Leveraging Agile Principles in IT Operations: 2 of 4

Working systems over comprehensive documentation

Agile Overview

Last week I discussed how you can reap the benefits of a structured framework and create opportunities for continuous improvement in your IT operations team by emphasizing individuals and interaction over processes and tools. This concept is based on the idea that the processes and tools that your IT operations team uses, including the organizational framework, should be driven by the team’s values rather than the desire to watchdog productivity.

This week I’m going to talk about the second precept of the Agile Manifesto: Working software over comprehensive documentation. Although software is integral to the work of a site operations team and members of the team are often required to code as part of their regular work, creating working software is not the primary function of an IT department, so we’re going to modify this precept to reflect the core competency of IT operations: Maintaining working systems over comprehensive documentation.

The Documentation Monster

If you want to provoke a negative emotional response in your IT operations team, tell them everyone needs to focus on documentation. It’s not fun. It’s hard to know where to start. It takes away from the time your team can devote to deploying, fixing and maintaining systems. It’s not generally the strongest skill in the IT professional’s toolkit.

On the other hand, it can save a significant amount of time when troubleshooting. It can foster knowledge transfer. It speeds the learning curve for new hires trying to find their way around your systems. It can be integral to a good disaster recovery plan.

Given the advantages and drawbacks to documenting your systems, how can you find a reasonable approach to creating the documentation?

Document Key Information

The key difference in this approach lies in understanding the difference between comprehensive documentation and valuable documentation. Valuable documentation supports the needs of your team.

Lay the groundwork for creating a culture that embraces documentation by discussing the values of your group. What drivers would make documentation valuable to you? As a team, determine what system information you need to track. This will generally come down to four key ways the knowledge will be used:

1. Reducing troubleshooting time
2. Sharing knowledge
3. Training new hires
4. Supporting disaster recovery

Recognizing the value and purpose of documentation can support the culture of creating and maintaining it. Keep in mind that if the information doesn’t strongly support how your group will use the documentation, it is extraneous. Extraneous information is a waste of time and energy to track and doesn’t maximize the IT operations team’s value stream.

Maintaining Working Systems

It’s rare to have the luxury to build systems and documentation together from the ground up. Many start-ups are scrambling just to have working systems, much less document them. Most of us have to start with a system that is already in place.

Examine your system. Is it mature? Do you have instrumentation in place, including telemetry, monitoring and alerting, failure detection, and comprehensive, readable logs? Does it fail gracefully? Is it designed for recovery? Are the necessary high availability sub-systems in place? These are the foundation for maintaining working systems. Identify your gaps, prioritize them and create a plan for putting them in place.

Document as You Go

It’s not practical to drop the regular work of an IT operations department and go on a documentation spree for a week. For one thing, everyone will take the week off. For another, knowing where to start documenting is a daunting proposition.

Instead, document as you go. When a team member is working on a standard tasks – deploying, fixing and maintaining – use the opportunity to look at the system from a documentation standpoint as part of the standard task. Refer back to the ways your group will use the documentation as a guideline to creating it.

Another way to create documentation is to embrace failure. When your systems fail, use the opportunity to strengthen them, address the root causes, and document both the fix and the new, stable state. This can support future troubleshooting efforts while creating training material.

Looking Ahead

In part 3 of this series I will examine how the third precept of the Agile Manifesto, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, supports an IT operations environment.

Jen Browne and Patrick Phillips

Leveraging Agile Principles in IT Operations: Part 1

Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools

Agile Overview

“Agile” refers to a set of methodologies that focuses on iterative and incremental software development, emphasizing collaboration between cross-functional teams. I was recently asked by a CEO to explain the value of using Agile principles in IT operations, a group that doesn't typically embrace Agile tools and processes.

At its foundation, relating Agile to IT operations rather than to the development world, where Agile was founded, means understanding the differences between the needs of a group that follows a pattern of planned work (software development) and a group that is largely interrupt-driven (operations).

The Agile Manifesto lists four main precepts:

• · Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• · Working software over comprehensive documentation
• · Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• · Responding to change over following a plan

In this series of blog posts I will discuss how each precept can bring value to the responsibilities of your IT operations team.

Traditional Frameworks

When seeking an organizational approach, there are compelling reasons behind constructing an IT department using an ordered framework such as ITIL or MOF. This approach locks the team into a safe, prescriptive approach that is hard to fault. It reduces the need for personal judgment and critical thought while defining roles and responsibilities, offering a clear trail for audits.

However, there are associated drawbacks. Frameworks don’t foster creativity. They’re often top-heavy, requiring a great deal of time and effort to implement and maintain. Additionally, overlaying a framework on a disorganized IT team won’t create useful process and can bog down the team when implementing the framework, rather than providing structure for the department, becomes the goal.

Structured frameworks also fail because they don’t foster continuous improvement. Even though root cause analysis is often included within the framework, the step that remediates the root cause and creates process improvement is frequently not addressed. Thus the value of understanding the root cause is lost.

Individuals and Interactions

Fortunately, you can reap the benefits of a structured framework and create opportunities for continuous improvement in your IT operations team by following Agile’s first precept: individuals and interaction over processes and tools.

The processes and tools that your IT operations team uses, including the organizational framework, should be driven by the team’s values rather than the desire to watchdog productivity. Focusing on individuals and interactions puts a framework into perspective; it becomes a set of guidelines that support the team rather than setting the framework itself up as the goal.

The concept of individuals and interaction over processes and tools also forms a philosophical stance for the management of teams. Trust your IT team. Many IT people are intelligent, internally-driven professionals who want to find ways to improve department processes and customer service. If you don’t trust your team, get a different team, either by getting different people on the bus or by shifting yourself to a new bus. Using processes and tools to lock down the behavior of team members as a substitute for trust can be disheartening for teams and is an ineffective management approach.

Looking Ahead

In part 2 of this series I will address the second precept of the Agile Manifesto, working software over comprehensive documentation, and discuss how it applies in an IT operations environment.

Jen Browne and Patrick Phillips