ISG Provider Lens™ Next-Gen Application Development & Maintenance (ADM) Services - Global 2019-20 - DevOps Consulting
Next-Gen ADM
Customer preferences and demand patterns are evolving and shifting toward rich user interfaces, dynamic (applications), responsive features, speedy updates and releases and responsiveness. As a result, the outlook of next-generation application development and maintenance (ADM) is undergoing a gradual transformation and aligning to accommodate the requirements of enterprise clients. The ADM practices of service providers are aimed at addressing these requirements by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), automation, agile and innovation as the key tenets.
One of the aspects that facilitate this change is the increased usage of automation, AI, machine learning (ML) algorithms and bots/assistants in the development lifecycle. This helps in simplifying and minimizing the coding efforts, leading to a faster application development release. It also enables error detection, code refactoring and interpretation of business rules (written in arcane coding languages), bugs fixes and other functions in the lifecycle. Agility is another factor that has become a cornerstone in ADM and is finding tighter integration with the development and testing functions of ADM. The emergence of low-code development is also gaining prominence and contributes to agility. This is driven by the need to produce codes at a rapid rate by eliminating the need for coding expertise, thus resulting in faster turnaround time. Security has found tighter integration, both from the points of view of protecting intellectual property and of applicability in the testing value chain across areas such as non-functional tests.
Agile Development
Service providers are expanding the base of their trained resources on methodologies such as scrum, Kanban and extreme programming to accelerate agile maturity and shift away from traditional application delivery to inculcate an agile mindset. There is a certain degree of similarity among services providers regarding the approach to agile in terms of offering proprietary frameworks and use of tools. They are partnering with bodies such as Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), automation tool providers such as Docker, Ansible and Jenkins and getting certifications on Scrum Alliance, Scrum.org, SAFe and Disciplined Agile Delivery (DaD) to create an agile workforce base. However, managing the change from an organization change management perspective is an area that needs greater focus as providers face the task of delivering services and managing scale across geographies and teams. Facilitating the creation of an agile mindset across the growing resource base, combined with skills management and standardization of agile delivery, are the areas that will take time to mature.
Continuous Testing
Continuous testing has become a mainstream practice of service providers to entrench it as an integral part of their agile and DevOps delivery. Its importance can be gauged by the popularity of the shift left practice that is becoming a norm in the continuous testing domain. Some of the leading services delivered by providers as a part of continuous testing include functional tests, TDD, BDD and performance testing (left-shifted). Automation is finding an increased adoption within the continuous testing lifecycle across test case management, automation engineering services and proprietary tools and intellectual property as providers seek to embed it within testing practices to accelerate application release. AI is also being used in testing platforms to improve agility and predictability across various phases.
Devops Consulting
The boundaries of DevOps are witnessing overlaps with agile, and intersections between the two are clearly visible in the industry. DevOps is gaining momentum among service providers that are considering it as one of their delivery pillars for application development. Leading service providers are integrating their services with key DevOps principles of people over process over tools, lean management, continuous integration and continuous delivery and feedback. Using DevOps, providers are breaking silos in communication and collaboration and delivering various functions of continuous delivery, continuous planning, continuous integration, configuration management, continuous testing, monitoring and continuous feedback as a part of their overall approach. The addition of automation and tools in the DevOps delivery ensure the availability of metrics, visibility across the pipeline and a reduction in work efforts. Service providers are also adopting and training their resources on popular open source tools for various functions to meet customer business requirements.