Are DevOps and Enterprise Service Management (ESM) a match made in heaven? While it may not be immediately evident, the methodologies and technologies used in both these practices can completely transform how software is built, deployed, and delivered. For instance, with ESM and DevOps integration, teams can have a single source of truth for adaptive and agile change and release management. They can know exactly which services are currently running within the infrastructure. They can also get insight into the risks of changes and deliver new capabilities accordingly.
Benefits of ESM DevOps Integration
The goal of almost any DevOps organization is to bridge the gap between siloed teams and enable the consistent delivery of high-quality software. However, in hybrid or multi-cloud environments, this is becoming increasingly difficult. That’s where ESM delivers its magic.
Having evolved from IT service management (ITSM), Enterprise Service Management (ESM) enables IT helpdesk-like services to every function within the organization. Whether HR, customer support, or marketing, ESM enables better service delivery for business teams, enhancing issue resolution speed and accuracy and user satisfaction.
- Better organizational agility: DevOps teams can use this ESM mindset to increase the velocity of CI/CD processes and build a culture of continuous improvement. By aligning IT and business processes, they can enable faster and more adaptive decision-making and respond quickly to changing priorities and unexpected challenges.
- No silos: DevOps teams can leverage all the data harnessed by ESM for improved visibility and insight into the relationships and interdependencies across complex enterprise systems. With tools like Jira Service Management, teams can take an orchestrated approach to software development, delivering innovations across critical services, addressing issues as they arise, and driving seamless collaboration across departments. Embedded change request screens spanning different tools can further support agile DevOps practices, improving cross-team visibility and real-time collaboration.
- Improved service delivery: ESM DevOps integration allows DevOps teams to know exactly which services are running within the infrastructure. This minimizes guesswork and reduces the chances of relying on outdated information in a constantly evolving environment, enabling the delivery of rapid innovation for mainstream services.
- Minimized outages: Armed with ESM data, DevOps teams can gain much-needed insight into the risks that any changes may entail. Unified visibility across IT and business workflows allows for proactive monitoring, efficient resource allocation, and rapid recovery, ensuring high system availability and minimizing the impact of outages on business continuity. This helps them move quickly to deliver new capabilities while mitigating the risk of breaking things.
- Enhanced collaboration: With ESM providing end-to-end visibility into workflows, processes, and data, DevOps teams can align more effectively with IT and business units. This synergy ensures that everyone operates with a unified understanding of priorities and dependencies and embraces a streamlined approach to delivering value-driven solutions across the enterprise.
- Faster incident resolution: Integrating Enterprise Service Management (ESM) with DevOps is a great way to improve incident resolution. Knowledge management, for instance, allows Dev and Ops team members to access help using a single, unified portal, more quickly identify root causes, and maintain business continuity while continuously improving system performance.
- Streamlined ITSM: Integrating ESM with DevOps allows for more adaptive and agile change and release management. By reducing handoffs and facilitating transparent collaboration, this integration offers stakeholders a single view of the truth, a unified workflow to avoid bottlenecks and misunderstandings, and a focus on driving innovation.
- Better user experience: Enterprise Service Management (ESM) and DevOps integration transforms the user experience by fostering seamless collaboration and operational efficiency. Centralizing data and processes across the organization gives DevOps teams real-time visibility into user needs and concerns. Teams can use this information to build features that are reliable, agile, and tailored to evolving requirements.
Integration Tips
Adopting ESM principles can create shared responsibility and opportunity across DevOps teams. By bringing all DevOps-related workflows into one place, ESM allows every team member to find what they’re looking for instantly and effortlessly. Accessing everything in one place also reduces wait times while ensuring scarce resources, like your best people, are used more efficiently.
- Define common objectives: Defining common ESM and DevOps goals is essential to creating a unified framework that drives efficiency, agility, and customer satisfaction. From streamlining workflows to enhancing collaboration across teams, having clarity on integration goals can aid in reducing operational risks, responding swiftly to changes, and delivering consistent, high-quality user experiences.
- Leverage automation tools: DevOps teams must use automation tools to streamline workflows. For example, codeless setup and configuration can instantly spin up new services, workflow rules, and reports.
- Build feedback loops: Feedback loops enable seamless DevOps and ESM integration. They empower development, IT operations, and business teams to work together to incorporate user requirements, respond to business changes, and deliver great experiences quickly.
- Foster a culture of collaboration: Frequent collaboration between various team members allows for a cohesive approach to software development. Whether a developer is writing code, or a tester is running automated tests, continuous communication and collaboration ensure every team member works with others to speed up service delivery.
- Track metrics: When embracing ESM practices in the DevOps lifecycle, teams must also continuously track metrics to gauge the efficiency of their efforts. From incident resolution time to customer satisfaction scores, process cycle time to, service uptime and availability, keeping track of metrics is essential to identifying areas for improvement and optimizing service delivery.
Rethink Your Approach to IT Service Delivery
Rapidly evolving markets and constantly changing customer expectations require DevOps teams to rethink their approach to IT service delivery. When brought into the DevOps lifecycle, ESM enables teams to quickly and iteratively deploy high-quality applications that effectively address pressing needs. By bringing siloed teams together and allowing access to a unified platform, ESM and DevOps integration enables a transformative approach to driving business agility and adaptability in today’s complex IT landscape.