It seems everyone who develops software is or has already begun adopting Agile practices as their preferred approach to deliver more responsive, higher quality software. For development teams, this means smaller and more frequent releases (i.e., “sprints”) that allow for more immediate feedback loops from testing and business stakeholders. This surge in Agile practices, however, has centered on improving the performance and output of application development teams. The unintended consequence is that Operations teams caught off guard by a wave of new requests are often unable to handle the resulting volume of activity. A traffic jam results, and the once optimistic goals of Continuous Delivery come to grinding halt.
The wall between the “change producers” and “change implementers” becomes increasingly contentious as the constant drumbeat of new changes clashes with Operations’ mandated goals of stability and reliability of the infrastructure. The increased pressure on Ops to deploy changes ever faster while still maintaining a low risk and stable environment inevitably leads to conflict.