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DevOps: Introducing Agility and Flexibility to BPO-IT Organisations – Service Providers’ Perspective

Received: 26 September 2016     Accepted: 2 November 2016     Published: 27 December 2016
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Abstract

Competition is rife within BPO-IT service providers as outsourcing clients opt for providers’ that will add significant value to their operations. Thus, providers perceive DevOps as one way of improving the quality of clients’ services through in-house development of reliable software. Research findings indicate that DevOps involves internal reorganisation that could provide the best possible option to combine people, process and software development tools. The approach has been widely applied in software development companies purposely for continuous delivery of reliable software, and to add value to client’s services within provider’s domain. This paper presents the findings from a multi case study of DevOps implementation in BPO-IT service provider organisations. The findings suggest the inclusion of DevOps as an element of strategic IT planning to improve competitiveness by reducing costs and quality of services. The developed DevOps framework proposes a team of coordinating teams working together to improving client and providers’ performances combining IT management, software development and processing teams respectively. To illustrate the concept of the framework, a flowchart depicting a stepwise role of each team is developed, allowing for implementation of agility and flexibility into the process and continuous software delivery, reduced time of service delivery, and improved quality of services.

Published in Software Engineering (Volume 4, Issue 5)
DOI 10.11648/j.se.20160405.11
Page(s) 65-74
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2016. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Devops, Software, IT Management, BPO-IT

References
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  • APA Style

    Charles Ikerionwu, David Edgar. (2016). DevOps: Introducing Agility and Flexibility to BPO-IT Organisations – Service Providers’ Perspective. Software Engineering, 4(5), 65-74. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.se.20160405.11

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    ACS Style

    Charles Ikerionwu; David Edgar. DevOps: Introducing Agility and Flexibility to BPO-IT Organisations – Service Providers’ Perspective. Softw. Eng. 2016, 4(5), 65-74. doi: 10.11648/j.se.20160405.11

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    AMA Style

    Charles Ikerionwu, David Edgar. DevOps: Introducing Agility and Flexibility to BPO-IT Organisations – Service Providers’ Perspective. Softw Eng. 2016;4(5):65-74. doi: 10.11648/j.se.20160405.11

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  • @article{10.11648/j.se.20160405.11,
      author = {Charles Ikerionwu and David Edgar},
      title = {DevOps: Introducing Agility and Flexibility to BPO-IT Organisations – Service Providers’ Perspective},
      journal = {Software Engineering},
      volume = {4},
      number = {5},
      pages = {65-74},
      doi = {10.11648/j.se.20160405.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.se.20160405.11},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.se.20160405.11},
      abstract = {Competition is rife within BPO-IT service providers as outsourcing clients opt for providers’ that will add significant value to their operations. Thus, providers perceive DevOps as one way of improving the quality of clients’ services through in-house development of reliable software. Research findings indicate that DevOps involves internal reorganisation that could provide the best possible option to combine people, process and software development tools. The approach has been widely applied in software development companies purposely for continuous delivery of reliable software, and to add value to client’s services within provider’s domain. This paper presents the findings from a multi case study of DevOps implementation in BPO-IT service provider organisations. The findings suggest the inclusion of DevOps as an element of strategic IT planning to improve competitiveness by reducing costs and quality of services. The developed DevOps framework proposes a team of coordinating teams working together to improving client and providers’ performances combining IT management, software development and processing teams respectively. To illustrate the concept of the framework, a flowchart depicting a stepwise role of each team is developed, allowing for implementation of agility and flexibility into the process and continuous software delivery, reduced time of service delivery, and improved quality of services.},
     year = {2016}
    }
    

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    AU  - Charles Ikerionwu
    AU  - David Edgar
    Y1  - 2016/12/27
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    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.se.20160405.11
    DO  - 10.11648/j.se.20160405.11
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    JF  - Software Engineering
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    AB  - Competition is rife within BPO-IT service providers as outsourcing clients opt for providers’ that will add significant value to their operations. Thus, providers perceive DevOps as one way of improving the quality of clients’ services through in-house development of reliable software. Research findings indicate that DevOps involves internal reorganisation that could provide the best possible option to combine people, process and software development tools. The approach has been widely applied in software development companies purposely for continuous delivery of reliable software, and to add value to client’s services within provider’s domain. This paper presents the findings from a multi case study of DevOps implementation in BPO-IT service provider organisations. The findings suggest the inclusion of DevOps as an element of strategic IT planning to improve competitiveness by reducing costs and quality of services. The developed DevOps framework proposes a team of coordinating teams working together to improving client and providers’ performances combining IT management, software development and processing teams respectively. To illustrate the concept of the framework, a flowchart depicting a stepwise role of each team is developed, allowing for implementation of agility and flexibility into the process and continuous software delivery, reduced time of service delivery, and improved quality of services.
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Author Information
  • Department of Information Management Technology, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria

  • Glasgow Business School, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

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