Lucy Ellen Lwakatare

Continuous deployment of software intensive products and services: A systematic mapping study

Abstract The software intensive industry is moving towards the adoption of a value-driven and adaptive real-time business paradigm. The traditional view of software as an item that evolves through releases every few months is being replaced by the continuous evolution of software functionality. This study aims to classify and analyse the literature related to continuous deployment in the software domain in order to scope the phenomenon, provide an overview of the state-of-the-art, investigate the scientific evidence in the reported results and identify areas suitable for further research. We conducted a systematic mapping study and classified the continuous deployment literature. The benefits and challenges related to continuous deployment were also analysed. RESULTS: The systematic mapping study includes 50 primary studies published between 2001 and 2014. An in-depth analysis of the primary studies revealed ten recurrent themes that characterize continuous deployment and provide researchers with directions for future work. In addition, a set of benefits and challenges of which practitioners may take advantage were identified. CONCLUSION: Overall, although the topic area is very promising, it is still in its infancy, thus offering a plethora of new opportunities for both researchers and software intensive companies.

Dimensions of DevOps

DevOps has been identified as an important aspect in the continuous deployment paradigm in practitioner communities and academic research circles. However, little has been presented to describe and formalize what it constitutes. The absence of such understanding means that the phenomenon will not be effectively communicated and its impact not understood in those two communities. This study investigates the elements that characterize the DevOps phenomenon using a literature survey and interviews with practitioners actively involved in the DevOps movement. Four main dimensions of DevOps are identified: collaboration, automation, measurement and monitoring. An initial conceptual framework is developed to communicate the phenomenon to practitioners and the scientific community as well as to facilitate input for future research.

Towards DevOps in the Embedded Systems Domain: Why is It So Hard?

DevOps is a predominant phenomenon in the web domain. Its two core principles emphasize collaboration between software development and operations, and the use of agile principles to manage deployment environments and their configurations. DevOps techniques, such as collaboration and behaviour-driven monitoring, have been used by web companies to facilitate continuous deployment of new functionality to customers. The techniques may also offer opportunities for continuous product improvement when adopted in the embedded systems domain. However, certain characteristics of embedded software development present obstacles for DevOps adoption, and as yet, there is no empirical evidence of its adoption in the embedded systems domain. In this study, we present the challenges for DevOps adoption in embedded systems using a multiple-case study approach with four companies. The contribution of this paper is to introduce the concept of DevOps adoption in the embedded systems domain and then to identify key challenges for the DevOps adoption.

Performance Engineering for Microservices: Research Challenges and Directions

Microservices complement approaches like DevOps and continuous delivery in terms of software architecture. Along with this architectural style, several important deployment technologies, such as container-based virtualization and container orchestration solutions, have emerged. These technologies allow to efficiently exploit cloud platforms, providing a high degree of scalability, availability, and portability for microservices. Despite the obvious importance of a sufficient level of performance, there is still a lack of performance engineering approaches explicitly taking into account the particularities of microservices. In this paper, we argue why new solutions to performance engineering for microservices are needed. Furthermore, we identify open issues and outline possible research directions with regard to performance-aware testing, monitoring, and modeling of microservices.

DevOps Adoption Benefits and Challenges in Practice: A Case Study

DevOps is an approach in which traditional software engineering roles are merged and communication is enhanced to improve the production release frequency and maintain software quality. There seem to be benefits in adopting DevOps but practical industry experiences have seldom been reported. We conducted a qualitative multiple-case study and interviewed the representatives of three software development organizations in Finland. The responses indicate that with DevOps, practitioners can increase the frequency of releases and improve test automation practices. DevOps was seen to encourage collaboration between departments which boosts communication and employee welfare. Continuous releases enable a more experimental approach and rapid feedback collection. The challenges include communication structures that hinder cross-department collaboration and having to address the cultural shift. Dissimilar development and production environments were mentioned as some of the technical barriers. DevOps might not also be suitable for all industries. Ambiguity in the definition of DevOps makes adoption difficult since organizations might not know which practices they should implement for DevOps.

Hitting the Target: Practices for Moving Toward Innovation Experiment Systems

The benefits and barriers that software development companies face when moving beyond agile development practices are identified in a multiple-case study in five Finnish companies. The practices that companies need to adopt when moving towards innovation experiment systems are recognised. The background of the study is the Stairway to Heaven (StH) model that describes the path that many software development companies take when advancing their development practices. The development practices in each case are investigated and analysed in relation to the StH model. At first the results of the analysis strengthened the validity of the StH model as a path taken by software development companies to advance their development practices. Based on the findings, the StH model was extended with a set of additional practices and their adoption levels for each step of the model. The extended model was validated in five case companies.

Relationship of DevOps to Agile, Lean and Continuous Deployment

In recent years, the DevOps phenomenon has attaracted interest amongst practitioners and researchers in software engineering, reflecting the greater emphasis on collaboration between development and IT operations. However, despite this growing interest, DevOps is often conflated with agile and continuous deployment approaches of software development. This study compares DevOps with agile, lean and continuous deployment approaches in software development from four perspectives: origin, adoption, implementation and goals. The study also reports on the claimed effects and on the metrics of DevOps used to asses those effects. The research is based on an interpretative analysis of qualitative data from documents describing DevOps and practitioner’s responses in a DevOps workshop. Our findings indicate that the DevOps phenomenon originated from continuous deployment as an evolution of agile software development, informed by a lean principles background. It was also concluded that successful adoption of DevOps requires agile software development.

Toward an Improved Understanding of Agile Project Governance: A Systematic Literature Review

The purpose of this study is to provide understanding of project governance practices in agile projects. A systematic review of the previous agile literature is conducted to identify and categorize agile project governance practices, which are synthesized in a six-dimensional framework. The study contributes to the literature by contrasting traditional and agile project governance practices and by identifying new practices emerging in agile projects, while also noting remaining gaps in knowledge. The implications of this study enable managers to identify and apply feasible governance practices that can support better agile project performance.

Empirical Challenges in the Implementation of IT Portfolio Management: A Survey in Three Companies

The study explores the implementation challenges of Information Technology (IT) portfolio management in three companies. The portfolio approach to IT assets is significant for enabling organisations to make effective use of limited resources by prioritising IT initiatives and also for monitoring and evaluating their performance. In practice, the process facilitates the provision of necessary information for decision makers, allowing them to make rational decisions about IT investments. We found that there is a significant gap between IT portfolio management as discussed in the literature and its actual practice. The analysis showed that there was high flexibility when specifying IT projects, which caused companies to implement IT portfolios that were too broad. As a consequence, resources were not effectively utilised, and IT portfolio evaluations post implementation were rarely conducted. Our research contribution identifies important gaps to be filled in the literature and presents case studies related to IT portfolio management.