How DevOps Could Change Your Business

Henry Ford turned the U.S. auto industry on its head when he introduced the idea of prefabricating components at remote sites, and then putting them together on a production line. Despite many industries following suit, software lagged behind until 2008, when Andrew Clay Shafer and Patrick Debois told the Agile Conference there was a better way to develop code:
– Write the Code
– Test the Code
– Use the Code
– Evaluate, Schedule for Next Review

The term ?DevOps? is short for Development and Operations. It first appeared in Belgium, where developers refined Shafer and Depois? ideas. Since then, DevOps became a counter movement against the belief that software development is a linear process and has largely overwhelmed it.

DevOps – A Better Way

DevOps emerged at an exciting time in the IT industry, with new technology benefiting from a faster internet. However, the 2008 world recession was also beginning to bite. Developers scampered to lower their human resource costs and get to market sooner.

The DevOps method enabled them to colloborate across organizational boundaries and work together to write, quality assure and performance test each piece of code produced in parallel.
DevOps? greater time-efficiency got them to market sooner and helped them steal a march on the competition.

There are many advantages to DevOps when we work in this collaborative way. Cooperation improves relationships between developers, quality assurers and end users. This helps ensure a better understanding of the other drivers and a more time-effective product.

Summary of DevOps Objectives

DevOps spans the entire delivery pipeline, and increases the frequency with which progress is reviewed, and updates are deployed. The benefits of this include:

? Faster time to market and implementation

? Lower failure rate of new releases

? Shortened lead time for bug fixes and updates

The Psycho-Social Implications of DevOps

DevOps drills through organization borders and traditional work roles. Participants must welcome change and take on board new skills. Its interdepartmental approach requires closer collaboration across structural boundaries and greater focus on overarching business goals.

Outsourcing the detail to freelancers on the Internet adds a further layer of opportunity. Cultures and time zones vary, requiring advanced project management skills. Although cloud-based project management software provides adequate tools, it needs an astute mind to build teams that are never going to meet.

The DevOps movement is thus primarily a culture changer, where parties to a project accept the good intentions of their collaborators, while perhaps tactfully proposing alternatives. There is more to accepting a culture than using a new tool. We have to blend different ways of thinking together. We conclude by discussing three different methods to achieve this.

Three Ways to Deploy DevOps in your?Organisation

If you foresee regular DevOps-based projects, consider running your entire organisation through an awareness program to redirect thinking. This will help non-participants understand why DevOps members may be ?off limits? when they are occupied with project work. Outsourcing tasks to contracting freelancers can mitigate this effect.

There are three implementation models associated with DevOps although these are not mutually exclusive.

? Use systems thinking. Adopt DevOps as company culture and apply it to every change regardless of whether the process is digital, or not

? Drive the process via increased understanding and feedback from key receivers. Allow this to auto-generate participative DevOps projects

? Adopt a continuous improvement culture. DevOps is not only for mega upgrades. Feedback between role players is paramount for success everywhere we go.

You can use the DevOps concept everywhere you go and whenever you need a bridge to better understanding of new ideas. We diminish DevOps when we restrict its usefulness to the vital role it plays in software development. The philosophy behind it belongs in every business.

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Is the GDPR Good or Bad News for Business

The European Union?s General Data Protection Act (GDPR) is a new data authority coming into force on 25 May 2018. It replaces the current Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, while extending the remit to include the export of personal data outside the EU. It aims to give EU citizens and residents living there more control over their personal information. It also hopes to make regulatory compliance simpler for participating businesses.

The Broad Implications for Business
The GDPR puts another layer of accountability on businesses falling within its remit. It requires them to implement ?comprehensive but proportionate governance measures? including recording how they make decisions. The long-term goal is to reduce privacy infringements. In the short run, businesses without good governance may find themselves writing new policies and procedures.

Article 5 of the European Union?s General Data Protection Act lays down the following guidelines for managing personal data. This shall be ?
? Processed transparently, fairly, and lawfully
? Acquired for specific, legitimate purposes only
? Adequate, relevant and limited to essentials
? Not used for any other, incompatible purpose
? However it may be archived in the public interest
? Kept up to date with all inaccuracies corrected
? Ring-fenced when the information becomes irrelevant
? Adequately protected against unauthorised access
? Stored in a way that prevents accidental loss
Furthermore, affected businesses shall appoint a ?controller responsible for, and able to demonstrate, compliance with the principles.?

Implementing Accountability and Governance
The UK Information Commissioner?s Office has issued guidelines regarding provisions to assure governance and accountability. These are along the lines of the ?don’t tell me, show me? management approach the office has generally been following. In summary form, a business, and its controller must:
? Implement measures that assist it to ensure demonstrated compliance
? Maintain suitable, relevant records of personal data processing activities
? Appoint a dedicated data protection officer if scale makes this appropriate
? Implement technologies that ensure data protection by design
? Conduct data protection assessments and respond to results timeously

Implementing the General Data Protection Act in Ireland
The Irish Data Protection Commissioner has decided it is unnecessary to incorporate the GDPR into Irish law, since EU regulations have direct effect. The office of the Commissioner is working in tandem with data practitioners, and industry and professional bodies to raise awareness in business through 2017. It has produced a document detailing what it considers the essentials for business compliance. Briefly, these pre-requisites are:
? Ensure awareness among key personnel, and make sure they incorporate the GDPR into their planning
? Conduct an early assessment of quality management gaps, and budget for additional resources needed
? Do an audit of personal data held, to determine the origin, the necessity to hold it, and with whom shared
? Inform internal and external stakeholders of the current status, and your future plans to implement the GDPR
? Examine current procedures in the light of the new directive. Could you ?survive? a challenge from a data subject?
? Determine how you will process requests for access to the data in the future from within and outside your organization
? Assess how you currently obtain customer consent to store their data. Is this “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous”?
? Find how you handle information from underage people. Do you have systems to verify ages and obtain guardian consent?
? Implement procedures to detect, investigate, and report data breaches to the Data Protection Commissioner within 72 hours
? Implement a culture of always assessing the effect on individual privacy before starting new initiatives

So Is the GDPR Good or Bad for Business
The GDPR should be good news for business customers. Their personal data will be more secure, and they should see their rate of spam marketing come down. The GDPR is also good news for businesses currently investing resources to protect their clients? interests. It could however, be bad news for businesses that have not been focussing on these matters. They may have a high mountain to climb to come in line with the GDPR.
Disclaimer: This article is for information only and not intended as a comprehensive guide.

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Sources of Carbon Emissions

Exchange of carbon dioxide among the atmosphere, land surface and oceans is performed by humans, animals, plants and even microorganisms. With this, they are the ones responsible for both producing and absorbing carbon in the environment. Nature?s cycle of CO2 emission and removal was once balanced, however, the Industrial Revolution began and the carbon cycle started to go wrong. The fact is that human activities substantially contributed to the addition of CO2 in the atmosphere.

According to statistics gathered by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, carbon dioxide comprises 82% of UK?s greenhouse gas emissions in 2012. This makes carbon dioxide the main greenhouse gas contributing to the pollution and subsequent climate change in UK.

Types of Carbon Emissions

There are two types of carbon emissions ? direct and indirect. It is easier to measure the direct emissions of carbon dioxide, which includes the electricity and gas people use in their homes, the petrol burned in cars, distance of flights taken and other carbon emissions people are personally responsible for. Various tools are already available to measure direct emissions each day.

Indirect emissions, on the other hand, include the processes involved in manufacturing food and products and transporting them to users? doors. It is a bit difficult to accurately measure the amount of indirect emission.

Sources of Carbon Emissions

The sources of carbon emissions refer to the sectors of end-users that directly emit them. They include the energy, transport, business, residential, agriculture, waste management, industrial processes and public sectors. Let’s learn how these sources contribute carbon emissions to the environment.

Energy Supply

The power stations that burn coal, oil or gas to generate electricity hold the largest portion of the total carbon emissions. The carbon dioxide is emitted from boilers at the bottom of the chimney. The electricity, produced from the fossil fuel combustion, emits carbon as it is supplied to homes, commercial establishments and other energy users.

Transport

The second largest carbon-emitting source is the transport sector. This results from the fuels burned in diesel and petrol to propel cars, railways, shipping vehicles, aircraft support vehicles and aviation, transporting people and products from one place to another. The longer the distance travelled, the more fuel is used and the more carbon is emitted.

Business

This comprises carbon emissions from combustion in the industrial and commercial sectors, off-road machinery, air conditioning and refrigeration.

Residential

Heating houses and using electricity in the house, produce carbon dioxide. The same holds true to cooking and using garden machinery at home.

Agriculture

The agricultural sector also produces carbon dioxide from soils, livestock, immovable combustion sources and other machinery associated with agricultural activities.

Waste Management

Disposing of wastes to landfill sites, burning them and treating waste water also emit carbon dioxide and contributes to global warming.

Industrial Processes

The factories that manufacture and process products and food also release CO2 , especially those factories that manufacture steel and iron.

Public

Public sector buildings that generate power from fuel combustion also add to the list of carbon emission sources, from heating to other public energy needs.

Everybody needs energy and people burn fossil fuels to create it. Knowing how our energy use affects the environment, as a whole, enables us to take a step ahead towards achieving better climate.

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Benefits Realisation Frameworks – A Useful Handle

One of the greatest challenges of project management is maintaining top-down support in the face of fluctuating priorities. If you elect to take on the role yourself and are peppered by other priorities, it can be a challenge to exactly remember why you are changing things and what your goals are. Sometimes you may not even notice you have reached your goal.

The Benefits Realisation Chart-room

The Benefits Realisation Model is a framework on which to hang key elements of any project. These traditionally include the following, although yours may not necessarily be the same:

  • Definition of the project goal
  • Quantification of intended benefits
  • Project plan versus actual progress
  • How you know you reached your goal
  • Quantification of actual benefits

Another way of describing Benefits Realisation Frameworks is they answer four fundamental questions that every project manager should know by heart:

  • What am I going to do?
  • How am I going to do it?
  • When will I know it’s done?
  • What exactly did I achieve?

The Benefits Realisation Promise

An astounding number of projects fail to reach completion, or miss their targets. It’s not for nothing that the expression ?after the project failed the non-participants were awarded medals? is often used in project rooms. We’re not saying that it is a panacea for success. However it can alert you to warnings that your project is beginning to falter in terms of delivering the over-arching benefits that justify the effort.

When Projects Wander Off-Target

Pinning blame on participants is pointless when project goals are flawed. For example, the goals may be entirely savings-focused and not follow through on what to do with the windfall. At other times realisation targets may be in place, but nobody appointed to recycle the benefits back into the organisation. This is why a Benefits Realisation Framework needs to look beyond the project manager?s role.

Realisation Management in Practice

If the project framework does not look beyond the project manager?s role, then it is over when it reaches its own targets ? and can even run the risk of being an event that feeds entirely off itself. In order to avoid a project being a means to its own end, this first phase must culminate with handover to a benefits realisation custodian.

An example of this might be a project to centralise facilities that is justified in terms of labour savings. The project manager?s job is to build the structure. Someone else needs to rationalise the organisation.

In conclusion, the Benefits Realisation Framework is a useful way of ensuring a project does not only achieve its internal goals, but also remains a focus of management attention because of its extended, tangible benefits.

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