Accelerate & Deliver better Software by Cost Saving and Cost Optimization Continous Improvements through Agile Methods

Accelerate & Deliver better Software by Cost Saving and Cost Optimization Continous Improvements through Agile Methods

Mahesh Sankaran

Research Scholar: Dept. Of Engineering

Vels Institute of Science, Technology and Advanced Studies(VISTAS)

Chennai, India

Dr. E.N Ganesan

Dean: Dept. Of Engineering

Vels Institute of Science, Technology and Advanced Studies (VISTAS)

Chennai, India

AbstractWith Agile development being used in todays projects across the globe there has been huge increase in the need to do software application development in highly organized, process driven and efficient way. With Continuous Improvements there can be numerous ways in which the software development can optimized both in terms of quality and in terms of cost savings using our existing resources. We can look at ways to save the cost using the Agile methodology existing tools in the markets

KeywordsAgile; CostSavings; Software Developments)

1. INTRODUCTION

   Agile Development being iterative development, scope for improvement in terms of requirements, solutions and collaboration is more. The core reason for teams to follow Incremental and iterative work is mainly to assist the teams in responding to changes. Software development can be unpredictable and would lead to enormous cost even with or without business value added. We are at a situation to come up with new technologies, new process and various improvements in addressing the concerns of software development.

2. AGILE IS A MINDSET

   1. Business Agility

      First, this is everywhere, and it is being done in every project development. A recognition that for people in an organization to operate with an Agile mindset, need for organization change structure and operations to work in an uncertain environment.

   2. Incremental Development

   Successive version of the product is usable, and each build upon the previous version. This is way we build big complex projects, independent, value based, estimate able, size able and testable components are built and these increments add to the product as finished ones

3. NEW AGE OF AGILE

   We turn towards the future or new Age of Agile which is XP and Agile technical practices. we have practitioners who are moving the industry forward in a variety of ways.

   What elements should Agile XP change to adapt to the rapid evolution of socio-technical systems, after exploring the

   history of XP tells things have evolved with continuous improvements which now has developed into mature fast pace development model

   1. Iterative Development

      Iterative insofar is known as they intentionally allow for repeating software development activities, and for potentially revisiting. It is related to Sprint being done in running race where we complete lap and then return to same routine complete another lap. In a specified timelines we keep repeating and do the iterative development

   2. Milestone Retrospective

      • All of the teams permanent members can invest one to three days in a detailed analysis of the projects significant events

      • People/Technology wise there can be improvements such Reducing the usage AWS instances and also in creating dashboard for all of Instances & its usage.

      • Process- we can do improvements such as Read and Load PDF Content one by one Instead of Reading / Loading all the pages at a time. This gives Best User Experience by avoiding Slow load and also to avoid HTTP long waiting period.

      • Market Facing – Ansible common implemented for all projects. Now on demand basis we are bringing up the environment using AWS ansible common. Which saves lot of developers efforts

   3. Cost Reduction

      The Cost Savings and Reductions can be calculated based on the resources and how it is reduce the operation cost.

      Below is an example where we have.

      7 Services | 5 Environments | 11 instances = 77 instances

      $ saved monthly 2 Hrs. per week

      52 Weeks per year

      25$ savings per hour = 2 H* 52W * 25$

      Another example where we would the Cost Savings

      20 Hrs. per week 52 Weeks per year

      25$ savings per hour = 20 H* 52W * 25$

   4. Cost Savings

      • Across Service Line, we must work together and come up with improvements in a quality manner to do Cost Savings, especially to have it achieved over years as a continuous improvement.

      • We must go for regular process of having Cost Saving implemented on yearly basis, also with reviews done monthly. We need encourage our teams to work collaborate and achieve Cost savings team wise These savings can be of Direct or Indirect, we need to have this achieved across various teams.

      • We need to have a mechanism to interpretation of benefits in areas of AWS Cost (Cloud Cost), Better operability

      • Areas of Improvement can be in

        • People/Technology

        • Process

        • Market Facing

4. COST SAVINGS

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1. Savings Type

   The Cost Savings normally are into the way it is being achieved either through direct means of realization or through indirect means of realizations.

   1. Direct.

      1. Significant Cost Savings- AWS Instance Reduction – unused instances removal

      2. Configured actuator instead of New Relic for Monitoirng Stage and Production sever environments. No additional resources required for Actuator configuration

      3. AWS Instances usage reduced to 50%

      4. Nightly based on the usage instances will be tear – Performance teardown

   2. Indirect: Cost Savings in terms of realization in a indirect manner.

      1. Fewer Customer Impacting Incidents – Created a dashboard in New relic for (insights) project and also integrated Hip chat, pager duty and other notification channels for monitoring purpose.

      2. Deploying instances with Ansible framework – Creation of AWS resources using Ansible provides control

         over AWS resources maintenance. These resources would be tagged to the team properly and incidents like accident deletion of resources will be avoided

      3. Improved Customer Experience – As a company, has come up with the mandate that in all the Configurable Items (all Source files), their copyright should be added. This tool helps in automating this and can be used across various projects

      4. Faster Time to Market-Initial design was having single instance of DB, however our team proposed fallback DB replica approach and implemented the same. This will improve the stability and availablity of the application

2. Savings Category

   Cost saving can be done overcoming various challenges especially in the areas of

   • Significant Cost Savings

   • Fewer Customer Impacting Incidents

   • Deploying instances with Ansible framework

   • Improved Customer Experience

   • Faster Time to Market

3. Figures and Tables

TABLE I.

a. Sample of a Table footnote. (Table footnote)

b.

Fig. 1. Cost Savings Hard and Soft

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Cost Optimization & Cost Savings with focused efforts always brings wonders and gives the best possible way to handle Cloud Resources with visibility on the spend, bring standard to the team and its development cycle. DevOps with Cost optimization will enable teams to self-manage their cloud spend.

REFERENCES

Our research has uncovered various key capabilities that drive improvements in software delivery performance. Capabilities include Continuous delivery, Architecture, Product and process, Lean Management, and monitoring and Cultural.

1. The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win 5th Anniversary Edition Audible Logo Audible Audiobook Unabridged Gene Kim (Author), Kevin Behr (Author), George Spafford (Author), Chris Ruen (Narrator), IT Revolution Press (Publisher)April 1955.

2. Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler)) 1st Edition by Jez Humble (Author), David Farley (Author).

3. The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations Paperback Illustrated, October 6, 2016 by Gene Kim (Author), Patrick Debois (Author), John Willis (Author), Jez Humble (Author), John Allspaw (Foreword)

4. Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations Paperback Illustrated, March 27, 2018 by Nicole Forsgren PhD (Author), Jez Humble (Author), Gene Kim (Author)