DevOps support flow in PMO

As DevOps culture spreads, so does its impact on other areas of the organization. Take project management: DevOps fundamentally changes how IT teams approach projects, shifting away from monolithic, multi-month initiatives in pursuit of greater speed and agility in the software development lifecycle.

The DevOps process flow is all about agility and automation. Each phase in the DevOps lifecycle focuses on closing the loop between development and operations and driving production through continuous development, integration, testing, monitoring and feedback, delivery, and deployment.

By combining the practice of DevOps with the principles of project management, you achieve greater coordination between individual team members and the larger goals of the sprint.

Project support is essential and DevOps Engineers play a key role nowadays. When it comes to hotfixes or even minor changes to the Production environment, they are the gatekeepers.

Guideline

1.A requester submits a request related to one of the issue types to be resolved depending on importance (e.g., CRITICAL) via phone, email, or any messenger.

2.If it requires immediate action, the requester may reach the responsible representatives using the contact information in the Stakeholder matrix (including personal if it’s non-business hours).

2.1. If no one is available, one should contact the Project or Account Manager.

3.If there are questions or missing info, then DevOps team member reacts accordingly to what is being asked and replies that the task is accepted and understood.

4.Also, a requester can create a ticket or ask someone to do that in the task tracking system to submit the issue/task.

5.It is recommended to set up notifications in that task tracking system, messenger, where every DevOps team member will see it.

6.After the work is completed, the DevOps representative notifies the requester about completion via email and/or messenger. This information can be presented in other types of reports.

7.The last step is to conduct the root-cause analysis to prevent emerging such issues further on.

• A stakeholder matrix is an effective and efficient engagement and communication tool determining how, when, how often, and under what circumstances stakeholders want to be and should be engaged. Communication is a key part of engagement; however, engagement delves deeper to include awareness of the ideas of others, assimilation of other perspectives, and collective shaping of a shared solution. Engagement includes building and maintaining solid relationships through frequent, two-way communication. It encourages collaboration through interactive meetings, face-to-face meetings, informal dialogue, and knowledge-sharing activities.

Action types

Depending on the issue severity, DevOps must react according to the internal policies.

• Immediate — ASAP fix when the issue has occurred.
• Moderate — next-day fix unless it has high impact and is qualified as Immediate.
• Low — issues can be fixed in the next two days.

The importance of an issue is defined by the stakeholder’s judgment and will be revised by the team.

Tip: For MEDIUM or LOW importance, use the local time zone to fix the next-day issue unless another is stated in the email or other means of communication.

Issue Types Examples