The Promise of Collaborative Development and Operations

I came across a  DeveloperWorks article by IBM Distinguished Engineers Ruth Willenborg and Steve Abrams where they discussed Collaborative Development and Operations.

In my view, this is about creating a collaborative development platform that aligns all stakeholders, e.g. line of business, development, testing teams, suppliers and users. The ultimate goal is to accelerate the delivery of services by the business to its customers in a way that is measurable and where continuous feedback can be provided for process improvement.

IBM PureApplication System is a platform developed with these principles in mind. On one end of the scale, you have the development organization working with business analysts to design, prototype and build software assets. These assets are integrated and consumed on PureApplication system which is optimized for  web application delivery and lifecycle management. The platform's cloud computing capabilities enable operators to interact with it in a self service manner, resulting in faster delivery of services to consumers and end users. 

In today's agile world of mobile application and services delivery, collaborative development and operations is about enabling continuous innovation by software development organizations  and continuous delivery of application services to end users and consumers. This requires a platform that supports collaborative development, continuos integration, continuos testing, continuous release management and continuous monitoring, all in an iterative lifecycle.

This article shows how applications can be on boarded onto PureApplication System using patterns of expertise. Patterns offer significant potential in enabling IT organizations to transform themselves and become better aligned to the business.