Elevating DevOps: A Journey from novice to Master craftsman

 In the dynamic world of DevOps, the gap between theory and practice can sometimes seem as vast as space itself. Reflecting on my journey through countless interviews with DevOps engineers, a pattern emerges: a disconnect between claimed experience and practical knowledge. It's a concerning trend that sees the essence of DevOps, a craft of precision and innovation, being diluted by superficial engagement.

Rewind to the days before DevOps became the industry buzzword. I was at the helm of creating a comprehensive DevOps platform for Geometric Ltd., integrating both commercial and open-source tools. This experience was more than just 'clicking buttons'; it was about architecting a seamless workflow that propelled projects forward.

For those aspiring to master DevOps, here's a distilled essence of my experience:

1. Begin with the roots. Watch John Allspaw and Paul Hammond's seminal presentation at the Velocity 2009 conference. Let it be your DevOps genesis, and absorb its insights multiple times.
2. Dive deep into Version Control Systems (VCS). Whether it's Git, Mercurial, or Subversion, understanding the intricacies of VCS is non-negotiable. They are the backbone of any robust DevOps strategy.
3. Ensure everything is traceable. From source code to CI/CD configurations, every element should be version-controlled, allowing you to pinpoint changes with precision.
4. Immerse yourself in the wisdom of pioneers. My recommended reads include 'Release It' by Michael Nygard, 'The Phoenix Project' by Gene Kim, and 'Accelerate' by Gene Kim and Jez Humble.
5. Learn from the best. Study the engineering blogs of tech giants like Netflix, Google, and Facebook, Uber to stay abreast of cutting-edge practices.

DevOps is not just a role; it's a mindset of continuous improvement and relentless pursuit of excellence. Let's commit to upholding the true spirit of DevOps and nurturing the next generation of software craftsmen. 

Posted on LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7215942686271238144-7XjI

Ideas on on sessions /courses as Prof of Practce for Chandigarh University

 Sometime back I posted an update on LinkedIn about joining Chandigarh University as Professor of Practice.   

I am joining CHANDIGARH UNIVERSITY Computer Science dept as "Professor of Practice". This is part time. I plan to spend about 2 weeks every semester on university campus. And also want to do some online lectures/workshops. There are no particular time commitments. It more about Industry + Academia partnerships and sharing the experiences of with Students.

I also asked about ideas on sessions/courses that students will be interested in. I received lots of comments and suggestions. Here I am collecting all the ideas/suggestions at one place. Over time, I will keep on posting updates whenever I implement an idea/suggestion.

Nitin's Ideas

1. Few sessions in current academic topics related to software architecture and design but with sharing of experiences.
2. A 2 week hands-on workshop for 2nd/3rd year students on "professional software development" starting from using version control, and how to write a spec doc to coding, testing, etc.
3. A 1 week workshop for student teams who want to participate in hackathons.
4. Few sessions on diverse topics like 
• Algorithms in Daily life, 
• Costliest bugs in history of software, 
• Women Pioneers in Computer Science, 
• Basics of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), 
• Hidden Life of a Google Search Request 
• (re)Inventing the Assembly Language.
• Do/Doing/Done is NOT Kanban
• Using Version Control Effectively

Ideas from Harish Walke

1. few topics around "Agile" too! Fundamentals and basics of Agile
• Typical day or sprint in the life of a Developer
• built-in Quality and what it means in Agile
• Scaling agile 
• Some useful concepts of Value streams, Lean Portfolio, Strategic Themes, WSJF for prioritization, Real life examples of Epic, Capabilities, Features
2. Topics related DevOps
• DevOps with CI/CD.
• TDD, BDD. Different compliances and their inclusion in Features as NFR (Non Functional Requirements)
• SecDevOps with mindset of "Built-in Security"
3.  Innovation mindset related
• Lean Startup, 
• Design thinking, 
• Think Wrong (Don't find solutions for the problems that do not exist).h
4. Use of Tools while doing the course projects
• Task or backlog management tools
• version control tools

Ideas from Anirudha Raste

1. OO eyes!
   Look around you, in your real life to find many OO concepts. People think all OO and other software concepts were 'Created' by software engineers and architects. Whereas, they are already present in real life. Need to see them in software way! Then one will find that software is not so 'alien' to real world.
2. 'Importance of logging while troubleshooting problems at customer end, where you do not have access to customer's environment, customer data, debugging

Ideas from K K George (KKG)

The importance of unit testing and show them how to measure coverage of the unit tests.

Ideas from Manish Ramrakhiani   

• Agile principles
• Rise of Data and related roles in the Data Engineering/Analytics space
• Sharing some of real successful archicture/design of your favorite projects (Nitin's comment ; I was also thinking on these lines. So probably will do this early)

Ideas from Nikhil Karkare

• Automation: automating testing, RPA
• Would sound basic, but using powershell or bash for basic scripting (using awk for example) - (Nitin's comment :  In my opinion, absolutely needed)
• Using any code editor to its full potential (Visual Studio / Replit)

Ideas from Laxmidhar Gaopande

 Some projects split in small teams to work on for 2-3 months after your sessions and review by making them presentation to you along with all.  (Nitin's comment : CU already have a concept of Project Based Course, where students learn by doing a project rather than attending lectures. Will be good ideas to incorporate these in the same framework)

Ideas from Vivek Gupta

1. code readability/ maintainability, 
2. logging/eventing/traceability, log analysis (Nitin's comment : Also suggested by Anirudha Raste)
3. ease of troubleshooting, 
4. importance of code reviews, 
5. threat modeling etc. 

Ideas from Surjit Patra

Go with very basic and core topic like Aniruddha Raste said OO things. But also go 1 level below 

• "How to realize or relate the software way of thinking to a real problem". 
• Or How to visualize the problem, is it from outside/ inside. 
• What is the best approach to find the possible solutions.
•  How to pick the best one out of it. 

If you have any other ideas, please add in comments

Manual Code Review of every single change is OVERRATED

Many software companies have this policy that every change has to be manually reviewed and approved by some peer (or senior) developer either before it is commited or before it is merged in main development branch. This practice is recommended by many software luminaries. However, when implemented in a project/product, I found many practical issues with 100% manual code reviews and reached a conclusion that "manual code review of every single change is OVERRATED"

Over years, I realized that manual code review of every single change is OVERRATED. It does not appreciably reduce post shipment defects but does introduce many inefficiencies in your development process. Manual Code Review of every single change usually have -ve ROI. I find that nobody writes about bad side effects of forcing developers into 100% manual code reviews. Recently I found one article and that triggered me to write this blog post.

So here is the list of problems that I found in 100% Manual Code Review process

Problems in Manual Code Review of every single change

1.  ROI on Code Review - 
   
   Is reviewer finding kind bugs in code review such that if they remain undetected will take more efforts than the time spent in Code Review ? If yes, then ROI of Code Review is +ve else ROI of Code Review is -ve.  Most of the Code Reviews have -ve ROI.  
   Reviewer may be a good developer but he may not be really good or may not have an 'eye' for defect. Some years back I did an informal study of 'code review' comments reported in my company's code review system. Majority of the code comments were about 'coding style' or 'comments' or 'naming conventions'. Very rarely a serious bug is detected. Effectively Such code reviews have a '-ve ROI'.
2. Reviewers time and attention.
   
   Typically Reviewer is mostly one of the senior developers. He/She also has their own commitments on new feature development. Usually these commitments take priority over code reviews. Hence Code Reviews remain stuck in queue and total feature development time increases unnecessarily (elapsed time from start to feature is delivered in end user's hand).
3. Team's Most productive developers are 'reviewing' rather than 'writing new code'.
   On the other hand, if Senior developers spend majority of their time doing reviews, then 'most productive developers' are effectively not writing any code. Either case results in lower productivity for the entire team.
4. Lower developer productivity while fixing bugs reported during code reviews.
   Code review is helps only if review happens within short time writing the code (preferably within a day). However, in general actual review happens after many days. In this time, developer loses the context of code. When finally the code is reviewed and he/she has to fix something in the code, it takes longer because now developer has to 'get in the context' again. Effectively it lowers the developer's productivity again.

Over year's almost every team that I have worked with has made this mistake and effectively reduced the productivity. How do we fix this ? Whats the alternative ?

How to regain the productivity lost by "manually review every code change policy" ?

1. Institute "Zero Warnings" policy for your code.
   This is easiest and most effective way to eliminate bugs. Every new version of compiler improves in ability to detect potential problems and report them as 'warnings'.  Set your compiler to 'highest warning' level. If you are using Visual Studio, turn on 'report warnings as errors" setting. Fixing warnings is 'practically no-brainer'. Warnings have to fixed immediately. DO NOT wait till end of sprint or end of release to fix warnings.
2. Take advantage of Static Analysis Tools for your programming language.
   Every programming language now has static analysis tools (linters, tools like Klocwork, Coverity etc). This Wikipedia article will give you a list of static analysis tools. Make static analysis part of your 'CI/CD' pipeline. Make sure that static analysis bugs are fixed within day. DO NOT wait till end of sprint or end of release for fixing static analysis errors.
3. Identify your critical files and review only those manually.Stop reviewing very single line of change. Identify your critical files (use complexity analysis, analyze version history to find most frequently changed files etc).  Usually 80-20 rule applies 20% are your critical files. Mark those files in system. Any commits in these files should trigger your manual code review process. Manually review these critical files ONLY after warnings and static analysis bugs are fixed.

Development processes/practices followed in a typically software development team usually have serious inefficiencies. By using 'common sense' (rather than following common practices) it is possible to achieve an 'order of magnitude' (2x to 10x) improvement in the team's productivity and delivery quality. It DOES NOT require a change in methodology (like move to Agile) or any new expensive tools. It requires some disciple and taking advantage of many low hanging fruits. The results are usually visible in about 3 months. 

[Shameless Plug]If you want to know how to improve your team's productivity by 2x to 10x, I am available for 'consulting/coaching'.

References

1. Code Reviews Do Not Find Bugs - How the Current Code Review Best Practice Slows Us Down
2.  

Understanding DevOps Core Concepts - presentation on Slideshare

Few days back I published my understanding of DevOps on slideshare.

DevOps - Basics from Nitin Bhide

DevOps Imperative for Enterprise Apps like PLM – Part 3

In Part 1, I wrote about how implementing shorter deployment cycle is imperative for companies like AutoX (i.e.  companies like Ford, Toyota's and Airbus) and for PLM vendors (i.e. companies like Dassault Systèmes and Siemens PLM).  And implementing DevOps practices is the way to achieve these shorter cycles.

In Part 2, I wrote about how to achieve the seemingly impossible dream of dream of major version upgrade PLM version in a Auto company in one month and minor version upgrades in a week. What features PLM vendors should add to support this kind fast deployment cycles ?

In this part, I plan to write what changes PLM Customers like AutoX (i.e. companies like Ford, Toyota, Airbus, etc) have to do in their way of working to achieve fast PLM updates.

DevOps for PLM is imperative for AutoX to reduce the maintenance, upgrade and enhancement costs of PLM at the same time taking maximum advantage of new PLM features in day-to-day work.

I am assuming you (Reader) are the AutoX company.

Point 1 : Understand that you are a 'software company' now. (whether you like it or not)

 For you it is actually more complex situation than traditional software company because you have to 'integrate' software into your own workflow. So think about how you will manage source code of your software (configuration management), compiled executables/binaries, release cycles, code integration, feature/bug life cycles, version management, deployment management etc.

Even though you are a software company, you are not probably developing your own software product and you are not a company doing projects for others. You are somewhat like a 'systems integrator'. You have your own unique set of challenges. Unfortunately software literature is usually focused on 'products' or 'projects'. There are very few references available.

Point 2 :You will have to customize the PLM and other Enterprise software for your own needs. Out of The Box (OOTB) will not give you competitive advantage that you need.

1. These customization will be done by your own team, PLM vendor, or some third party development company.
2. You have to integrate code from multiple sources. These code-bases may be delivered at different intervals, with different technology stacks.
3. These code bases will have complex dependencies (sometimes circular dependencies).
4. Compiling these code-bases and deploying them in production is a complex task.
5. Tracking the deployment metrics and production performance is required.

'delivering' this code in production is a 'complex pipeline' of activities. Treat this as an 'assembly line' for software. DevOps is at its core about managing this 'assembly line' for software.

It is possible to apply the 'assembly line' concepts from manufacturing application (coming from Kanban, Toyoto Production System, Theory of Constraints etc etc) to this software assembly line and thereby improve the efficiency of this assembly line

1. Think about dependencies. Identify and break circular dependencies.
2. Treat whole program as 'system' and apply 'systems engineer' concepts to streamline workflows
3. Apply concepts like controlling WIP, reducing batch sizes etc. The features not yet delivered to end user is 'inventory'. Features underdevelopment is 'Work In Progress' inventory. Time Boxed Sprints of SCRUM is essentially controlling WIP and reducing batch size.

So where to start ?

1. Define configuration management tools and practices.
1. Which configuration management tool will be used in-house. Which tools will be used by your vendors
2. Add every customization in configuration management. (including build scripts, database schema migration scripts, deployment scripts etc etc)
3. Define how the code-base delivered by vendor, will be merged in your configuration management tool
4. Define configuration management practices in such a way that you can identify what is changed between version easily.
2. Mandate that the vendor has to deliver 'automated test scripts' along with source code (and not just test results).
1. Major bottle neck in DevOps implementations is lack of automated testing scripts.  
2. If you need to test manually all new features/bug fixes, then the deployment cycle (i.e. your batch size of features increase a lot)
3. Overall not having 'automated tests' reduces efficiency of DevOps implementation
3. Define Integration Pipeline
1. How the code will be merged ?
2. How it will be compiled and executable created ?
3. How it will be 'staged' on a test environment ?
4. How automated tests will run ?
5. How automatic deployment will happen ?
6. Every single step in integration pipeline will be 'managed' in your configuration management system.
7. Once code delivered by vendor (or released by your in-house team), entire integration process should take less than 1 week.
4. Define Integration and release cadence.
1. Make sure integration and release cycles are as short as possible.
2. Make sure that 'deployment downtime' should be as less as possible. Use newer cloud deployment tools like creating on demand Virtual machines, using Docker containers etc. 
5. Define a 'sane' agile change management process. 
1. Make sure 'change management' is part of Integration pipeline.
2. When projects/companies move from Water Fall to Agile (especially with code developed by vendor), biggest confusion is about managing 'change requests'.  
6.  Measure everything in production
1. Use tools like 'fluentd', 'TICK stack', ELK stack to collect metrics from production deployments.
2. Create dashboards which show this production metrics to your team.
3. Share the dashboards with your development team. Let them see how the applications they developed are performing in production.
4. To facilitate this data collection in production, define design/coding practices which will push the data to these systems.
7. In case of mixed deployment (part desktop, part server) define and implement how 'automatic' deployment/upgrade of desktop parts will be done along with server parts
1. PLM systems require integration with CAD/CAM/CAE applications and customization of  those applications.
2. DevOps implementation will require pushing changes in production for these applications as well. An automatic update mechanism will be of tremendous help.
3. Building metrics and bug/crash reporting inside these customization will increase the efficiency even more.

This list is just my initial thoughts. I will keep updating it. :-)

Please share your feedback.

DevOps Imperative for Enterprise Apps like PLM – Part 2

In Part 1, I talked about how implementing shorter deployment cycle is imperative for companies like AutoX (i.e.  companies like Ford, Toyota's and Airbus) and for PLM vendors (i.e. companies like Dassault Systèmes and Siemens PLM).  And implementing DevOps practices is the way to achieve these shorter cycles.

My colleague Sreekanth Jayanti shared this comparison that illustrates the benefits of 'shorter deployment cycles'

Now in this part, I intend to explain how to achieve the seemly impossible dream of major version upgrade PLM version in a Auto company in one month and minor version upgrades in a week.

Lets continue with the example of AutoX (an automotive company implementing PLM) and PLMX (the PLM vendor).  To achieve this Dream, AutoX have to change its way of working and PLMX have to change its licensing model, to some extent even business model. Lets start with what changes PLMX have to do.

Usually deploying/upgrading a new version of PLMX will require

1. Creating new version setup
2. Re-applying all customization to newer version (e.g. change web pages, ui customization, workflow changes, upgrade plugins etc) and Test
3. Test all existing integrations work with newer version. If they don't then fix the bugs, remove deprecated APIs etc and make it work.
4. Upgrade the database schema
5. Migrate the data to newer schema.
6. Upgrade documentation etc

To achieve all these steps in a 'short cycle', PLMX has to make many changes in its way of working and licensing model.

PLMX should License the tools developed for in-house cloud deployment and upgrade to customers

For many years, PLMX have acted as if difficulties of 'deployment' and 'upgrade' are not really its problem. It is the problem of 'AutoX' (i.e. problem of customer). This thinking is now changing (but slowly than expected). Major driver for this change is 'cloud deployment' of PLMX. Now PLMX is managing their own 'production cloud deployment' and now it is facing all the deployment and upgrade problems of AutoX. Obviously PLMX is better equipped to handle these challenges and it is developing tools to simplify these tasks. AutoX (i.e. customers of PLMX) requires exactly same kind of tools. Today PLMX is not licensing these tools to their customers yet. And that is the first change PLMX has to do.

PLMX should License automated regression test suite for public interface to customers

The major driver in achieving 'shorter' deployment cycles is 'automated tests'. There is NO way AutoX can achieve One month deployment if it relies on manual regression testing. Also AutoX will not able to write completely new automated tests for every upgrade cycle. It has to 'reuse' the tests already written. It will make AutoX life lot easier if PLMX includes its 'automated tests' as part of PLMX license. AutoX can then change these tests to as per the customization that AutoX has done. When a new release of PLMX is available, AutoX has to take new set of JARs, JSPs and Unit Tests from PLMX, re-apply the customization that AutoX has done to this set and then test new version with its own customization in its own test environment.

Even better if PLMX shares automated regression test suite on a sharing platform like Github

I will dream some more and assume that PLMX has put its 'public test suite' on a sharing platform like Github. Now AutoX just 'clone' the unit tests from Github and change it to test its own customization. AutoX is now contributing its own tests (which illustrate some bugs) to this sharing platform. All customers of PLMX are now sharing automated unit tests and effectively making their 'production deployments' faster.

PLMX should develop tools for 'incremental' migration of data

PLMX is already providing some tools to manage the database schema changes. However applying these 'schema changes' to production databases is messy and time consuming. When AutoX is migrating its PLMX back-end database to new schema, invariable issues are detected and 100% data is not migrated in 'first attempt'. So incremental data migration tools are critical. 2nd attempt should just migrate the 'failed' data and should not start from scratch again.

PLMX should develop tools/recipes for cloud deployment using virtualization and containerization of its components

Today PLMX comes with an 'installer' where IT admin has to 'click' next and select various options to setup the newer version of PLMX. To some extent PLMX is now using virtual machine images for test setups. But there is no containerization yet. Chef/Puppet recipes are not available yet. Automatic provisioning and horizontal scaling of PLMX deployment is still not easily possible.

PLMX should start using scalable, distributed data stores like Hadoop, Apache Cassandra

PLMX back-end is still traditional RDBMS (e.g. Oracle database or Microsoft SQL Server). Both Oracle and Microsoft SQL server now support 'horizontal scaling/scale out/distributed database architectures'. Also open-source data stores like Hadoop, Cassandra are also providing high availability and performance. PLMX back-end should be scalable providing high availability without single point of failure.

Of course all these steps will help PLMX in its own 'cloud deployment' of PLMX application. It will take at least 3 to 5 years for PLMX to achieve all these steps. However, PLMX will need a 'marquee' customer to like AutoX to try out all these tools in a production scenario. And that is Part 3 of this series.

DevOps Imperative for Enterprise Apps like PLM and ERP – Part 1

In dictionary, “Imperative” is defined as “of vital importance; crucial (adjective), an essential or urgent thing. (noun)”

Today I find that DevOps is focus of ‘end user product companies’ (be it desktop product or a web application or mobile application).  There are almost no documented cases of using DevOps on Enterprise products like ERP, PLM products.  Enterprise product companies like SAP, Dassault Systèmes, Siemens PLM are using DevOps practices internally while develop the SAP, Enovia (PLM) or Team Center (PLM). However, Enterprises like BMW, Ford and others are not really getting the benefit of DevOps while deploying these enterprise applications.  Current situation is ‘Lose – Lose’ for both Application Vendor and Customer.  My prediction is First company who realizes it and makes its application ready for DevOps practices in Enterprise deployments, will make a ‘killing’ in the market.  This is “DevOps Imperative” that I am going to write about.

Let’s take an example of deploying a PLM software (like Enovia from Dassault Systèmes or Team Center from Siemens PLM) in a large Auto or Aero company like BMW, Ford, Airbus or Boeing. Let see what is the current status and then dream about what is possible. Then see how we can make that dream into a reality.

Current Status – Why it’s a Lose->Lose situation for Vendors and Customers:

Let’s assume Auto Company “AutoX” has PLM system “PLMX” at version 10 deployed in its plants.  Typically PLM vendors release one major new version every release. Hence Version 11 of PLMX is now available.

1. For AutoX version upgrade is a major exercise. It may cost a millions of dollars and at least one year to upgrade the deployed version.
2. So if AutoX wants to move to version 11.00, it will take one year and millions of dollars to upgrade. So by the time AutoX upgrades to version 11.00, Version 12.00 PLMX will be available. So AutoX is always playing catch up.  By the time AutoX finish upgrade to version 11 , its time to start for upgrade to Version 12.
3. In the end AutoX decides to skip one version and upgrade directly to version 12.00. However, it means more difficult upgrade.
4. Since new features available in Version 11 will not be available to AutoX, AutoX will end up creating customization for some of features available in Version 11.  When AutoX upgrades to Version 12, these customization have to be removed so that same requirements can be fulfilled by OOTB features. Many times AutoX will end up maintaining its customization and NOT using similar Out Of Box features.
5. These customization will take time and money to develop and maintain. AutoX is essentially spending extra money for features which are available out of box.
6. For Vendor, many customers like AutoX will not upgrade to Version 11. So Vendor will not immediately get feedback on usefulness of new features.
7. Vendor has to support many old versions which are in production. It adds lot of cost to development efforts of the vendor.

Essentially it’s a ‘Lose Lose’ for everyone involved.

How do we convert this “Lose Lose” situation to “Win Win” ?

The upgrade is “Lose Lose” situation because of one key reason “time required to finish the upgrade”.
Now assume that you are the CIO of AutoX, close your eyes and imagine following:

1. Vendor has released version 11 of PLMX
2. AutoX has put the version 11 of PLMX on its DevOps ‘pre-production’ servers.
3. Within 2-3 weeks, all the customizations and other integrated applications are migrated and tested on version 11 of PLMX
4. In 4th week, with available DevOps migration tools (using containers, virtual machine images, private cloud setups etc etc) production schema is upgraded, production servers upgraded, and new versions of integrated applications installed etc
5. In one month AutoX is now on version 11 of PLMX.
6. If Vendor releases a hot fix or service pack, it is put in production within a Week.

With above assumption, the scenario will be different. What are benefits to AutoX and PLM vendor in such scenario?

1. AutoX is able to benefit from new features immediately. AutoX will now have much better ROI for its purchase of PLMX.
2. AutoX don’t have to develop and maintain so many in-house customization where similar functionality is available Out of Box.
3. For AutoX now cost of upgrade will be negligible and it will become ‘routine’ exercise.
4. Once majority of PLMX customers move to same kind setup, PLMX don’t have to spend time/money on supporting older version PLMX. It can its developers to new features and bringing more values to PLMX customers.

For many months now I am ‘dreaming about the above scenario’. Wherver I talk about this ‘dream’, the reaction I get from audience (most of them PLM veterans), “it’s impossible”.  Is it really impossible???

I urge you view/read about John Allspaw and Paul Hammond’s talk in Velocity Conference 2009 titled “10+ Deploys Per Day: Dev and Ops Cooperation at Flickr”.   (Slides) At that time “10+ deploys a day” was considered Impossible. However, this seminal talk broke through that mental barrier, and after that many previously “impossible feats” were achieved in many different companies.

Following table is show the data from book “Phoenix Project” by Gene Kim about on “number of deploys per day” at few popular and successful internet companies. This data is from year 2012.

Company	Deploy Frequency	Deploy Lead time	Reliability	Customer responsiveness
Amazon	23000/day	Minutes	High	High
Google	5,500/day	Minutes	High	High
Netflix	500/day	Minutes	High	High
Facebook	1/day	Hours	High	High
Twitter	3/week	Hours	High	High
Typical enterprise	Every 9 months to 1 year	Months or Quarters	Low/medium	Low/Medium

Amazon is doing 20000+ deploys a day and when I talk about 1 month to deploy a ‘new version” of PLM and people still consider that impossible. Enterprise Applications world is way, way behind in terms of DevOps practices.  Did Amazon reached 20,000+ deploys a day in few months. Obviously not. It took them 5 years to move away from their original OBIDOS content delivery system to current architecture.

If AutoX wants to go to 1 month production deployment and if they start today, probably it will take them 3 to 5 years to reach there. Obviously it will require mindset change, investment to develop the necessary tools and practices and it will require cooperation from PLM vendor.

Is that investment worth it? I em-pathetically say “YES”. I will repeat my prediction again that first PLM vendor who supports that and first company who achieves it will make a ‘killing the market’. Studies have established that There is a ‘positive’ correlation between the deploy frequency and profitability of the company. So its a great opportunity for companies like Ford, BMW, Airbus, Boeing, etc and PLM vendors like Dassault Systèmes, Siemens PLM.

In Part 2 of this article, I will explain the steps that are required from AutoX and from PLMX vendor to achieve this ‘seemingly’ impossible dream?

Readers, do you still think it is an impossible dream? I will love to hear from you. Please leave a comment.

NOTE - All the opinions expressed in this article are my personal opinions