For me, what is really exciting about DevOps is the notion that software development, infrastructure engineering and operational automation can and should done simultaneously and collaboratively. DevOps doesn’t invalidate ITIL, nor does it mean unbridled application deployment.

The way I see it we already have some great examples of DevOps in action — its just that the term hasn’t been applied to them yet.

Can you remember the last time when you had to apply patches or config file changes to a system. And did you have that fingers crossed feeling? Wouldn’t it be great that you could install a patch and run a series of tests to see if everything behaved the way it should?

I’ve been managing systems teams in an Agile environment for a number of years, and after thought and experimentation, I can recommend using an approach borrowed from Lean systems management, called Kanban.

Here is a detailed example of a fairly typical 2-tier Kanban board, for teams that know the basics of Kanban and are taking their first steps towards implementing it in practice.

Agile training expert Robert Dempsey examines the application of Kanban techniques to system administration work, with a devops flavour.