Infosys TechCompass

ALM

Trend 13: OKRs help track decisions and product value

Organizations are extensively using objectives and key results (OKRs) to define and set goals, and to achieve outcomes. A set of key results defines the measurable outcome for these objectives. While OKRs have been in use for a while, the systems to relate these key results to the stated objectives in a near real-time manner were lacking. Here, VSM gets into the picture.

VSM ensures the flow of business value is accelerated all the way from the ideation stage to the actual delivery of desired outcomes. Organizations are using ALM tools to establish and track these flow metrics, providing visibility on delays in the release process and highlighting the impact on desired outcomes. By gathering relevant data across tool chains, crossfunctional teams, and value streams, the VSM platform gives a unified view of the progress of value delivery to the end customer. Associating the relevant flow metrics with the desired key results helps provide clear visibility of the likelihood of achieving the key results and hence the business objective.

A U.S.-based global logistics provider wanted to reimagine customer journeys and improve business outcomes. It partnered with Infosys to use design thinking to boost productoriented delivery and scale operations. The company, in collaboration with Infosys, built a flow that included setting strategic OKRs, cascading them to product levels, and regularly monitoring and evaluating them. The benefits included the doubling of shareholder value and a two-week release cycle.

ALM

Trend 14: NoOps brings extreme automation and abstraction to the IT infrastructure

NoOps is intended to eliminate human intervention in software management and to allow operations teams to focus on value-adding activities. Hyperscalers that provide elements of the software, software-defined infrastructure, and networks have contributed to NoOps becoming a reality. Enterprises first moved from siloed development and operations teams to an integrated DevOps model, where the team that builds the system also runs it. As enterprises adopt more automation, ALM tools adapt to support the further evolution from DevSecOps to a NoOps model. Here, maintenance and other tasks performed by the operations team are fully automated, eliminating the need for a dedicated operations team. NoOps solutions will remove friction and increase the flow of valuable features through the pipeline, so businesses can focus on early feedback, continuous learning, and improvement. The NoOps approach will help derive AI-based inference of the metrics provided by the ALM tool. It will also assist in other aspects like corrective and preventive maintenance or scaling.

Businesses with a traditional approach and legacy systems are less likely to move in this direction, while those with scalable infrastructure and on-demand, automated deployment and monitoring features can prosper from a NoOps approach.

A leading oil and gas company wanted to accomplish a federated, cloud-based DevOps model by implementing a hub-and-spoke architecture. The company collaborated with Infosys to develop a self-service Azure platform that started the shift toward NoOps, where teams would manage the infrastructure elements. The hub ensured the implementation of right policies. With automation, more than 250 spokes and approximately 1,000 resource groups were created in 18 months. Also, Azure policy-driven compliance and audits (more than 300 policies applied at different access levels) were implemented. The company was able to repurpose its operations staff on newer areas like SRE, which are also embedded within the teams.