DevOps Culture of Agile Software Development
Let’s be honest, software development is a complex process. Defects and integration challenges are quite often identified too late, becoming sizeable obstacles for business owners, development teams and end-users.
Lucky for you, there is a better way to do things. At Levi9, we use a holistic approach to software development. One that encourages communication and collaboration between the product management, development teams and operations. We transform a business idea into a product that delivers value and contributes to your objectives. It is called DevOps and we’re quite fond of it.
DevOps culture maximizes productivity and predictability. It complements lean and agile software development practices with the main goal to ensure fast and reliable delivery of useful software. DevOps practices ensure a smooth and fast flow of work from product design and development to operations and ultimately to the customer.
It enables a fast feedback-loop from operations to development, in order to detect issues fast, recover quickly and prevent problems. A streamlined process that keeps everybody connected, from users to product management to the development team.
On top of that, our continuous improvement practices create a culture that encourages initiative and experimentation; plus it gives us more time and energy dedicated to innovation and taking your products up the value chain. Global organizations that embraced DevOps definitely have a competitive edge: they deploy software code 30 times quicker; …with 60% less bugs; …with up to 200 times faster lead time to change; …and 168 times faster time to restore service.
Not only do these companies have higher growth rates, they get much higher satisfaction scores all across the board. Their customers appreciate their reliability in delivering products that truly add value to their business. Their employees love having a growth culture, where continuous improvements lead to professional development and a psychologically safe working environment.
An organization that does not use data as an incentive to improve practices of flow, feedback and continuous improvement will probably end up wasting time. In a competitive digital market, DevOps helps you keep up metrics and learn from your data – a real game changer. Take it from a myriad of state-of-the-art products, happy customers and satisfied employees; taking ownership of the way you approach the value stream and your innovation culture is the most beneficial change you will ever make. …and we’d be happy to assist you.
If you want to learn more about how we do DevOps and Agile, please join our event on 13 February in Utrecht. Find the program and registration form on https://stagingwww.levi9.com/event/devops-and-agile-transformation/
The secret to fruitful collaboration
We sat down with Ian Meyers, senior product manager identity at LiveRamp, a San Francisco based tech marketing company that just started working with us, to get some feedback on their experience with finding the right partner for their IT challenges.
LiveRamp provides the identity platform leveraged by enterprise marketeers and their partners to deliver innovative products and exceptional experiences. The LiveRamp platform connects people, data, and devices across the digital and physical world, powering the people-based marketing revolution and allowing consumers to safely connect with the brands and products they love.
LiveRamp was looking to build a product from the ground up and got referred to us by Faktor, a company they had recently acquired and one of our long- lasting customers. Being listed at the New York Stock Exchange, LiveRamp is required to comply with a myriad of regulations, both legal and compliance-wise and as such they had to act very prudently in their selection process for a development partner.
Contract negotiations proved to be an iterative and collaborative endeavor, in which Levi9’s framework agreement proved to be both legally sound and able to meet LiveRamp’s requirements in a flexible way. Mutual trust and openness were at the basis of a fruitful process and led to an outcome that respected the interests of both parties. LiveRamp shared their product concept with us, our team wanted to understand exactly what they would like to achieve, to make sure we were in the best position to help them throughout the entire project.
The interactions during an orientation phase really shape a project. Through technical input and prototypes, a rough idea was converted into a detailed project that would truly help LiveRamp move forward.
We made sure that a 9 hour time difference wouldn’t get in the way of running intensive agile processes together. LiveRamp stressed the importance to have teams that collaborate and communicate closely and short-cycled – a foundation to make a project a success.
The communication between the team was not about preventing hurdles along the way but rather to iteratively keep fine-tuning the product.
LiveRamp never feared that things would go off track, they were in good hands.
Ian shared with us: “Even though we are your customer, the Levi9 team very much feels like our colleagues” Collaboration is key to us, and LiveRamp is the best partner we can hope for!
Hack9 – It’s not about the prize, it’s about the pride
Athletes spend years training to sharpen their skills. Years of dedication, sweat and tears, hoping to get a spot on the podium.
Well, our developers are not that different. You can be sure that when it comes to IT, they are ready to enter the arena. Our own annual hackathon event gives room to our developers to show what they are made of; 33 teams, 199 participants from 3 different countries – ready for an intense sleepless 24hrs of IT athleticism.
Every year, a different challenge needs to be met, and it’s all about apps, software, innovations and challenges. This year, following the immense success of our last Open Source themed hackathon Hack9, we gave our Levi niners something they can’t get enough of: fundamental IT. Our teams composed of Levi niners and teams from our customers came together to triumph over our new challenge: Designing the same highly performant app.
Everyone got briefed just a moment before the kick-off. The difference this year? Everything took place in the cloud – a technology progressively taking a bigger place in our daily work. Teams chose their own cloud platform and were encouraged to utilize all the managed services that the cloud of their choice offers, to cut down cost and the effort of implementation.
There was no jury this year. Every app was auto tested and its performance was displayed live on a big screen. The teams were evaluated on the functionality of their app, its performance, its cost efficiency and the team member’s ability to work with colleagues that they haven’t worked with so far. We sure love to get someone out of his or her comfort zone to explore new skills. On a practical standpoint, the skills we learned will definitely help every Levi niner thrive on an everyday basis. Yes, we like to learn a thing or two.
Events like this one, aside from celebrating our company culture and helping us to bring innovative ideas to life, allow our Levi niners to sharpen skills that we use regularly in our daily jobs and to enable our customers in their challenges.
It’s not about the prize, it’s about the pride. After an intense 24h event, it was time for some sleep. But you can be sure that we are already looking forward to the next Hack9 edition! Levi9 organizes several interesting events throughout the year, aimed to share insights and inspire. Check out our events page to find out about our upcoming events and to sign up https://stagingwww.levi9.com/events/.