The Digital Age has disrupted many industries. Streaming services from Netflix and Spotify have replaced traditional media organizations, and e-commerce from Amazon continues to disrupt most retail organizations. These innovative companies used digital technologies to create rapid delivery and feedback loops that enabled them to dominate their respective markets—and created new ways of working that allowed them to achieve substantial business outcomes.
The digital age is now disrupting aerospace, defense, automotive, and other industries building large, complex cyber-physical systems. While the fundamental Lean-Agile principles still apply, the practices needed to build these new systems will differ. Over the past 20 years, the software community discovered the practices, tooling, and infrastructure required for fast delivery and feedback in their industry. The cyber-physical system community is beginning its DevOps journey to deliver innovative solutions faster or be disrupted.
This is why their new book, Industrial DevOps: Build Better Systems Faster, is so important and timely. The authors, Robin Yeman (a former Fellow at Lockheed Martin who is now a Carnegie Mellon Space Domain Lead) and Dr. Suzette Johnson (a Fellow at Northrup Grumman), bring decades of experience building some of the world’s largest and most complex cyber-physical systems. In their book, they explain how Lean, Agile, and DevOps principles apply to the planning, development, manufacturing, deployment, and serviceability of these significant systems. The ideas are augmented with real-world examples, case studies, and practical tips.
SAFe practitioners will quickly connect with the book’s guidance. Robin and Suzette are SAFe Fellows, and many of us on the Framework Team here at Scaled Agile have been fortunate to work with them for several years on Industrial DevOps principles and practices. The initial concept for Industrial DevOps was born six years ago from a collaboration at the fourth annual DevOps Enterprise forum, sponsored by Gene Kim and IT Revolution. That initial whitepaper led to further collaboration that influenced their work book and SAFe. And you will see the parallels in this book.
I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I did. It is a timely and critical resource for these industries entering their digital age. The Books on SAFe page provides a link to order Industrial DevOps and other SAFe books.
Stay SAFe!
Harry