It’s often assumed traditional software development drives digital transformation. Alan Shimel from DevOps.com has a different opinion. Alan recently sat down with CIOs and DevOps experts, including Worksoft’s Jim Dugger, for a discussion of major trends in the software industry. It turns out some of the most exciting innovation in the software world isn’t in the production of code, it’s in a company’s use of pre-packaged apps supporting mission-critical end-to-end processes.

In his recent conversation with Alan at IBM InterConnect, Jim notes much of this innovation comes from business process changes helping companies ensure they can meet market demand – and the rising expectations of end-users – as well as maintain a competitive advantage. You can hear the full discussion of DevOps software trends in this video.

Whether an organization develops custom software or uses pre-packaged apps – change is a constant that CIOs and IT leaders must navigate with confidence.  Automation helps businesses and IT keep up with rapid development cycles to ensure frequent updates and upgrades don’t impact the business.  Whether packaged software or custom applications, the principals and goals of an Agile approach to delivery make sense.  Development and deployment methodologies will continue to evolve, but the demand for speed and quality are here to stay.

We’ve all seen the headlines: “United Airlines Suffering Flight Delays Again Due to Another Computer Glitch”, “Software update, not hackers, cause customs computer meltdown at airports”, “Amazon failure disrupts hundreds of thousands of websites.” When it comes to the use of critical systems – one can’t risk defects or unplanned down time; get it right the first time!  Fortunately, automation enables the deployment of new functionality as often as needed – daily, weekly, monthly.  Automation fast-tracks process discovery and documentation and the building of automated tests - cutting regression testing times from days or hours to minutes. Don’t wait until something breaks or crashes to make a fix. With automation, rest assured continuous change is executed flawlessly.

How does automation help manage change? By matching the rate of testing with the rate of change. Worksoft makes it possible to begin testing earlier in the product lifestyle without pulling staff from other productive activities. This eliminates QA backlog and allows companies to roll products out quickly!

Check out our blog post on a new quality approach for Agile DevOps.