Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Terms to Know
Innovate: Doing (good) things we haven't done before.
Stakeholders: People and organizations that are seen as having an interest in a
project's success.
Artifacts: Any kind of tangible by-product produced during the development of
software—source files, executables, documentation, use cases, diagrams, pack-
ages, and so on.
Service Delivery Flow: The trip through the system from beginning to end; often
shortened to flow .
Cycle Time: How frequently a flow completes.
Deployment: The process of pushing a release into production; often shortened to
deploy .
Gate: An intentional limit that prevents flow. For example, the deploy step is
gated by whether quality assurance tests succeeded.
Release Candidate: The end result of the build phase. Not all release candidates
are deployed.
Release: The successful completion of an entire flow, including deploy. May res-
ult in users seeing a visible change.
A good service delivery platform takes into account the fact that a service is not just
software,butalsotheinfrastructureonwhichtheserviceruns.Thisincludesmachineswith
an operating system loaded and properly configured, the software packages installed and
configured, plus network, storage, and other resources available. While infrastructure can
be set up manually, it is best to automate that process. Virtualization enables this kind of
automation because virtual machines can be manipulated via software, as can software-
defined networks. The more we treat infrastructure as code, the more we can benefit from
software development techniques such as revision control and testing. This automation
shouldbetreatedlikeanyothersoftwareproductandputthroughthesameservicedelivery
flow as any application.
When service delivery is done right, it provides confidence, speed, and continuous im-
provement. Building, testing, and deployment of both an application and virtual infrastruc-
ture can be done in a completely automated fashion, which is streamlined, consistent, and
efficient. Alternatively, it can be done via manual, ad hoc processes, inconsistently and in-
efficiently. It is your mission to achieve the former.
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