Challenges
The increasing use of DevOps approaches within IT development teams is leading to a radical change in production roll-out approaches. Having been in charge of integration for this insurance company for 8 years, we have changed the way we deliver our services to take account of these challenges.
Our client is organised into a set of Release teams, each assigned to a specific business line and responsible for upgrading the application portfolio. These release teams need non-production and production environments to test and then deploy their applications. We have adapted and transformed our delivery model to provide them with the best integration service.
17000
application integrations per year
9/10
Average client satisfaction score
80%
standardised demands
18
application integrators
Transformation stages
We began by setting up teams with expertise in specific areas (Linux, .net, Java, Apache, etc.) who were responsible for accepting all deliverables supplied by the release teams. For each acceptance, manual or semi-automatic control, testing and integration processes were carried out within a defined timeframe.
Over the last 5 years, the service has been outsourced before being transformed into an ISO 27001 service centre.
Over the last 3 years, the organisation has evolved to support automated Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines on non-production and production environments.
Evolution towards continuous integration
The duration of our partnerships bears witness to our desire and commitment to provide each of our services with a scalable organisational framework, in line with the operational objectives and developments of our customers and the best practices on the market. Here we have demonstrated our ability to support transformations in methods and culture, such as the implementation of a DevOps environment.
We began by seeking to reduce the amount of expertise carried by our teams in favour of the standardisation and security provided by managed processes.
We then placed agile methods at the heart of the way our system operates, so that we can now comply with DevOps best practice.
Training our teams in the content and form of the new integration tools (XL Release, XL Deploy, Ansible, Jira) was essential to enable them to adapt to the new environments and to ensue processes evolution for handling the work of the Release teams.
Our main mission today is to ensure the application integration of all the Release teams, in compliance with the standards and rules in force and the deadlines set.
Integrating applications, on-demand
A catalogue of services is made available to the Release teams. They can find out about the associated deadlines and commitments as soon as their requests are made.
The service catalogue takes into account the reality of a DevOps-oriented organisation: atypical requests, one-off emergencies, crisis situations, etc.
Handling the CI part
Regulatory constraints, historical factors, hybrid infrastructures and legacy systems mean that processes have to be adapted to meet expectations. We take these specific factors into account in our catalogue of services, so that we can provide Release teams with an Application Integration service, whatever the project concerned (non-DevOps integrations, DevOps integrations).
Developing the DevOps organisation
Because we adopt a partnership approach with the insurer’s teams, and over and above the actual implementation of requests, the consultancy dimension is fundamental for us, particularly with regard to the operation of the team or the operation with the Release teams: implementation of Kanban, creation of new automation, changes to the organisation or responsibilities of team members. These changes are tested and implemented according to an AGILE precept, in keeping with the DevOps spirit.
Providing CI tools expertise
Providing an Application Integration service requires tools, but it’s not just about tools. Over the past 8 years, as those have evolved in line with the offerings from the market (Ansible, Terraform, XL Release, SL Deploy, Python, etc.), we have advised, managed and implemented the essential changes, involving our tools experts to support the application integration teams.
We recognise the qualities of the Consort teams in their ability to adapt to changes in our IS, and in their capacity to develop and industrialise their delivery model.
Strategic Committee | Insurer
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