itSMF 2017 June Bulletin Bulletin -June 2017 | Page 10

ITIL Practitioner and the
Three Ways of DevOps
By Stuart Rance
If you’re familiar with DevOps, then you’ve probably heard DevOps enthusiasts talking about “The three ways”. This
refers to three very powerful and practical approaches to managing the work of IT departments, particularly within
modern business organizations that use IT to conduct every aspect of their business, and that rely very heavily on their
customer facing IT.
If you’re familiar with the recently published ITIL Practitioner Guidance, then you will have come across “The nine
guiding principles”. These are powerful concepts that can help organizations make the improvements they need to
create more value for their customers.
The three ways of DevOps
The emphasis is on the performance of the entire system, as
opposed to the performance of a specific or single
department or individual. Focus is also on all business value
streams that are enabled by IT. This process works in a line-
ar fashion ensuring that defects are never passed along.
The emphasis is on increasing feedback and understanding
of all teams involved. The outcomes of this will be increased
communication and responding to all customers, internal
and external, shortening and amplifying all feedback loops,
and embedding knowledge where and to whom it’s needed.
10 itSMF Bulletin—June 2017
Two things are equally important: experimentation and
practice. Embedding this in the working culture – where
learning from taking risks, and repetition and practice are
encouraged – is key to mastery. Risk taking and
experimentation promote improvement, whilst mastery
provides the skills required to revert any mistakes.
Source: Wikipedia