In order to reduce operational risks, organizations put in CONTROLS, typically via Change Management processes, which satisfy audit and compliance requirements. These CONTROLS create friction among the team. To minimize this friction, let us look at 5 Tips to integrate Change management in your DevOps journey.
TIP #1 – TALK TO YOUR AUDIT/COMPLIANCE TEAM
START a conversation with your Audit/Compliance team members now, and try to understand their needs. These conversations will help your team to empathize and see the world from the ‘audit’/’security’ lens. You can then move forward to provide the ‘solution’ instead of jumping in with precooked notions. Read more here on how to start these conversations and ASK the right questions.
TIP #2 – CREATE TRACEABILITY AND CONTEXT FOR YOUR CHANGE SET
START providing the traceability and context for your change set to the operations teams. The goal for your team should be to provide evidence of quality test results for the proposed change set, which will provide the required CONFIDENCE for the Operations team. Read more here on how to start providing this traceability and have a deeper engagement with your Operations teams.
TIP #3 – RE-CLASSIFY YOUR CHANGE SETS
Start to reclassify your change sets, and build agreements, which allow you to auto-deploy to production. Building “standard” change sets, with pre-defined risk profile (low risk first!), you can move towards building a culture of trust with change and operations teams. Read more here on how to reclassify your change sets and increase transparency across the team.
TIP #4 – — USE TELEMETRY TO SHOW EVIDENCE
Start to build out your telemetry systems. These systems allow capturing error, warnings, events, trigger points, and logging this data to central\distributed stores. Use this evidence to show the CONTROLS required for the audit, change management processes. Read more here on how to build these telemetry systems in your DevOps journey.
TIP #5 – AUTOMATE, AUTOMATE, AND AGAIN AUTOMATE !
Stop doing manual steps in your change management teams, STOP ! Start to automate your workflows –build-–automated tests – deployments –reports. Read more here on how to increase the automation across the life cycle and increase transparency across the team
So go ahead, kick start and integrate the change management in your DevOps with these tips. Subscribe to my blog for more, and feel free to share your feedback here.