Over the past few years, industry leaders have been discussing the best and most innovative ways to make software delivery faster and safer. Continuous Delivery, Agile and DevOps mindsets are prevailing while new technologies related to containers, microservices and release automation have been top of mind. These methods and technological advancements are finding their way into nearly every marketplace, from FinServ to healthcare, and it’s made its biggest gains in enterprise IT organizations. This week’s top 10 walks us through the DevOps journey in the enterprise, why it is necessary for IT professional to adapt with new DevOps skills, and, for a bonus, Jez Humble returns to the blogosphere to tell us why he thinks Gartner’s “Bimodal” IT model is misleading.

As always, stay tuned to all the news coming from @ElectricCloud on DevOps andContinuous Delivery throughout the week and retweet/like to get your top news items featured in our weekly recap!

1) The Flaw at the Heart of Bimodal IT

By @jezhumble | Published on @jezhumble
http://jezhumble.com/2016/04/the-flaw-at-the-heart-of-bimodal-it/

Gartner’s “Bimodal” IT model has taken the world of enterprise IT by storm. Gartner defines Bimodal IT as “the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed.” In this post I will describe three flaws in Gartner’s model, the most fundamental of which is that high performing organizations do not in fact trade off agility for safety. In fact, high performance is characterized by consistent improvements in levels of both agility and safety. While the Bimodal model provides a valuable guide to enterprises beginning their agile journey, I will argue it is misleading and, I believe, dangerous when viewed as a destination in its own right.

2) DevOps Journeys of Large Enterprises Highlights

By @ashimmy | Published on @devopsdotcom
http://devops.com/2016/04/06/devops-journeys-large-enterprises-highlights/

I read a recent comment to an article made by my friend Rob England (the IT Skeptic). Rob took exception with the author’s point of view about that DevOps was so widely adopted. Rob asked the author of the article, “How many of the Fortune 500 are DevOps shops?” My reaction to this was “Rob, not sure if you have noticed out in New Zealand, but there are a sizable number of Fortune 500 and other large enterprises that are DevOps shops now.” Maybe not a majority, but a sizable minority and growing every day. DevOps journeys of large enterprises are pretty well documented.

3) The Next Evolution of Enterprise DevOps is to Harden It

By @anders_wallgren | Published on @infoworld
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3049995/devops/the-next-evolution-of-enterprise-devops-is-to-harden-it.html  

In today’s digital age, business innovation is largely driven by software. To win, serve, and retain their customers, enterprises must release application updates at an increasingly faster pace. A great idea, killer functionality and a robust technology are all as important as ever, but they don’t mean much if you can’t get your code to your end users in a fast, predictable manner with high quality.

4) Implementing IoT With a Three-Tier Architecture

By Bryan Che | Published on @4enterprisers
https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2016/1/implementing-iot-three-tier-architecture  

If you aren’t looking to the Internet of Things to connect the analog side of your business to the digital world, your organization is going to be left behind. As enterprises digitize their analog business, the number of devices accessing your business services is going to dwarf the total human population of the world. This is going to create huge new opportunities. McKinsey estimates that the IoT market could grow up to $11 trillion dollars in the next 10 years. Adding sensors and automation to your analog business will allow you to tap new data and insights that could open up entirely new business opportunities for your organization.

5) What the Buzz is DevOps?

By @jamie_informa | Published on @BizCloudNews
http://www.businesscloudnews.com/2016/04/04/what-the-buzz-is-devops/  

In an industry where there seems to be a constant conveyor belt of buzzwords, you’ll struggle to find one that is currently more widely used that DevOps. In its simplest form, DevOps is, among other things, a business practise which ensures greater collaboration between the development and operations function within the organization, the Holy Grail for most businesses! Development often considers operations too regimented, and operations tends to consider developers too wishy-washy. Finding a middle ground can be a tricky task.

6) IT Operations Pros Must Adapt With New DevOps Skills

@PariseauTT  | Published on @TechTarget
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/450280776/IT-operations-pros-must-adapt-with-new-DevOps-skills

The intersection of DevOps with IT operations is a two-way street — even as developers increasingly take on more of operations, IT Ops pros must think more like app programmers. The technical changes that come with establishing a DevOps culture affect the IT infrastructure even if separate IT operations teams still manage day-to-day matters. New application development practices such as containerization, microservices and release automation, as well as new infrastructure management techniques that require programming skills, mean IT Ops pros must learn new tricks to keep that infrastructure running smoothly.

7) DevOps: The Good, The Bad and The Inevitable

By @BenRossi89  | Published on @InformationAge
http://www.information-age.com/technology/applications-and-development/123461218/devops-good-bad-and-inevitable

DevOps allows organisations to unite software development and operations teams, do away with organisational silos, and encourage teams to work towards a shared objective. As a result, many that take the plunge are seemingly reaping the rewards and leaping ahead of competitors in almost every relevant metric, thanks to its ability to speed up software delivery times, produce greater stability and reliability for customers, and free up valuable business time.

8) Wikibon Offers Prescription to Make Containers Enterprise-Ready

By @bgracely  | @SiliconANGLE
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/03/24/wikibon-offers-prescription-to-make-containers-enterprise-ready/

Containers have dramatically changed the ways in which application developers package and deploy software, initially in the cloud but soon in the enterprise as well. When combined with DevOps, microservices, and cloud-native applications, containers are revolutionizing the applications are designed, developed and managed over their lifetimes. Containers, however, only take the development process part way to the operational environment, writes Wikibon Analyst Brian Gracely in his latest Professional Alert, “Docker is the Least Interesting Part of Docker.” Containers cover the artifacts-to-applications part of the journey, but that only takes an application part of the way to reliable deployment.

9) Which is Best – Waterfall or Agile?

By @david_cotgreave | Published by @CIOonline
http://www.cio.com/article/3052651/project-management/which-is-best-waterfall-or-agile.html

“Which is best – Waterfall or Agile?” a client asked this week. For me, ineffective project management, a better question would be “Which is the best methodology for THIS specific part of THIS specific project?” You probably have many pairs of shoes … formal shoes, hiking boots, sports shoes, slippers, etc. When you choose which shoes to wear you do so based on what you’re about to do. If you were to head off on a vacation that you knew was going to include hiking in the foothills, laying on the beach, playing tennis and dancing the night away you wouldn’t try to pick one ‘best’ pair of shoes to do it all in – you’d pack the lot.

10) Guest View: Seven Reasons to Spend More Time on the Front End of Your Agile Projects

By Tony Higgins | Published on @sdtimes
http://sdtimes.com/guest-view-seven-reasons-to-spend-more-time-on-the-front-end-of-your-agile-projects/

Many initiatives vie for business dollars, but only a few get funded. To gain funding, business leaders document a clear business case and a sound economic argument. They articulate the problem and the value of solving it, often providing candidate approaches for delivering that value. The information in the business case helps a project team understand the “why” of the work it is about to do. It provides a guidepost to which the team can refer throughout the project to ensure it delivers what the business needs.