DevOps Across a Largely Outsourced IT Ecosystem

Speaking at the DevOps Enterprise Summit, Jagpal Jheeta, Head of Regulatory Systems, Financial Conduct Authority, presented on: “DevOps Across a Largely Outsourced IT Ecosystem”.

A critical challenge for achieving DevOps Flow is that for many enterprise organizations the end-to-end delivery not only spans multiple departments, but also third-party suppliers.

For example the FCA who have over 80% of their team outsourced. With the primary impediment to smooth flow being the hand-overs between teams this presents a significant challenge.

Responsible for all the FCA’s front-office technology Jagpal has a team of 100, who design, build and run all of their systems. For an organization of 5,000+ this is a small number, and so additionally another 500 people are incorporated via outsourcing.

The FCA are fully Cloud enabled, they operate no on-premise IT, a journey that began in 2013 when faced with the need to implement a new, large-scale application that they recognized they were not equipped to do. Opting for a SaaS solution began their process of embracing outsourcing and a new culture and way of thinking.

From 10m:20s Jagpal gets to the heart of the challenge: How do you maintain a common performance framework across multiple suppliers, that enables the FCA to ensure consistent delivery.

He describes how DORA metrics are key to this, achieving a single common language and understanding of expectations such as uptime.

Additionally Jagpal describes how he proactively takes steps to purposely include the team members assigned to his account from outsource providers into the culture and operations of the FCA, such as organizing meetups where they attend. This breaks down the supplier/contractor boundary and makes them feel a valued member of the team. Furthermore there are weekly calls with their senior executives to ensure they are clearly aware of progress.