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IT Industry is Set for Bigger Ideas if we Push for Design ThinkingLed Devops

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Anupam Kulkarni, Co-Founder, iauro Systemsiauro Systems is an outsourced product development company specializing in scalable technology solutions in Mobile,Cloud, Big data, UI/UX, IoT and many more.
As solution experts, when we create a product, we are usually fixated on how to create it over whom to create it for. As Steve Jobs once said at a WWDC fireside chat in 1997, “you have to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology”. You cannot start with the technology and figure out where to start with the marketing or the technicalities of it. Rightly said, this form of DevOps would be defined as a ‘designled approach’ in enhancing a seamless experience in products without compromising on the core functionality of it.

How, one might ask is a design thinking strategy practically fitted to an infrastructure that is, for lack of a better word functional & mechanical in nature. The number of applications in which Design thinking can complement DevOps is only limited to an imagination. It can involve aspects of data analytics, cloud features, microservices or even blockchain at today’s pace. For example, a McDonald’s outlet can incorporate realtime data gathering into its management process to identify trends, preferences, traffic and even demand & supply. If the outlet is observed to produce 3000 more vegetarian burgers on a festive day like Ganesh Chathurthi, it will automatically alert its neighbouring outlets to produce a similar amount of vegetarian burgers and cast a pre emptive measure to reduce wastage of food, in this case non vegetarian items in the menu. And thanks to a robust process of quick logistics of raw material from the kitchen coupled with seamless management at the forefront, the outlet is able to thrive accordingly with the walk in patterns.

In IT parlance, this can be compared to a robust system of developers and operation teams in which they could be timed, allocated certain resources at certain periods of time, or even given information from the internet based on various programming for a faster & richer delivery of prototypes.

The idea of a design thinkingled DevOps strategy is to help what the customer would like to build today that it is able to implement on the very same day


Some of the benefits of a design led approach for DevOps are as follows:
Current Solution:It helps find solutions to today’s problems. Challenges can occur dynamically in an environment where there are a number of errors that can happen in the course of the day.

Aspirational Solution:A developer may be able to produce n number of solutions. They might not be able to think far ahead into the future for problems that might not happen today, but might happen five years down the line. The solution, when created for a future proof date, is scalable and easily adapted.

No Limit to Innovative Capacity: The idea of design thinking is to be able to creatively comeup with solutions. Developers are able to thinkout loud owing if a solution is not given any limitations or criterions. In the case of a DevOps process, the consumer’s problems are understood, thereby giving a speedy and seamless canvas for solution brainstorming. For example, UberEats was able to successfully launch, thanks to their already successful and thriving cab aggregating service. Their logistics was already in place and was thereby able to breakoff from their standalone app. The fact that they had a fleet of vehicles and relevant data for demand & supply, they made them capable to stand as competition in the food delivery ecosystem.

Feedback Loops: One successful aspect of integrating consumer analytics in DevOps is the use of insight that can build better products. Each iteration through feedback will continually mature the product. The more you improve the design, the lesser the time to production and thereby better feedback loops. An example of this is taking the analogy of a change log of updates that will inform all parties of the improvements.

DevOps as a Service Design: The point of servicing a user is to acclimatize the culture of empathy. The users who utilize the product are ultimately being thought of from the point of view of being able to use the product with minimum repercussions and maximum creative capacity. When we apply the same principles as Design Thinking, we are able to think and execute from the point of view of the developers and testers.

Insightled innovation is important for enterprise level DevOps. The idea of a design thinkingled DevOps strategy is to help what the customer would like to build today that it is able to implement on the very same day. Helping a developer overcome their challenges by making the maximum use of their strengths will set the road for a fast and highly innovative environment.

For developers and testers, their speed is important in creating the code, and as for operations, their monitoring is paramount in ensuring quality for a timely delivery. When we put ourselves in the shoes of the developer and tester, we are able to design an infrastructure that would not only reduce the cost of overheads, but also the creative capacity of the team in its entirety.