DevOps automation

The planning, management, control and governance of organisational, project and service assets and artefacts. The identification, classification and specification of configuration items (CIs) and their inter-relationships. Identifying the configuration and version of source code, software, systems, documents and service dependent CIs at distinct points in time. Systematically controlling changes to the configuration and maintaining the integrity and traceability of the configuration throughout the project, system and/or service life cycle. Identifying and documenting the functional and physical characteristics of CIs, controlling changes to those characteristics, recording and reporting change processing and implementation status. Verifying and auditing CIs for data quality and compliance with specified internal and external requirements.

The planning, designing, creation, amending, verification, testing and documentation of new and amended software components in order to deliver agreed value to stakeholders. The identification, creation and application of agreed software development and security standards and processes. Adopting and adapting software development lifecycle models based on the context of the work and selecting appropriately from predictive (plan-driven) approaches or adaptive (iterative/agile) approaches.

The planning, design, management, execution and reporting of tests, using appropriate testing tools and techniques and conforming to agreed process standards and industry specific regulations. The purpose of testing is to ensure that new and amended systems, configurations, packages, or services, together with any interfaces, perform as specified (including security requirements) , and that the risks associated with deployment are adequately understood and documented. Testing includes the process of engineering, using and maintaining testware (test cases, test scripts, test reports, test plans, etc) to measure and improve the quality of the software being tested.

The planning, implementation and control of activities to integrate/build components, subsystems and interfaces to create operational systems, products or services for delivery to customers, or for internal or interim purposes such as testing. The development of organisational capabilities for systems integration and build including automation and continuous integration.

The management of the processes, systems and functions to package, build, test and deploy changes and updates (which are bounded as “releases”) into a live environment, establishing or continuing the specified service, to enable controlled and effective handover to operational management and the user community. The application of automation to improve the efficiency and quality of releases.

The installation, configuration, upgrade, administration, monitoring and maintenance of databases. Providing support for operational databases in production use and for internal or interim purposes such as iterative developments and testing. Improving the performance of databases and the tools and processes for database administration (including automation).

The operation and control of the IT infrastructure (comprising physical or virtual hardware, software, network services and data storage) either on-premises or provisioned as cloud services) that is required to deliver and support the information systems needs of a business. Includes preparation for new or changed services, operation of the change process, the maintenance of regulatory, legal and professional standards, the building and management of systems and components in virtualised and cloud computing environments and the monitoring of performance of systems and services in relation to their contribution to business performance, their security and their sustainability. The application of infrastructure management tools to automate the provisioning, testing, deployment and monitoring of infrastructure components.