Today's topic was one which interests many folks of varying roles within our corporate organizations.    John O'Keefe lead a discussion to talk about 'Why DevOps?', where he looked into various considerations for DevOps.

We all valued that people and collaboration were listed as essential components for a successful DevOps practice.  He said that "DevOps is a culture, not a tool" - which I can appreciate.   It fits the observation I have had many times over - where lack of communication and collaboration can cause a project to tank.     Let us never forget the most important component to a process - the people!   If you are thinking 'hey, what about tools?'.    John points out that after the process and people / culture have been established, tooling is a next step.

DevOps = C.A.L.M.S.

A concept credited to John Willis and Jez Humble, CALMS is a really great way to think about DevOps

Your CI / CD Pipeline

John illustrated quite simply a pipeline for DevOps which promotes continuous feedback into your process.  The pipeline discussion was great and opened up various considerations for folks including server provision & deploy, monitoring and  application configuration. 

Please feel free to review the slide deck attached generously donated by John for more details.     Thanks John for kicking off DevOps to the Western NY Vivit Chapter!

Testing Considerations for DevOps

I lead a brief talk about considerations from a Tester in a DevOps World.    I had a chance to share some our current plan of attack for supporting a CI / DevOps movement.   During this discussion I was able to outline the various HPE tools available to aid the testing efforts.   One item which is growing in discussion is ALM Octane and 'what can it do for me?'.      We had a brief chance to review some of the features of the tool which can aid with CI practices.    Reminder that a 30 day trial is available via HPE SaaS and Melillo is offering live walkthrough of the product to those interested.

Testing - staying afloat

The last session was a roundtable on resources for keeping current with testing trends, technology and training.    See more on this growing page of links for good testing related resources: Testing Resources

Please find the powerpoint slides attached to this post for your viewing pleasure :)

Look forward to more content coming out of this DevOps primer possibly looking at some more hands-on functional automation, team collaboration, performance interests, CI and more.    As always we look to you, the Vivit member, to help us determine topics to best serve you!