Improve your SDO Performance

Visualise the flow of work to understand the system.

Never pass a known defect downstream.

Never allow local process optimisation to create a global degradation.

Review and optimise to increase flow.

Create rapid feedback loops through Automated Testing and Continuous Integration of code, driving it with practices like Trunk Based Development.²

Minimise your Work-In-Progress (WIP) by using Continuous Deployment to push small changes to production as frequently as possible.³ This makes the process highly repeatable and reliable. To do this you might need to adopt a lightweight change protocol.

Invest heavily in paying down Technical Debt and improving Code Maintainability to reduce the drag it places on all development and operations practices.⁴

Create environments on demand by using highly automated Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) deployment everywhere.

Shorten and amplify all feedback loops.

Respond to all customers - internal and external.

Elevate the improvement of processes over daily work through the use of structured Problem Solving, and and "stop the line" or “andon” processes.

“Shift-left” testing using practices like Test First development (TDD & BDD ) to build comprehensive, fast Test Automation suites.^{5 6}

Creating shared goals (and pain) for Dev and Ops teams by making all parts of the process highly visible – including operational performance and customer feedback.

Promote experimentation.

Learn from success and from failure.

Respond quickly to change.

Exploit new opportunities.

Encourage innovation and risk taking via autonomous Product Teams by giving them Flexible Working arrangements and encouraging your engineers to become masters of their art through targeted Learning and Knowledge Sharing.⁷

Exploit opportunities such as incidents to constantly test and improve your Disaster Recovery which will drive reliability and reduce friction in operations.

Use hypotheses, backed by data, to experiment, fail-fast and uncover new high-value opportunities.