Integrating DevOps With Service Management Is the Future

Source :- bmchelix.cio.com

The enterprise steadily is adopting DevOps as organizations seek to create and improve applications faster for the business. However, development teams tend to use similar yet different tools than IT operations, which can present challenges. For example, DevOps may use a separate incident tracking tool than ITSM, causing unnecessary complexity and increased risk for errors and incidents.

“So what you end up doing is forcing developers to use some process that’s outside of their norm in order to address issues,” Donna Knapp, curriculum development manager at the ITSM Academy, told Tech Beacon.

That’s why it is time for ITSM to embrace DevOps successes and get on board with the integration of the tools both teams use.

Finding commonality for flexibility

Automation is the most singular thing making a difference in the DevOps model. The software-development lifecycle — including integration, testing, and deployment —typically is automated to achieve speed and accuracy.

By moving away from manual IT service delivery, ITSM can achieve the same results. For example, automation of change requests and issue tracking not only speeds processes, it improves the IT customer experience and productivity.

The marriage of DevOps and ITSM automation tools can drive even greater value for the business — speeding processes and delivery for both teams.

“In this multi-cloud world, most enterprise organizations want to more tightly integrate IT service operations with DevOps tools,” says Nayaki Nayyar, President of Digital Service Management at BMC. To accommodate for this, she says enterprises need modern IT management tools that are more widely and broadly accessible.

Companies should seek commonalities between ITSM and DevOps tools, including in the areas of change management, DevOps, and self-service provisioning.

“Change management has often been where DevOps and ITSM collide,” said Roy Atkinson, who analyzes the service management market for HDI. “The stereotypical Change Advisory Board must radically revise its approach to be in sync with the enormous amount of change that DevOps can produce in a day.”

To make this process easier, BMC Helix ITSM automates a risk score for every change created by Agile tools such as Jira and Azure DevOps, then automatically generates a change request. Having risk data helps enterprises determine which changes can be auto-approved and which changes require attention before deployment. It’s a win-win: Organizations can deliver rapid changes without risking service availability.

When it comes to DevOps tools, BMC Helix ITSM — which is supported for on-premises and hybrid cloud environments — provides out-of-the box capabilities for organizations to tightly integrate incident, change, work order, and problem management with DevOps tools such as Jira. Here’s how:

When a developer creates an issue in a tracking system such as Jira, a corresponding change, incident, problem, or work order automatically is created in BMC Helix ITSM.
When a change coordinator creates a change request in BMC Helix ITSM, a corresponding user story automatically is created in any agile development tool. The development team can view details of the change request in the tracking tool.
Using BMC Helix ITSM for DevOps integration unlocks a series of automated functionality with BMC Helix ITSM — for change requests, issue creation, incident tracking, and more.

Finally, self-service provisioning is becoming a must-have. The 2018 State of DevOps Report suggests organizations best equipped to reach the final stages of DevOps have secured commitments from multiple departments — including ITSM — to provide automation and self-service capabilities.

In this area, BMC Digital Workplace shines. The solution provides a central service catalog for one-stop shopping, where all the tools and services users require are just one click away.

Ultimately, the integration of change management, DevOps, and self-service provisioning tools across DevOps and ITSM leads to a more flexible, intuitive service management model within the organization. In turn, this enables the business to move more efficiently, productively, and faster.