This is a 4-part blog intended to give you some pointers to think about when choosing DevOps tools. In the interest of full disclosure and trying to be as non-biased as I can be, I spent around 9 years in software pre-sales with IBM. One of the main reasons why I joined Perficient is because Perficient partners with pretty much every major tool player in the DevOps industry. Thus, I am free to help my customers choose the best-fit tool solution that meets their needs. My loyalty is to my customer as I need to make my customer happy no matter which tool they choose to purchase and implement.
#1 – What are your defined, written down, tool requirements that meet your organization’s business goals?
If you don’t have clearly articulated requirements, how are you going to make an objective decision? How are you going to ensure an apple to apples comparison of different tools that perform the same job? If you don’t equate those requirements to your businesses’ objectives how are you going to justify your decision to your business stakeholders in order to get sign-off on a purchase?
Requirement areas to remember:
- Budget – Everyone wants the Rolls-Royce of tools, but can you afford it? Does your organization have use it or lose it budget? What is your fiscal budget cycle and how far in advance do you need to plan for that cycle?
- Schedule – Most organizations are budget and date driven. Do you have reasonable schedule requirements?
- Security – Those pesky security people always get in the way. Work with them from the beginning so there are no surprises.
- Infrastructure – Who is going to own and be responsible for the installation, configuration, and maintenance of your tool? How does this affect your project requirements and budget?
- Subjective requirements – How are you going to objectively evaluate subjective requirements? This includes things like ease of use, maintainability, ease of onboarding the tool, etc. These requirements are the hardest to objectively evaluate, but they are extremely important.
- Scalability – Do you expect to have a few people or an army use and maintain this tool? Will this tool be able to grow with your organization as your needs grow?
Once you have your requirements written down for your desired tool, the next question to ask yourself is: “how am I going to get my company to pay for this thing?”. We’ll talk about that in part 2 of my blog…
Learn More
Are you looking to get the most out of your DevOps transition? Work with us and reach out to one of our specialists at sales@perficient.com and download our DevOps guide for more information.
