DevOps mixing with ITIL?

We recently recorded a webinar looking at trends in ITIL Release Management and found synergies with the DevOps philosophy. ITIL seems to have a stronghold in larger organizations, with established operations teams and a risk-adverse attitude. Meanwhile, the DevOps movement was based in more aggressive organizations – often startups with web products facing consumers.

However, enterprise IT seems to understand that the dysfunction between developers and operations needs work. In fact, when we looked at the mandate ITIL has for Release Management and the modern pace of releases, we found Release Managers to be natural DevOps facilitators in the enterprise.

Apparently, Gartner is seeing much of the same thing in the field. A recent research note* by Ronni Colville and George Spafford, observes:

With the increased demand for more frequent releases and predictable outcomes, IT organizations are beginning to realize that they can no longer focus on production-only processes. By factoring in the DevOps philosophy and using a more integrative, holistic approach toward the release of new and changed services into production, IT management can tailor their efforts to create solutions that address the need to increase the velocity and quality of releases from service design, development and transition into production.

These sorts of hybrid process approaches are common among teams we work with. We see teams using ITIL as the model in operations, Agile variants like Scrum in development and a variety of approaches like DevOps used to bridge and align the two.

Everyone involved in software from business analysts and developers to release managers and operations is trying to rapidly deliver value at a high degree of quality. With the increased collaboration that is coming into vogue across the SDLC, blended processes seem to be the most viable approach.

Watch the recording or download the slides.

Gartner Clients my download the note.

* “Leveraging DevOps and Other Process Frameworks Requires Significant Investment in People and Process” Ronni J. Colville | George Spafford Feb 2012