Hundreds of enterprise customers are leveraging cloud computing to better enable their IT to be Agile and power Agile software development teams. Companies that have successfully implemented cloud-enabled software development have subscribed to the following five best practices when creating Agile infrastructure:
1. Don’t change the Agile process to fit your legacy infrastructure; change your IT strategy to be more Agile.
The very essence of the Agile model is trust and delegation, and yet some IT organizations are still refusing to operate with these principles in mind. They claim to support the Agile development model, but require developers to change their model to fit the existing IT architecture already implemented. Successful IT organizations are more flexible and work with software development teams to create an IT architecture strategy that has elements that are self-service oriented, while still providing visibility and control for IT.
2. Empower your end-users with self-service environments.
Enable your developers and testers by creating operational templates specific to each development project, setting consumption policies, and providing IT services that developers can consume easily.
3. Expect rapid changes and fast iteration to be the new normal.
Be ready to architect your IT infrastructure to be more configurable, scalable, and flexible. An Agile development model is inherently fast paced, so be willing to accommodate change and quickly adapt to what works and what does not. Expect rapid iteration and design accordingly.
4. Collaboration is at the heart of Agile development.
Customers, line-of-business users, QA, and support professionals should be able to collaborate during multiple phases of the development cycle. All of these stakeholders are expected to operate on the application based on the specific roles they play on the team. If the environment cannot be easily replicated and shared across teams, then the developers and testers will not adopt it.
5. Maintain full visibility and control over IT operations.
Implementing Agile infrastructure does not eliminate security and governance needs. IT organizations need to set security policies and enforce them through granular access control. They need to have full visibility into quota usage, resource management, and compliance.
Extending your existing IT architecture to encompass a cloud-enabled development strategy will ultimately serve your Agile development team better. The process does not have to be difficult or challenging, and in most cases, complex computing environments can be created in the cloud in just a few minutes or hours versus days or weeks.
Look for enterprise-grade cloud computing service providers that can deliver on the following five key capabilities to enable your applications development teams:
- Intuitive self-service
- Full visibility and control for IT
- Fast productivity
- Flexible complex computing environments
- Collaborative platforms for teams
Although it is possible to continue using on-premises infrastructure, your Agile development process will be much more effective when your IT infrastructure and service delivery model is Agile. Given the potential consequences of operating with dated hardware, poor collaboration, and slow provisioning of IT resources, organizations can increase business agility by embracing cloud computing for software development and testing.
