIL to depend on DevOps for speed and agility. DevOps needs ITIL for "underpinning process[es]," according to Groll.
Part of the disconnect between DevOps and ITIL is an uncommon taxonomy which includes the same acronyms with different meanings. For example, IC in DevOps refers to doing continuous integrations, and ITIL refers to IC as collecting configuration items.
Streamlining the language associated with both models can clear up misunderstandings between users. It can also give way to a more "squad"-like mentality where skills cross over, as opposed to a team-like mentality.
DevOps stands as this crossroad of what companies have done and where they want to go. Unlike other models, DevOps doesn't have a single library and people have to "get away from this framework loyalty," said Groll.
Over the years, "ITIL became a little religious" with how businesses were sticking to the book, said Groll and it shouldn't have gotten that way. At the end of the day, there are only two points in time that value is delivered to the customer: the first line of code and the when the customer gets to use what is produced.
