5 Ways Process Automation Can Streamline ITOps – The New Stack

Too often ITOps teams’ time is not spent adding tangible value to the business, but devoted to repetitive, manual work usually tied to running a production service, which Google describes as “devoid of enduring value.”

It’s easy for ITOps teams to get stuck in a vicious cycle of this labor-intensive work, which means they’re not able to focus on more creative tasks and critical work that drives real value for the organization.

This challenge is only increasing as digital infrastructure becomes more complex to support the seamless experiences customers now demand. It means an over-reliance on subject matter experts (SMEs), such as developers, for even routine tasks — driving boredom and burnout at a time when such skills are already in short supply. Organizations simply can’t afford the status quo. They need to build more automation into processes, especially for labor-intensive tasks like incident response and service management.

But where should the journey to reduce toil begin? Here are five ideas.

Change takes time, especially in modern IT environments where altering configurations can have a domino-like impact on complex dependencies. There may be thousands of such configurations to manage in a typical enterprise, each with a potentially large set of dependencies. Documentation that could help with the process is time-consuming to produce, so it isn’t always available. And change management reviews might require input from multiple decision-makers, adding further delays and overheads to the process.

A better approach would be to build a list of pre-approved and standardized configuration changes into an automation solution. This might include tools, scripts and automation from existing configuration tools like Ansible and Salt. Use of such a repository can be delegated to non-subject matter experts to accelerate change approvals, reduce the opportunity for human error and improve the quality of ITOps. By using a dedicated automation solution, organizations could even trigger an automated process directly from existing tools like Jira or ServiceNow, removing human involvement almost completely. All that will be required is time to create and approve the initial configuration updates.

Provisioning requests are usually handled by SMEs. That’s because platform or cloud engineers are required to complete a set of specialized tasks, from bringing up virtual machines (VMs) to specifying a Linux OS image, attaching storage and then exposing the app’s URL via a load balancer. The problem is that these experts are often beset by repeated interruptions, reducing the time they get to spend on high-value tasks.

Streamline this process with automated, end-to-end workflows dedicated to provisioning and connecting new infrastructure. Pre-approved automation workflows allow developers and others to do the provisioning themselves, without needing to reach out to platform or cloud engineering experts. Even better, they could do so from within the tools they are currently using, like Jira and ServiceNow. Even dependencies can be pre-loaded and security settings applied before developers get access to mitigate governance risk and accelerate the process. Developers can start coding straight away without needing to interrupt the ITOps team.

Once the infrastructure is provisioned, the relevant teams will begin deploying applications to the cloud. Although some use highly automated update mechanisms as part of CI/CD, manual deployment and testing are often used. In some organizations, teams may even still rely on ITIL-based change management processes, which require release engineers, database admins (DBAs) and network/security engineers to deploy packages and rolling updates, and run quality assurance.

Developers could build their own deployment automation in staging and then pass it to ITOps after testing. These same developer teams could define self-service operations tasks and pre-validate system changes using automated runbooks, thereby satisfying change control requirements. Automated deployment workflows can be safely delegated to other teams across the organization as required.

Creating and managing user accounts and permissions within IT infrastructure can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive task. Yet it’s critical to maintain the security and integrity of such systems and the data flowing through them. IT administrators need to be assured that only authorized users have access to this data, according to the principle of least privilege: That is, they only have temporary access to the data they need to do their job and no more. This matters from a security perspective but is also an issue of cost control. If users don’t need access to a particular set of resources, then their account/license could be freed up for a colleague.

By automating user provisioning with workflows, ITOps can create new user accounts and assign roles and permissions based on predefined rules and policies. Do the same with de-provisioning once an employee leaves or changes roles. This will help to accelerate on- and offboarding, reduce human errors, bolster security and compliance, and optimize license and resource usage. These workflows could even be delegated to HR and other teams via self-service capabilities.

Updating software and/or reconfiguring infrastructure is a never-ending but critical task to mitigate security and compliance risks. However, in many organizations, it is still a highly manual process requiring a high degree of system awareness and expertise to ensure updates function as intended without breaking underlying systems. Patches will often need to be applied in groups during the same maintenance window, with third-party dependencies complicating the process further. It’s a highly specialized task that, depending on which assets need to be patched, may require input from a variety of SMEs. Resource constraints can increase the chances of error creeping in.

Instead, consider using an automation platform to schedule tasks and fix vulnerabilities as they are discovered. This will reduce the burden on individual SMEs by removing the reliance on manual tasks and scripts only available to expert engineers. This means they can spend more time innovating and less time on firefighting issues.

Toil is not always unpleasant. However, it is an inefficient use of time for some of the highest-value members of the organization, meaning they are constantly interrupted to fix problems that solve the needs of the few, not the many. This can take a heavy toll on SME burnout and the financial bottom line. Automation is not a panacea, but it does offer a glimpse into a better way of doing things that will help to optimize precious time and resources.

Growing operational complexity may look like a major barrier to automation. In fact, it should be a driver. Start small and choose routine, repetitive IT processes in high-touch functions like incident response. The results should speak for themselves.

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5 Ways Process Automation Can Streamline ITOps - The New Stack