Taking software development from waterfalls to the great, big ocean of possibilities

Gravity does strange things to water – makes it unending, irreversible, and uncontrollable in the form of waterfalls. Traditional waterfall methodologies for software development are bogged down in much the same way, becoming complex, cumbersome, and critically slow over time. Which is why TCS decided to adopt devops practices to drive business agility in the overall software delivery process through automation, standardization, and a centralized orchestration of all software development life cycles.

The devops initiative brought in modernization through reimagined processes and a shift in our traditional work mindset. With rigorous and sustained program execution, TCS automated 96% of all product releases, improving agility, minimizing lead time, and increasing code quality and product security. Devops was thus leveraged to accelerate internal transformation initiatives and to optimize existing technology investments. 

Legacy systems: More time, less value

To bring in quality and speed in this age of customer-first-driven processes, IT enterprises have had to replace their legacy systems with ones that are easy to use. These new systems also bring in business agility and deliver incremental value with faster time-to-market. 

We were quick to realize that traditional methodologies for internal operations were restricting innovation and agility and increasing dependency on central teams, with longer lead times. Given the series of manual activities and multiple hand-offs involved, the processes had become rigid, time-consuming, and non-repeatable, leading to longer release cycles. A large, simplified, diverse IT ecosystem with a standardized execution process was needed, one that could automate the delivery process with intelligent quality measurement capabilities and help TCS IT keep pace with its internal goal of digital transformation.  

Driving digital business transformation

With a goal to achieve a single-click, frictionless, and end-to-end automated delivery process, TCS IT brought in transformation, focusing on three foundational pillars. 

• People: Fostering a devops culture: Devops is about embodying a culture, a set of operating principles, and a collection of practices. But cultural transformation is hard. This roadblock was surmounted by way of reorganizing teams, instituting rewards and recognitions, and executing a series of evangelization campaigns by associates. 
• Process: A collaboration between development and operations: Process transformation was brought in by introducing automation at every stage and tying it to a single continuous delivery model, building a strong devops toolchain foundation capable of integrating with multiple tools and extensible enough to continuously add mature devops practices, and scalable enough to support over 350 pipeline runs a day.  
• Technology: A tools and technology foundation for automation: The TCS devops platform is powered by some of the most popular devops tools in the market. These are meticulously crafted and woven into a highly scalable pipeline with a set of custom-built tools and supporting systems to compliment use cases where products or tools are not readily available. 

A devops center of excellence

A dedicated center of excellence (CoE) was constituted to focus on devops practices within TCS IT in order to accelerate the process. The devops CoE charter included strategic planning, assessments across platforms and technologies, process modelling, organization structure recommendations, cultural transformation, knowledge management, and governance of various devops programs. Furthermore, the CoE worked towards proofs of concept, pilots, and training on new tools and technologies

A strong foundation for a future-ready enterprise

The outcome of the CoE-led process was fast-running delivery mechanisms and reduced time-to-market. It has been a continuous journey of delivering flexibility to business. A strong devops foundation has already been established to accelerate other key enterprise initiatives such as agile, cloud, digital core, and testing automation, and is being leveraged towards mature devops practices such as GreenLight for automated releases, Tracer-bullet Releases for new applications, on-demand environment provisioning and containerization, and moving toward being a 100% devsecops organization.

This successful demonstration of devops at scale has enabled TCS to take larger strides towards its internal digital transformation journey and realize its vision of Enterprise Agile by 2020. We won industry recognition for our devops initiatives and were honored with the IDG CIO 100 2020 award for ‘Delivering business agility through largescale agile devops transformation’, as well as four ICMG Architecture Excellence awards in 2019.