DevOps As A Service(DaaS) product site [here] (https://solidify.dev/services/devops-as-a-service)

How do we achieve software excellence and improve development velocity? Let's look at some common situations first:

• Is your lead developer now doing patching of your build servers?
• Is your PO taking the responsibility updating and streamlining build tasks?
• Is your QA department taking on the responsibility of creating a new release pipeline and setting up automated alerts on deployment failure?

Software excellence is different for most projects, but they all have one goal in common: to drive software development further in the fastest way possible, with the best possible quality and compliance.

We measure the output from teams in a unit called Development Velocity. In order to increase or improve the development velocity, you need to be sure that the team is operating at full capacity on tasks they are trained to handle.

When looking at the statements above, it becomes clear that maximum development velocity cannot be achieved when members of the team are taking on tasks that they should not be responsible for.

During these times of uncertainties, it is more important than ever to make sure you are pushing your features to your customers with accuracy, quality and making sure that they are compliant to security standards. That means that when you get your developer to do patching wh en your PO is doing maintenance, and when QA is implementing new pipelines, your potential maximum development velocity will be down. Not only that, morale will be down and the team as a whole will not feel empowered to deliver on time.

What to do with the development tool stack?

Tooling is key for gaining traction and increase development velocity. Your tool stack needs to be up-to-date and compliant with the regulations of your organization, and that is a big task for companies of all sizes and structures. Making sure that your development tool stack is up to date should be the first thing that you need to take care of, but you need to do it sensibly. Accept that even though you have adopted Agile and DevOps, your development team should not be responsible for the development tool stack - unless you have a dedicated DevOps engineer trained and ready to execute the tasks that are needed.

Introducing DevOps as a Service

With DevOps as a Service from Solidify, you get DevOps experts with years of experience to take care of your tooling and ensure that your core development tool stack is performing as well as it possibly can.

DevOps as a Service is designed for companies that understand that:

• Productivity is dependent on your tooling running smoothly
• Your employees feel empowered to deliver their tasks on time
• Everyone is focused on tasks that they have the necessary training for

On the other hand, if you only want to offload the tooling stack maintenance, you do just that with our proactive DevOps as a Service maintenance package.

How does it work and what do you get?

We provide you with a point of contact that is reachable through your group communication software of your choice: mail, phone, teams, slack, or anything you want.

Proactive Work: With DevOps as a service, your contact will work with you to create a common backlog that is planned and prioritized. Your backlog is setup for proactive work, meaning that proactive tasks are preformed, that in turn result in a development platform that is up to date and in good shape. 

Reactive work: Solidify will help you with support questions or problems that may come up. If you have team members that want to learn to do keep the development platform up to date, we will schedule in training for those members, cutting your contract time and allowing you to take over the responsibilities at your leisure.

How is the work performed?

Most of our work will be done remotely, but some meetings or training might be done on-site or with virtual tooling.

Wait, isn't this a DevOps Antipattern?

Some of you might think “Well, that's odd. In the past, we have been pushed to embrace DevOps and have all the knowledge in the team/department and do everything ourselves”.

And that is absolutely correct - if you have a key person in your team/department that has the responsibility of keeping your toolchain up to date. In our example, the true antipattern is trying to get your team to take on tasks that they are not trained for and/or might not want in the first place. This, in turn, will lead to a poorly performing team that is working longer hours, leading to suffering work-life balance.

A well-functioning DevOps team does have its Dev’s and its Ops. These do not by any means have to be the same person and, in most cases, they are not, but they have broken the silos and are working together with clear goals. If your organization does not have the capacity or the will to hire a DevOps Engineer to take care of your core tooling, you can (and should) buy that from an external source.

Let me be clear: you should not hire an external consultant to come full time. But you should find services, such as our DevOps as a Service, where you can minimize the cost of having your toolchain up to date.

And let’s face it - that was the intent from the start.

Why Solidify?

Solidify is a leading Scandinavian consultancy recognized as a Microsoft Gold Partner in DevOps, Cloud Platform and Application Development. We're also one of the first companies in the world to be a GitHub Advanced services and technology partners.

Here are some statistics to back up our knowledge and experience:

• 800 projects in Scandinavia on time and in accordance with contracts for over 200 customers
• Delivering close to 300 successful trainings and briefings
• Experts in all fields of Software Deliver with 50 certifications of excellence
• Three Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals.

Ready to get started?

Read more about DevOps As A Service(DaaS) [here] (https://solidify.dev/services/devops-as-a-service)

If you are ready to get started, you can contact us here. We're always available and excited to adopt new projects.