What Are the Right Metrics for DevOps?

Source – itbusinessedge.com

DevOps is not merely a technology upgrade but a change to business cultures, processes and models. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that few organizations have a handle as to exactly what makes a successful transition.

One of the biggest mistakes is thinking that traditional performance metrics can give you an idea of what is working, and what isn’t, in a DevOps environment. While it is true that things like resource utilization, network traffic patterns, storage consumption and the like can provide insight into the IT infrastructure that still plays a crucial role in DevOps, the fact is that true performance depends on a whole lot more.

Going forward, it appears the enterprise will need to expand its monitoring capabilities into areas that border on the esoteric. According to experts recently polled by jaxenter.com, these can range from common metrics like uptime, response time and user satisfaction to things like how much weekend or overtime your DevOps teams are logging or how much sleep they are getting overall. As TCDI’s Eric Vanderburg notes, however, the best metrics will be the ones the enterprise defines for itself based on the objectives of its unique business model.

Determining what to measure is only one part of the challenge, however. Equally important is how fast you measure it, says Electric Cloud’s Anders Wallgren. In a recent post on Information Week, Wallgren pointed out that traditional cycle and response times are inadequate for today’s business environment. Instead, the enterprise should focus on building real-time feedback loops tied directly into automated systems in support of the continuous integration/continuous delivery paradigm. When everything from infrastructure, development, testing and deployment are defined as code, a monitoring process that takes weeks, days or even hours to collect and analyze data is a sure way to put yourself behind the competition.