We have a bumper crop of customer presentations, which we’ll announce next week.  These are my personal favorite sessions of the whole event and they cover every aspect of the application lifecycle.  The Serena engineering teams will show off what’s cooking in the lab. I’ve seen some of the innovations and they will simply amaze you.  Plus, we’ll have deep dives into the new capabilities of the latest Serena Solutions that will launch at xChange.

No matter what breakout track you decide to take at xChange, you’ll have at least 10 sessions to choose from.  So, bring a colleague to get the most out of the conference.  Here’s a glimpse of some of the tracks.

• Application Development Solutions Track – Don’t miss the session about Continuous Integration and Release Best Practices.
• DevOps and RevApps Track — We’ll show you how your Serena solutions can be at the heart of your DevOps strategy.
• Serena Business Manager (SBM) Track — This track has the most customer-delivered sessions with real-world implementations that will inspire and astound.
• Mainframe Track — I am particularly proud of the focus on the modernization of applications and the application development infrastructure.

There is so much to see and hear that I promise you this: every session will deliver practical advice you can use the day you get back from Miami.

And this year, for the first time in quite a while, I get to present one of the sessions too!

Check out the sessions for yourself and sign up today while the Early Bird pricing is still available.

ZMF4ECL (Eclipse plugin):

• Windows 8 support
• Large Volume (EAV) support
• Support for scheduled promotion requests
• Improved filtering
• ZDDOPTS – alignment with zDD client and support for RACF groups

zDD (Windows Explorer Interface)

• Windows 8 support
• Large Volume (EAV) support
• Support for scheduled promotion requests
• ZDDOPTS support for RACF groups

One of the questions that John was asked in the ensuing Q&A session was whether the ZMF Client Pack would honor ISPF customizations (such as changes to panels, panel-exits, etc.). John correctly answered “no.” As ISPF is a client that resides up on the System z mainframe, customizations are limited to that platform.

This brings me to the main point in this blog entry. As discussed in one of my previous posts, our customers are doing more with less, and the user community is expressing the need to facilitate off-platform development and test. Serena remains responsive to these needs. There are two areas that we consistently hear from our customers:

1. The first is around off-platform development — the Client Pack components do not recognize user-customizations to the ISPF component. What was needed — and what we’ve now provided is functional parity amongst all clients. In other words, all the functions available to the ISPF client should be equally available, regardless of whether the user is in ISPF, Eclipse, Windows, or executing our XML or Web Services. A user should never need to log on to TSO if they do not want to. Thanks to John, and many others on the ZMF and Sernet development teams, we have provided this functional parity as John demonstrated at the last VUG. Yet, we still have the issue of ISPF customizations not recognized outside of ISPF (i.e. Client Pack, Web Services, XML Services, etc.).
2. The second area is the upgrading from one release of ZMF to another. What sets ZMF apart is its exceptional level of flexibility and ability to tailor to the customer’s environment. This flexibility is accomplished mostly through customizations to ISPF components and, in other cases, user exits. A consequence of this flexibility is that the customizations need to be carried forward when upgrading to a new release, and we do hear this from our customers.

The team is working on a solution that addresses both of these issues. If user-customizations were encapsulated to an area that sits on top of the product, and there is that division between what Serena ships and what the customer “owns”, we have a two-fold benefit:

1. Customizations that are centralized are then accessible from any client (ISPF, zDD, Eclipse, our callable services).
2. It also provides a mechanism to lift-and-carry customizations from one release to the next, which renders the notion of managing all of the ISPF skeletons obsolete.

The R&D team is busy in their sandbox working up Pre and Post exit points at every major stop in the ZMF workflow. Additionally, the team is researching ways to encapsulate other customizations outside of the major points in the workflow and are experimenting with a few different options. Not only does this ensure that the clients all follow the same rules, but greatly facilitates product upgrades.

One of the major themes that the team is working on, and one our customers will appreciate, is time-to-value (TTV) and its related elements.  To learn more about this TTV theme and what’s in store for ChangeMan ZMF, join me at xChange13, Serena’s annual user conference in September.  You can still take advantage of Early Bird registration.  Hope to see you!

Process management, visualization and traceability are all critical, especially as the number of releases increases.  A release management solution, of which release automation is one component, must also have a concept of what a release is.  A release is more than just a collection of builds.  It includes change requests, scheduling, approvals and many other things.

Trying to add the concept of a release on top of a release automation solution that has no concept of release or a simplistic version of release is a lot of work.  Furthermore, having to roll your own frequently results in auditability, traceability and visualization capabilities becoming more unwieldy, losing some of the value that a solution provides.

Without the right checks and balances, release automation provides an extremely effective vehicle for potentially releasing the wrong thing to production efficiently. You can talk to me more about this at the upcoming Velocity Conference from June 18-20 in Santa Clara, CA.  I’ll be in the Serena booth.  Register for the event, if you haven’t already!

DevOpsDays Austin focused very much on culture, much to the frustration of some but I believe it is the right choice.  Unless you are fortunate enough to be in an environment that has a culture perfectly suited to DevOps, then focusing on technology alone will probably end in disappointment.

My co-workers who attended DevOpsDays Austin last year tell me that there were more staff from larger enterprises attending this year, which tracks with the general uptake of DevOps in the enterprise.  While DevOps is slowly gaining traction in the enterprise, I certainly see a lot of interest in tools to help bring DevOps to the enterprise.  Tackling culture at an enterprise scale is something of particular interest to me and something that I continue to think about.  There is no easy answer to cultural change at an enterprise scale, but it is great to see discussions in that area at DevOpsDays events.

Patrick Debois attended and gave a presentation on the future of DevOps. He even included the definition of a meme in his session and the description was quite surprising.  Patrick always delivers great sessions and didn’t disappoint with this one.

The Ignite talks and Open Spaces were thought-provoking and full of useful information.  A particularly interesting session was on monitoring.  Jenny Yang and Toufic Boubez of Metafor Software facilitated this discussion, which was lively and informative.  You can read Toufic’s blog post on the subject.

On the second day I presented an Ignite session. Let me tell you, they are much harder to prepare for and do than a regular speaking slot.  My session on “DevOps when you can’t hire the A-Team” focused on breaking out of what I call the DevOps bubble and how to leverage open source and commercial software to achieve DevOps success.

Patrick is posting videos of the event to vimeo.

Finally, thanks to the folks at Puppet Labs for getting me to participate in their 3PM push-up session!  No photos were taken that I know of, and in all honesty, I’m okay with that!

I’m looking forward to DevOpsDays Mountain View. Hope to see you there.

@GrandmaHenri, a technical writer at Puppet Labs, presented a session on how to document modules on the Puppet Forge.  This should keep the quality of submissions to Puppet Forge high and help people find the appropriate modules to use.

Adrian Thebo did a session on “Writing and Sharing Great Modules on the Puppet Forge” and provided good programming advice for all of the Puppet users in the room with or without a programming background.  Acronyms like MDD (Mistake Driven Development) got a lot of sheepish grins and people readily admitted to testing Puppet code in production! I think everyone came away with ideas on how to improve what they were doing.

There were many other sessions that were just as excellent and a cut above what I’m used to seeing at these types of events.  I’m looking forward to PuppetConf in August!

A big thank you to Dawn Foster (@geekygirldawn) for helping to organize an amazing event and for helping to build an awesome community.  I hope to see everyone I met at Puppet Camp at PuppetConf in August.

The first memorable session was “Scaling systems configuration at Facebook,” presented by Phil Dibowitz from Facebook.  A larger-than-life rock and roll guy if ever I saw one, Phil did an awesome session on why Chef was the appropriate tool for use at Facebook.  I think Phil probably made Chef support staff cringe when he discussed “tweaking” the Chef libraries to meet his needs, but he did add a disclaimer that tweaking probably shouldn’t be done.

Glenn O’Donnell of Forrester Research presented what I would call a “feel good” session which described how important the skills of everyone at ChefConf are as the industry moves forward.  Infrastructure as code is no longer a nice to have but a competitive advantage that we need to stay on top of.

Disney presented a highly polished, extremely interesting session on how Chef is used at Disney.  One session highlighted potential problems with enterprises using open source solutions.  A company had made several Chef Cookbooks and had not given any back to the community.  Comments voicing frustration quickly erupted on Twitter.

The stats on Chef community growth were truly impressive; it has more than doubled in the past 12 months.  You can read more about the momentum that Chef currently has on the Opscode Blog.

Finally, one thing was mentioned over and over and over again at most of the sessions I attended — The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim.  Characters Eric, Brent, and Bill were referenced as if they were personal acquaintances of everyone.  I suspect many people will also purchase and read The Goal, as it inspired Gene.  I know I will.

I can’t wait for the next ChefConf or Chef meet-up.  Hope to see you there!

I was honored to give a brief keynote and chose the value of data interpretation as the topic.  In a session I called “Being Evangelical about Data” I was inspired to talk about the difference between collecting data, analyzing data and interpreting data. You can find the presentation on SlideShare or view it to the right.

Like all military organizations across the world: the MoD is looking to improve the efficiency in the systems they use that support the missions they have. One significant change that has been implemented is a joint logistics force that delivers the food, equipment, spare parts, ammunition and everything that is needed in theaters of operation. As the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines all use the same makers of equipment (such as the Apache Helicopter) it makes sense to have all the parts managed by one, new, service called the Joint Supply Chain (JSC).

The first question asked when all the inventory came under the control of the JSC was, “What is the value of the inventory managed?” The answer came back that it was about £40bn (about $64bn). Quite something, as this was not able to be calculated before.

So here we have Data giving Information. But further analysis showed that, while the MoD could tell how much the inventory was worth, they could not tell, for the most part, where it was located. And now we have Information giving Insight. And now, the next step in improving the logistical capabilities of the MoD, is to make inventory tracking much better.

My presentation took all of this to the next level and left the audience with one of my favorite quotes from a Serena customer in Chicago. Our customer implemented the Orchestrated IT approach across the entire development lifecycle from requirements through development and testing, into change and release management, and all the way to deployment. The director of the Change and Release Management team told me:

 ”I used to spend all of my time fighting fires… I now spend all of my time finding out who is starting them.”

During the breaks, many of the project leaders came to the Serena exhibit to talk about how they too can use process improvement and automation to give them control, repeatability and insight. It is so interesting to talk to customers about their organizations and their approach to developing and deploying applications. It is fascinating to have these discussions with members of our armed forces whose mission is complicated by deploying applications into the most hostile environments.

We thanked them for their service. We will be working with many of them over the next few months so that they too can get insight from their data.

Why is all this important?  Because DevOps is a rapidly mainstreaming approach to speeding up the pace of application enhancement.  Not just any applications, but mostly for Revenue Applications, those that customers use to directly transact with an enterprise.  RevApps are fundamental to how many industries go to market now, so the ability to rapidly evolve them becomes the ability to stay agile in the market.  Fail at that and not much else matters.

Serena has a long history helping enterprises with release management.  We also have a longer history than most at helping customers with modern release automation, and in thinking about how to embrace DevOps.  Our successful track record, combined with today’s announcement of the enhanced DevOps capabilities across Orchestrated IT 4.5, stands in contrast with recent announcements by CA Technologies and IBM.  Those two behemoths just bought their way into DevOps, marking the starting point for their learning curve and integration efforts.

Meanwhile we at Serena are marching along, building on our lead and helping customers successfully embrace DevOps, releasing more and better all along the way.

1. The value and knowledge gained at xChange13 is difficult to replicate elsewhere. You’ll be able to address your specific questions with Serena support technicians, product experts and power users at the conference. Provide your manager with a written list of issues you hope to address and, if possible, list the specific technical sessions you plan to attend. Use this list to demonstrate the value of xChange to your company. You can view some of the sessions in the current xChange brochure.
2. Face-to-face interaction facilitates valuable information exchange and problem-solving. Talk to your Serena sales representative now about setting up meetings with specific Serena product owners, engineers and executives to resolve particular issues. Over 100 Serena staff will be at the conference. Many xChange attendees save hundreds of thousands of dollars from finding solutions to problems or new ideas to speed their organization’s growth. Consider your attendance at the conference as an investment rather than an expense, and explore your company’s education or training budget as a resource.
3. Boost productivity back at the office. Offer to host a “lunch and learn” upon your return to the office. Use the data you’ve obtained at xChange13 to educate your entire team or other cross-functional teams that are key to your business unit. Quantify the benefit: imagine if you can boost your productivity (or the team’s) by just 5%, a very conservative number.  It would mean 100 hours per year per team member.
4. After the show, prepare a brief written report for your manager. Use this report to document the outcome of your meetings with Serena product owners, engineers and executives. Include additional information gained from conference speakers, other users, or Serena partners to supplement your summary of solutions for your company’s current problems and concerns. Don’t forget to work in the value of networking and the information you obtained on how companies are solving similar issues. You might consider writing portions of your summary as a blog or Twitter post.
5. Finally, remember that the best time to get permission to attend xChange14 is while the value of the 2013 conference is fresh in your manager’s mind. When you return from xChange13 in September, give your boss a heads-up on when xChange14 will be held and how much you are looking forward to building on the relationships you established this year.

Throughout this entire process, you will have educated your boss on the issues and concerns you deal with in your day-to-day responsibilities; demonstrated your own professionalism; and opened the door to continuing your education by attending xChange. If you haven’t already, begin the process described above with this email template request for manager approval so that we can look forward to seeing you in September!

For more information about xChange13, go to www.serena.com/xchange.

Stay tuned, winners will be announced on May 7, 2013 during an awards dinner and ceremony in Las Vegas.

See all of the Network Products Guide category finalists.

On another note, I’m also happy to share Serena is ranked #12 in the annual San Francisco Business Times’ Peninsula Software Companies list that came out last week.

Spring is here and we are definitely springing forward.

• Reduced application development time by 90%
• Reduced application failures by 80%, and
• Reduced application delivery costs.

Whether you’re new to the DevOps movement or an experienced practitioner, I guarantee you’ll gain some knowledge from this webcast that you can easily put to use immediately.  Plus, I’ll throw in a bag of popcorn.  Register now for the “How to Achieve DevOps Nirvana” webcast.

See also past and upcoming presentations in the DevOps Drive-In webcast series.  A couple have sold out and the ones coming soon look to be blockbusters!

Assuming your basic processes are sound, should they be implemented as is or adapted to be even more effective when used as part of an automated process?  This brings me to a fifth technique for a DevOps Ninja that I didn’t mention in the article: continually improve your processes.  Being able to measure the effectiveness of your process is key.  Decide on the KPIs, measure them and then continually seek to improve what you are doing and how you are doing it.

Read “Secrets of a DevOps Ninja” and let me know about your experiences by writing a comment below.

On Saturday morning I had the pleasure of meeting Gene Kim, renowned DevOps researcher and author, and John Clapham, development lead for Nokia.  Over breakfast we discussed the current state of DevOps and what could be done to help speed up DevOps adoption.  My opinion is that while we have practitioner buy in, practitioners aren’t the best people to present strategic initiatives to business leaders.

The Phoenix Project, which just happens to be written by Gene, does a really good job of telling the story of how IT affects business outcomes and why DevOps is important.  The story is told through the eyes of management and covers interactions between IT and many groups in the organization.  No matter whether you are a hardcore techie, senior management or somewhere in between you will probably experience many “Aha!” moments and just as many moments that will bring back painful memories.

Based on our conversation, Gene decided to present a session on how technologists can better sell DevOps to management.  The slides from the session can be found on slideshare.net.  See also Gene’s blog post “The Construction Of ‘The Phoenix Project:’ Using The Downward Spiral To Better Sell DevOps.”

So, what are the next steps?  To bring DevOps to a wider audience, there needs to be a suite of tools that are easy to use and integrate.  The skill set required to chain together various tools is immense, and frankly sometimes the ingenuity shown is not something that will or should scale to the larger market.

At Serena we are making technology to support DevOps within companies more accessible, without needing an army of consultants or gurus just to achieve the basics and keep systems up and running.

Stay tuned for future articles on how to integrate commonly used tools into processes managed by Serena solutions.

What brave new world is that?  The one that has crept up on us, where industry after industry now markets themselves to consumers via the wonders of their RevApps. File an insurance claim? Check in for a flight? Deposit a check? Shop for groceries? All via RevApps.  These B2C examples can be equally matched in most B2B industries.

The reality of living and dying based on the success of RevApps is driving a bifurcation in IT organizations, new process models within RevApp IT and the adoption of new tool chains.  That last is where Serena generates our revenue, but we’re also a participant in the community that is defining the new organizational and process models.  To that end, I’m pleased that the Evolution of RevApps is making a contribution.

You had me at Release Management.

Congrats to its creator, @jdnorthwest, who wins a $150 US AmEx gift card, a bottle of California Champagne and a box of Ghirardelli chocolates to go with the bubbly.

The first runner-up #DevOpsLove letter is

Dev seeks Ops – Lean and agile, partnership of equals, merging makes life worthwhile.

Congrats to @PiaAdolphsen, who wins a $100 AmEx gift card.

Last but not least is the second runner-up #DevOpsLove letter.

Dev, Love means never having to say you’re sorry…to the Help Desk after 10,000 unnecessary calls, Ops

Congrats to the prolific poet of IT, @Kaizeneer, who wins a $50 AmEx gift card.

Your story could encompass a single product, a robust solution or an IT function; anything from Serena Business Manager to ChangeMan ZMF, Service Management to Release Management, or Application Development to Operations. Topics I’m particularly interested in for this year’s conference include:

• Success stories with quantified results
• Tips and tricks for getting the most out of a Serena solution
• Using Serena products for improving IT processes
• Best Practices for implementing Serena solutions
• Cost savings with Serena solutions

Please click here to submit your presentation topic and description by March 31, 2013. We will review all submissions and let you know if yours is accepted into the program no later than April 2, 2013.

If you are not planning to speak at xChange13 in Miami Beach but would like to attend, register at www.serena.com/xchange and take advantage of early bird savings!

But, back to Mark Stewart and the incredible things they are doing at Interthinx. Risk mitigation is a multi-billion dollar business today. Organizations cannot afford to have holes in their business processes and so forensic audits are now part of everyday life for all public (and most private) companies in the world.

Mark has a great anecdote about just how efficient it is possible to become when one can optimize and automate processes. Listen for the “No available work” error message story. Click on the play button in the image above or watch the video on Serena’s YouTube Channel.

While the Agile revolution isn’t done yet, the methodology is rather widely adopted now in development organizations.  This is especially true when what are being developed are Revenue Applications, apps that are directly used by customers in the course of business.

The game changer for winning the RevApp race has thus moved downstream to Change & Release Management.  Efficiently capturing Change Requests, triaging those CRs, routing and fulfilling them are part of the solution.  So is automating  deployments of both application and operational changes.  Fail at this and it doesn’t matter how agile your dev is.

The good news is that new tools and orchestration systems are available to enable you to wildly succeed at CR Management.  And now Serena is making available a webinar to explain the thought process you’ll want to understand to underpin that wild success.

On March 19^th, Forrester Research Analyst Glenn O’Donnell will reveal 5 Simple Steps to Improving Change and Release Management Now.  He will focus on five actions for success:

1. Standardizing processes
2. Revamping the CAB
3. Packaging releases
4. Automating changes and releases
5. Altering incentives

Be sure to tune in on March 19^th. We’ll also provide you with a 10-minute tour of how Serena’s software can help you streamline your change and release management processes.

Actually there is one week left in the three week #DevOpsLove contest and the competition is hot and heavy, so to speak.

Here are three of my faves.

• Dev, Love means never having to say you’re sorry…to the Help Desk after 10,000 unnecessary calls, Ops – @Kaizeneer
• Dear John, I’ve met someone. They know my needs, they continuously deliver, always on time. And they’re Agile! ‘Bye old life. – @KevinParkerUSA
• Lets lets stay 2gether, loving u whether,whether times r good or bad,happy or sad ohh #Dev & #Ops 2gether 4ever!- @Krissy_r

Love how that last brings in some Al Green.  Love and soul, baby.  And DevOps.  Lots of DevOps.

That word is “Appification”.

Think about how you use apps on your smartphone.  App updates don’t come on regular release schedules; they come when they are needed. The driver could be a fix for something that is broken or it could be in response to having fewer downloads of an app and pushing out new functionality that has been kept back, just waiting to go until App sales needed a boost.

This process is wonderfully convenient for both the vendor and users. Updates come frequently and we accept the updates without hesitation, as the changes are usually incremental and therefore, considered safe and not worth further consideration.

How does Appification relate to enterprise applications?  For better or worse, as a society we want instant gratification.  We don’t want to wait. And the way apps are delivered has proven to us that software can be delivered easily in incremental amounts.  Customers are no longer willing to accept hosted solutions that are delivered at a set schedule of weeks or months.  Missing the release train is no longer an option.  Customers want hosted applications to be updated in the same manner as Apps on their smartphones.

At Serena we think of Continuous Delivery as a superset of Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Testing (CT) and Continuous Deployment.  Changes that are automatically propagated to all environments, except for production environments, are referred to as Continuous Deployment.  The diagram below illustrates an example of Continuous Deployment.  Deployments are approved automatically if success criteria are met for DEV, TEST and INTEG.  To deliver code to UAT, STAGING or PROD, manual approvals and scheduling is required.

 

In order to achieve what we refer to as Continuous Delivery, simply remove the manual approval or scheduling and have successful changes propagate all the way through to production automatically, assuming all release criteria are met for each stage.

This is why the terms Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment are used interchangeably. The only real difference between the two is where you decide to put on the brakes for automated delivery to an environment.

Embracing the impact of Appification and applying it to your enterprise applications will give you a competitive advantage over your competition, enabling you to release value to your customers faster.

Join us for the next DevOps Drive-In webcast on March 19 at 8:00 a.m. PST.  Glenn O’Donnell of Forrester Research will talk about 5 Simple Change and Release Management improvements that you can make.  Why wait years for improvements when you can have them now?  Register for the webcast!

This year’s tracks include:

• Orchestrated Application Development
• Service Transition through Orchestrated Change and Release Management
• Orchestrated IT / Serena Business Manager

Among the advances and improvements, you will hear about how to bring agility into application development and delivery processes, including agile planning and continuous delivery. Within Service Transition, you will learn how to optimize and drive efficiency of change and release management processes while securing tremendous business value. Finally, you will hear about key and critical updates to orchestrating IT from Demand, through Development, Release and Service management.

Greg Hughes, Serena CEO and President, will be on hand to discuss Serena’s strategic path ahead with your agency in 1:1 meetings.  Another highlight is The AnswerZone, where Serena product experts and gurus answer any question you have, on any subject.  Finally, all Federal User Group attendees are eligible to attend the free Federal Boot Camp sessions the following day, April 4th, also at the Newseum.

We very much look forward to meeting you, hearing from you, and understanding how we can best service your agency’s requirements and the needs of your customers.  Register now!

The laughter was so strong at the end that it obscured the video’s tagline, which is that Serena is your solution when you need to go from request-to-release in less than an eon.  And that’s no joke.

For our fourth posting in the “Customers Always Say it Best” series I thought we would hear about what it takes to revitalize the infrastructure of an organization. Most of us have an accretion of technologies that we have inherited and customized to the hilt. But, just like our much loved and faithful car from our college days, eventually we realize that it is time to get up to date with something safer, faster, easier to use and cheaper to maintain.

Take careful note of what Max Perez of MIQ Logistics has to say about the confusion and frustration users can experience when service management is not supported with great technology and the impact it has on any business. Click on the play button in the image above or watch the video on Serena’s YouTube Channel.

We are pleased to announce that Early Bird registration is now open for Serena xChange13 (pricing below).  The conference dates are September 16-18, 2013 with post-conference training from September 19-20.  Plan on joining us on September 15^th to enjoy “A Taste of Miami” welcome reception.  Then you will have two full days to soak in 80+ breakout sessions, the AnswerZone, and Serena product gurus.

But don’t wait for the conference to start collaborating.  Once you register, you’ll have access to the xChange Collaboration Portal where you can connect now with other users and product experts.  Here’s how you can save by registering for xChange13 before July 1:

Early Bird Pricing through June 30
• Early Bird ticket $1,595 (save $300 on standard price)
• Early Bird 5-Pack $7,000
• Early Bird 10-Pack $13,000
• International ticket $1,200 (non-US only, use Voucher code INTL13)

I guarantee you will take home new knowledge that you will be able to implement almost immediately when you arrive back to work.  With that, how can you not attend?  Register now!

There are three players in the triangle that is today’s product-focused IT orgs: Dev, Ops and DevOps. These teams all work closely together and play integral roles, but such as with any relationship comes those triumphs and infatuation also some times frustrations and lows. For example, sometimes Dev is especially appreciative of Ops’ ability to solve service problems, and on the flip side, sometimes Ops isn’t so happy with Dev’s inability to deliver on deployment. So today we are launching a Twitter love letter contest to showcase those high and low feelings between, Dev, Ops and DevOps to one another.

Now it’s your turn. The three-week-long DevOps Love Letter contest is a chance to use Twitter and your imagination to get creative, have fun and win great prizes, such as a $150 US AmEx gift card, bottle of California Champagne and a box of Ghirardelli chocolates. Three winners will be chosen with second place receiving a $100 AmEx gift card and third, a $50 AmEx gift card.

The contest kicks off Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 12:01am ET and ends Friday, March 8th, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

To be a part of this contest, write and submit a Tweetable love letter in the well known 140 characters or less.  Make it from the perspective of Dev, Ops or DevOps, tell why one of the others means so much to you. All entries must be submitted via Twitter to @SerenaSoftware, and include the hash tag #DevOpsLove.

Sometimes love turns sour however.  So feel free to write spurned love letters as well.  Keep in mind that humor is one of the judging criteria.

For example:

@SerenaSoftware Ops, I love your communication and our collaboration. Love, Dev. #BestFriendsForever #DevOpsLove

@SerenaSoftware Dev – nice code. Love, Ops #MatchMadeInHeaven #DevOpsLove

@SerenaSoftware You are the only ops in my eyes #DevOpsLove #loveatfirstsight #oneandonly

A panel of judges will select a winner based on creativity, humor, relevance and frequency of submissions. The winner will be announced via Twitter on March 11, 2013.

For official rules and prize information, please visit: http://ser.so/DevOpsLove

A key driver for Continuous Delivery has been the adoption of Agile as a development methodology.  Most of our long-term application lifecycle management (ALM) customers have implemented at least some agile development processes, and Continuous Delivery is next up for them.

At Agile 2012 last year, we surveyed the audience and found that 49% of the respondents’ companies have significantly adopted the use of Agile for development.  And 55% of those respondents said that they are “already there” or “getting there” in the use of Continuous Delivery.  Take a look at the infographic from the Agile 2012 conference and survey.  Note also that we’ll be at Agile 2013 in August and we’ll rerun the survey and provide our annual Agile Conference Survey report for you!  We’ll see what the adoption rate for Continuous Delivery is after another year.

While Continuous Delivery does provide great value, it is not appropriate for all application deployments.  Many applications require a separation of duties: App Dev develops and IT Ops deploys.  Hence, deployments into production follow the traditional stage gate methodology and are handled by IT Operations.  This hybrid of Continuous Delivery and Stage Gate Delivery is Continuous Deployment; it can be implemented with Release Automation plus release process control and management of the hand-offs between App Dev and IT Ops.

To learn how you can implement Continuous Delivery as quickly as possible while still supporting the traditional stage gate delivery process, watch our recent webcast “Implement Continuous Delivery with Traditional App Dev Processes“ featuring Julian Fish, Director of Development for Serena Release Manager.

MMA Technologies is based in New Jersey. The team comprises of seasoned experts in the field of Release Management with decades of experience delivering business-critical applications into production for some of the largest financial institutions in the world. Eric Kunkel of MMA Technologies builds some of the most advanced and sophisticated processes and automations that deliver results through shortening delivery times, improving quality and making visibility and control consistent.

But it is better if you hear this directly from Eric. He has some powerful metrics to share.  Click on the play button in the image above or watch the video on Serena’s YouTube Channel.  Then learn how Serena and MMA work together to build world class release management teams in DEV and OPS.

View previous blog posts in the “Customers Always Say it Best” series.

If you have ideas or comments about this series of blog posts please contact me at kparker@serena.com or write a comment below.

Our innovation this time is to directly address and automate the challenges of Service Transition, the ITIL volume focused on change, release and deployment management.  Service Transition has received too little attention from those of us in the vendor community, which is a problem since it is central to speeding up Request-to-Release cycles and in addressing the DevOps divide.  IOW, it is an essential competency for any business that competes online.

Anyway, speaking for the innovative Serena software engineers who built the solution that automates the Service Transition process, let me say that it’s an honor to be a finalist for the second year in a row.  We look forward to sharing with the attendees at Pink13 how the solution that impressed the Pink Elephant judges works and why it will win them awards of their own.

In our second episode we hear from Matt Stratton at Apartments.com. Any online business needs to have maximum velocity in IT in order to maintain its competitive edge. To rapidly innovate and turn software versions, Apartments.com has to release software very fast, with repeatable accuracy and efficiency. The pressure was on at Apartments.com because of the development team’s move to Agile methods and the need to ensure business continuity. Two opposing requirements but both necessary for the business.

Click on the play button on the image above or watch the video on Serena’s YouTube Channel and hear Matt describe what release automation means to Apartments.com.

View previous blog posts in the “Customers Always Say it Best” series.

If you have ideas or comments about this series of blog posts please contact me at kparker@serena.com or write a comment below.

Think You Know Your Team?

When was the last time you sat down with your peers and had a discussion about their priorities? What drives your priorities and what drives those of your peers may be widely dissimilar. Time-to-market may be your watch word. Maybe up-time and availability are key for your colleague downstream and driving out costs for an associate upstream.

What if you could have a Leadership Priorities Matrix for everyone in your team? How would you approach your peers if you really knew what they wanted?

The Social-IT Game

At the beginning of 2012 Serena decided it was time to find out. So a team of very smart marketing engineers got together and created the Social IT Game.

In the Social IT Game you get to play yourself. You are faced with a number of IT challenges and asked to prioritize your responses to them. Challenges vary from game to game but include the whole gamut of topics from Demand Management to Release Management to Service Management and everything in between.

But the real fun begins when you then have to put yourself in the shoes of your peers and guess how they would prioritize their responses to the challenges.

Suddenly, development managers are faced with trying to understand how release managers would prioritize needs of the service desk community. It’s fascinating what people get right and what teams have in common. But what truly brings new clarity and real debate is in the differences and in the surprises.

Surprising Results

In one recent game the entire IT management team had strong and uniform consensus that Reduce Cycle Time to the Business was everyone’s number one priority (see graph to right). Detailed and Accurate Chargebacks was rated last for all team members. But there was clear division between the DEV and the OPS communities over the relative importance of More Business Value versus More Visibility in the release management process. And from this an informative debate ensued.

To help put the graph and scores to the right in perspective, different point totals were given to a priority based on the ranking of each participant.

In 2012 Serena conducted almost 40 of these Social IT Game events for specially invited customers and at the invitation of customers inside their own organizations. Each company received an assessment report afterwards, kind of like an IT Org Profile.  Take a look at a sample report for Qlarius, a fictitious company with Doug Serena at the helm of IT.

Get Your Own Leadership Priority Matrix 

Want Serena to bring the Social IT Game, along with lunch, to your IT organization? Want a Myers-Briggs IT score for your team? Contact me.

In this 5-episode blog series I am going to introduce you to some of the key contributors that have helped shape and frame Serena’s direction. Through their experience and knowledge we have created leading solutions to businesses technology issues.

Our first contribution comes from Ken Vane at Navy Federal Credit Union. Like most organizations, Navy Fed is trying to maximize the effectiveness of the development community from requirements to deployment. Let’s hear from Ken about what it takes to get better insight, control and traceability for its entire development process. Click on the play button on the image above or watch the video on Serena’s YouTube Channel.

Learn how you can become part of the xChange or see just how Serena helped make Navy Fed a leader in software development. If you have ideas or comments about this series of blog posts please contact me at kparker@serena.com or write a comment below.

The survey’s key findings were as follows:

1. The business (92%) does not perceive IT as a true partner.
2. Development and Operations blame each other. Three quarters cited operations as a roadblock to agile development, and 72 percent cite development as not supporting the goals of operations. The research shows a clear divide between Development and Operations, helping to explain the aspirational popularity of DevOps this past year.
3. Inconsistent and manual ITSM practices are too slow for online, agile business. In particular, 70 percent reported poor release management processes.
4. Disconnected processes limit Development and Operations’ success. 72 percent revealed that operational change and release management, which are central to the Service Transition prescribed by ITILv3, were the most disconnected.
5. Rudimentary communication practices lead to limited visibility into planned changes. 60 percent cited they had “little to no” visibility into planned changes. Survey data showed antiquated communication practices such as email, spreadsheets and word of mouth are still relied upon for sharing critical and time-sensitive information about planned development of operational changes.
6. Poor reporting leads to inaccurate status updates to the business. Only six percent reported having shared release calendars across development and operations. Shared calendars add transparency to development changes, helping to ensure they are not missed.
   

The survey results indicate that it is time for organizations to take a more holistic approach to ITSM as prescribed by the five core publications in ITIL v3 – Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement. In this new on-line world, it’s all about Service Transition, rapidly delivering services required by the business into operational use, and that’s exactly what’s reflected in the survey results.

Many organizations have recognized this challenge and are doubling down on streamlining service and release management, the Agile-ITIL interface.  Perhaps Matt Stratton, Director of Technical Infrastructure at Apartments.com, says it best.

The Doug Serena, CIO project is now also award winning, having been named a Gold Medal winner in the ‘Film or Video of the Year’ category for the Best in Biz Awards 2012. Winners of the Best in Biz Awards 2012 were determined by an independent panel of 32 judges from top-tier news, business and technology publications, broadcast outlets and analyst firms, such as ABC, BusinessWeek, Computerworld, Entrepreneur, eWeek, Examiner, Forbes, FOX News, and IDG. Prior to the Best in Biz, the Doug Serena, CIO series was named a finalist in the Business-To-Business (B2B) Talking Category for the Forrester Groundswell Award 2012.

We are excited that Doug Serena, CIO has continued to drive awareness of the benefits of Orchestrated IT, and are appreciative that it is being recognized even outside of IT.

If you missed the series, you can watch all five episodes here.

Needless to say, I’m excited about this new opportunity and look forward to continuing to bring the industry the most innovative ALM, enterprise DevOps, and IT service management solutions available today.

Most recently I served as GVP & GM of SBM Products & IT Service Management where I worked to develop and launch the Serena Service Management Solution, which received the coveted Pink Elephant Innovator of the Year Award last year. Prior to that, I was VP of SBM products here at Serena where I defined the strategy for process-based visual application assembly and developed the SBM Platform to fulfill the orchestrated IT solution strategy for Serena.

In the year ahead, I plan to help Serena continue our great journey of strengthening Serena’s leadership position and will focus on automating and streamlining the supply chain process of application development, delivery and support. We plan to further leverage Serena’s underlying PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) to empower Managed Service Providers and Online Enterprises looking to deliver differentiated process-based application content to their cloud (Process-as-a-Service). Stay tuned!

You can read my full bio here.

I recently gave a presentation on ITSM implementation best practices and was reminded of the nonchalant approach most organizations take towards their implementations when it comes to non-technical facets.  In essence, there’s still a large percentage of companies who focus on the go-live date and tool readiness and often overlook the need for a strategic adoption plan.  This results in a dysfunctional organizational adoption of the tool set (read: “we won’t use it”), limited tool-specific knowledge and another waste of capital in the eyes of senior management.

In order for an ITSM initiative to not only meet its deadlines and provide value back to the company, it’s imperative that the enterprise include an Adoption Campaign during the delivery.  It’s about cultural adoption, education, and assimilation activities that will not only reduce fear and anxiety of the forthcoming change, but increase the user rate while improving processes, which will ultimately drive down organizational costs.  Win-win if you ask me.

Go Beyond the Email

As I’m sure you’ve experienced, internal email is the most commonly used form of promoting tool adoption.  If you’re nodding your head, then you know the drill. Email is sent, some read it, most don’t, and the go-live is a technical success but adoption is a non-event.  People need to be sold on the notion that change is coming; it will make lives easier (if it doesn’t, why do it to begin with?), and is worthy of an embrace.  Failure to sell and market internally will reward you with this type of karmic retribution.  Not to mention, it’s extremely boring.

We need to get creative and excited here, folks!  Create posters, have lunch and learns, and if all else fails, bribe people!  Well, not in the illegal sense, but encourage the population to become involved in the changes that will occur and reward the participants.  Starbucks gift cards go a long way in this regard.

So, the next time you’re looking to upgrade or change your ITSM solution, don’t just concentrate on the go-live dates in order to measure success.  Focus on the people who will be adopting the solution, and do it early.  Success will be right around the corner.

Let me know some ITSM implementation best practices you’ve encountered by adding a comment below.

1. The Squeaky Wheel, who constantly harasses IT or escalates requests.
2. The Black Hole where good requests go to die.
3. The Annual Plan that stays the same, no matter what happens during the year.
4. First Come, First Serve that forces everyone to wait their turn, regardless of business priority.
5. Commitment Conundrum or Analysis Paralysis.
6. Death by Committee, where no one is willing to make a decision.
7. Unfinished Business, when initiatives just die because there’s no one to champion their cause.

So how can you conquer the 7 deadly sins of IT demand? Here are 7 tried and true cures I’ve heard from customers:

1. Don’t just set it and forget it. Build flexibility into your plan, and make sure you have defined time periods, criteria and stage-gates where you review your plans. Be realistic about potential slips and delays, and build that in your plans. And if possible, reserve some capacity for unplanned activities.
2. Set the right path: Make smart decision-making points so that demand can quickly get routed and fulfilled by the right people. Change requests, new project ideas or operational requests should be funneled through a common system that triages each request quickly, and then routes it to the appropriate party. In this model, IT becomes more efficient and responsive to the customer.
3. Establish a czar: You need to have one person be the head “controller” for IT demand within a given service or application domain.  This needs to be a senior representative from the business organization with the right amount of political clout.   Otherwise, your organization will quickly devolve into Committee Conundrum or Death by Committee.
4. Let everyone vote: Use a single place for everyone to submit all requests. Make it open, available and transparent to everyone, so business users know where their requests are, so that good ideas can be expanded upon to make them great ideas.
5. Get real with your people: Initiate time tracking so you can more accurately assess planned versus actual capacity.  Integrate time tracking into the systems where people actually perform their work, like the IT Service Management system and the Configuration Management System.  That way time tracking is done in real time and is not a weekly afterthought.
6. Make the process transparent: Document the process and be sure to include formal stage gates. Ensure the process is visible and understood by all stakeholders, not just IT.
7. Be consistent: define a standard set of criteria to assess and prioritize demand. Use a single system for tracking initiatives, and ensure KPI’s are in place to accurately measure project status.

If you’re ready to slay the seven deadly sins of IT demand management, I highly encourage you to check out the interactive product tour of Serena Demand Manager. You’ll get a hands-on opportunity to see how this revolutionary Serena product can make managing IT demand super fast and easy. And if you haven’t already done so, you should also read the brief whitepaper, “A Fresh Look at IT Demand Management: Four Steps to Intelligently Fulfill Demand Across the IT Lifecycle.”

For the Front Office, Development, and Operations, Serena Orchestrated IT 4.0 consists of Serena’s major solutions, including Serena Dashboard, Request Center, Demand Manager, Requirements Manager, Development Manager, Release Manager, and Service Manager.

New and enhanced Serena solutions to enable Orchestrated IT for the agile enterprise include:

• Dashboard 4.0: The new Serena Mobile Dashboard lets IT executives use the Apple iPad to access and interact with the KPIs and dashboards. The latest version of Serena Dashboard also includes many more metrics for Serena ChangeMan ZMF, providing customers a unified view of both distributed and mainframe platforms.
• Request Center 4.0: Serena Request Center adds smart search capabilities, improving self-service so users can quickly locate knowledge base articles pertinent to their issues. Tighter linkages between service requests and the associated services provide better visibility across the service delivery life-cycle, aiding continual service improvement.
• Demand Manager 4.0: The latest release of Serena Demand Manager provides a number of features that make it easier to track resources and costs. Managers can create teams based on skills, allocate them to project deliverables and be alerted when resources are already fully allocated. Team managers also have complete visibility into both planned and actual allocations in a given month.
• Requirements Manager 4.0: The latest release of Requirements Manager provides a number of customer enhancements, and includes even tighter integrations with Serena Development Manager and Serena Release Manager.
• Development Manager 4.0: Providing many customer enhancements, Development Manager advances the user experience for development team stakeholders, supports process control that unifies the coordination of development change requests across both ChangeMan ZMF and Dimensions CM, and streamlines the hand-off of development packages to Serena Release Manager.
• Release Manager 4.0: Rich development-driven release management capabilities have been added to Serena Release Manager to complement its strong operations-driven release management capabilities. Significant enhancements include support of continuous delivery, intelligent deployments to reduce deployment time, and enhanced cloud deployment capabilities, including the ability to schedule and deploy applications to Amazon EC2. Other enhancements to Serena Release Manager include the scheduling of deployments across multiple applications, the availability of Media Vault / Definitive Media Library (DML) functionality, and enhancements to the release calendar to support user customizable data feeds.
• Service Manager 4.0: The Configuration Management System (CMS) has been enhanced in this release to make it easier for customers to configure authorized and allowable relationships between configuration item (CI) types, associate custom icons with CI categories, create relationships between CIs graphically and zoom in to the details of a CI that is in focus. New dashboards that track work assignments across service request, incident, problem and change management to better manage resources have also been added in this release.

You can read the detailed release notes for all the Serena solutions on the Serena Support website (customer login required).

1. Our customers are doing more with less.

With downsizing, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate restructuring, we have customers who now have only 2 or 3 ChangeMan ZMF administrators versus the 8 – 10 ZMF administrators in the past. Yet, the demand, commitments, and overall workload for the administrators continue to grow.  Fortunately many ZMF enhancements over the past few years have helped administrators be more productive, whether it be by streamlining the compile process, allowing for variable library types, the ability to keep core skeletons cleaner, etc.  We know that customers are looking for even more productivity enhancements along these lines and we aim to please.

2. The user community is expressing the need to facilitate off-platform development and test.

There is a shift to move development and unit test off of the higher priced general purpose MIPS to more cost-effective platforms.  Although we know that mainframes continue to process the lion’s share of the world’s computing workloads and transactions, the tools and methodologies have changed dramatically in the last several years. With new developers coming out of universities who are accustomed to working in a variety of integrated development environments and using more lean development methodologies, how can Serena, and the industry as a whole, adapt to that?

Serena’s response is to Orchestrate IT around key business processes such as Application Development Management and Application Release Management.  With our Serena Development Manager and Serena Release Manager solutions, now companies can manage the entire application development and delivery processes across all platforms in one common system.  We’ve also fitted ChangeMan ZMF to support Java code development and to work with Eclipse through our ChangeMan ZMF Client Pack.

3. Mainframes are not islands.

At least not anymore. Support for heterogeneous platforms and hybrid apps are more relevant now than ever before. With a significant amount of new MIPS-on-the-floor dedicated to zLinux, our customers are looking to us for leadership in orchestrating a unified strategy.

Let’s first talk about what was demonstrated at xChange12. During the conference, we talked about Orchestrated IT and connecting all IT processes, including those for the mainframe and those for distributed systems.  This is a tremendous change from what IT organizations have been accustomed to — a distinct chasm between the mainframe and distributed environments. Now, with zLinux running on System z, and mobile, cloud and embedded thrown into the mix, the lines that separate the platforms no longer exist, or are at least very fuzzy.  As these environments begin to move in lock-step from demand through deployment, Serena is uniquely positioned to assist in navigating every step of the way with rigor, visibility, traceability and the ability to roll back. And with ChangeMan ZMF ERO web services now available, we are able to augment our Orchestrated IT story with the intelligence that ERO brings to the table.

Serena Dashboard provides out of the box metrics, facilitates product integrations and provides ChangeMan ZMF-specific information providing complete visibility into the environment.

Beneath this, we have both our Serena Development Manager (DVM) and Serena Release Manager (RLM) solutions which fully integrate with ChangeMan ZMF and can tie mainframe  application lifecycle management (ALM) activities with the distributed applications.

ChangeMan ZMF provides the rigor, scalability, and industrial strength to your mainframe application development and release processes.  And augmenting ChangeMan ZMF are:

• ChangeMan ZMF Client Pack: With ChangeMan ZMF for Eclipse, developers have the option of working in Eclipse and no longer need to log onto a 3270 to interact with ZMF. This is the biggest leap yet in what we are delivering for ChangeMan ZMF for Eclipse.
• ChangeMan zDDnow sports an improved .NET interface, the ability to edit and submit raw (native) XML.  And soon we’ll deliver Windows 8 support, Extended Attribute Volume (EAV) support, a simplified installer and a significant amount of ChangeMan ZMF-centric enhancements.
• Serena will continue to focus on, and deliver around doing more with less, support for off-platform development and Orchestrated IT.

For more on the future of the mainframe, listen to the recorded webcasts from the “xChange Again” webcast series:

• “The Mainframe is Not an Island: Orchestrate Your App Dev Around the Mainframe“
• “Modern Mainframe Application Development with ChangeMan ZMF”

• What’s the status of my requests?
• Why can’t IT fulfill my demands faster?
• What’s IT doing with my budget?

So what are the 7 Deadly Sins and how are they jeopardizing IT success?

1. The Squeaky Wheel: Whether it’s constantly harassing IT or escalating requests, the Squeaky Wheel makes sure his demands get fulfilled, no matter what the impact is to the rest of IT’s efforts. The Squeaky Wheel is a surefire way to delay everyone else’s initiatives and upset the IT apple cart.
2. The Black Hole: The most common complaint of business stakeholders? They have no idea what the status of their requests is. Ideas get submitted, but they end up in an IT Black Hole and then no one can tell what happened to them. Just as bad, these requests often get released without the business knowing about them!
3. The Annual Plan: Every IT organization has a great annual plan on the amazing initiatives they’ll accomplish in the upcoming year. The problem? Things change – priorities, competitive offerings, resources – but the plan never does. And usually there’s no process or plan on how to modify the plan in mid-stream.
4. First Come, First Serve: Following close behind the Squeaky Wheel is First Come, First Serve. Without clear direction and priority, IT simply serves whoever is first in line. When something more important comes along, the initiative has to wait its turn.
5. Commitment Conundrum: Or call it Analysis Paralysis. Often times, IT organizations are too afraid to actually commit resources to initiatives that they end up analyzing and analyzing business requirements until it’s too late to do anything.
6. Death by Committee: We’ve all been there. A close corollary to the Commitment Conundrum, this deadly sin makes progress slow to a halt because no one on the governing body is willing to make a decision.
7. Unfinished Business: Even success can lead to failure! Often after the initial phase of the project, the sponsor is promoted or moves on, and the IT initiative just dies because there’s no one to champion its cause.

Once you’re aware of these 7 Deadly Sins, only then can you start taking steps to conquer them. First, I encourage you to read the brief whitepaper, “A Fresh Look at IT Demand Management: Four Steps to Intelligently Fulfill Demand Across the IT Lifecycle.” Then subscribe to the Serena blog so you can catch our upcoming post, “How to Conquer the 7 Deadly Sins of Demand Management.”

Perhaps a lot more than you think.

Last weekend, I watched a more recent Academy Award-nominated baseball film, Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.  Based on Michael Lewis’s biographical book of the same name, Moneyball recounts how General Manager Billy Beane (Pitt) and the 2002 Oakland A’s competed against wealthier teams, like the New York Yankees, despite a payroll roughly a third the size of the Yankees’.

In one scene, Peter Brand (Hill) uses a video to make a point to his boss, Beane.  At the end of the video, Beane says to Brand, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”

Thinking Beane may have missed the point of the video, Brand says, “It’s a metaphor.”  Beane understood.

I also saw a metaphor in the story as a whole, though probably not one that the writers or director intended.  Beane’s challenges in Moneyball mirror the challenges we face today in the IT industry.  Let’s take a look at some ways Beane overcame his challenges and how we might apply similar thinking to IT:

1. Identify needs.  Beane realized he had to think differently and identify the real challenge he needed to solve:  How to produce enough runs to win games and make the playoffs or win the World Series, despite severe budget constraints.

How it relates to IT – In order for IT to meet the needs of the business, we can’t make assumptions.  We must capture the actual business demand for IT services or development projects using an application like Serena Demand Manager.

2. Define a quantifiable solution.  Beane created an innovative way to address his challenge of producing runs.  With the help of Brand, a fictionalized composite of an assistant General Manager with an Ivy League economics degree, Beane ignored traditional baseball statistics and focused on statistics that directly impacted run production and minimized outs.

How it relates to IT – We can’t afford to spend our time or our money on low priority items, and we need to add value as efficiently as possible.  Therefore, we should design services that best align to the needs of the business.  Well-defined services should be published in a service catalog and should include measurement goals.  Serena Request Center enables customers to quickly publish IT’s services to the business.

3. Evaluate and improve.  Together, Beane and Brand found ways of quantifying value and evaluating performance to assemble a team that would help them better predict success in the form of runs scored and wins.  Throughout the season, they continued to tweak their roster to get the greatest value from the team.

How it relates to IT – We must continually evaluate performance and look for areas to increase value, reduce cost or gain efficiency.  Monitoring service levels associated with the items in the service catalog often gives us the best snapshot of performance.  Serena Request Center allows you to quickly and easily define the service levels and view both real-time and historical performance.

Tighter budgets.  Need for greater innovation to increase value and drive success.  Finding ways to quantify performance and determine how to continually improve.  Maybe we don’t romanticize IT as much as baseball, but it’s only a metaphor.

For more information on how Serena can help you drive home value with our award-winning solutions, visit the Serena Demand Manager or Serena Request Center product pages or check out one of our Orchestrated IT videos.

Here are some of the key excerpts from the Wave ALM report:

“Serena has made impressive advances at both the individual tool and suite level. Central to its product strategy is ‘orchestration,’ a vision of ALM as an ongoing, rhythmic activity. Not surprisingly, given this vision of a regular flow of activity (conceive, build, test, deploy), Serena has one of the best workflow designers available. Serena’s recent enhancements to its ALM portfolio, such as the Serena Release Manager, provide more support in this end-to-end orchestration model.”

The report went on to say,

“Serena has recognized how important it is for organizations to effectively orchestrate the larger ‘meta-process’ of software development and delivery, which spans the typical activities (coding, testing, building, etc.) that guide the development efforts of other commercial and open source tools. Serena Software tells a very clear story about the challenges orchestrating development and delivery in large IT organizations and how its products help organizations address those challenges.”

The Forrester Wave report was written by analysts Tom Grant, Lyle McNabb and Alissa Anderson, and is a thorough look at the ALM landscape. Analysts perform deep research and analysis into the vendors included in the report and even survey third-party influencers to make sure they are familiar with the technology.

Read the full report.

ITSM guru Ben Cody will be presenting on “IT Economics: Mastering Business Demand” at FUSION 12 on Oct. 30 at 11:15 a.m. PT. If you’re around, come learn how you’ll be able to effectively utilize the resources to meet business demand, eliminate work that doesn’t provide value to the business, make a better case for additional resources where needed, and master the challenge of meeting business demand for IT services.

We’re looking to keep the momentum going with the “Best Hybrid Cloud Solution,” one of the 2012 UP-START Cloud Computing Awards. The 2012 UP-START Cloud Awards recognize cloud-computing contributions to the business and technology community. We think we have a great shot at this given how Serena’s Orchestrated IT offerings are both available from the cloud and help IT organizations deploy their apps to the cloud.

Finalists are selected via a public voting system, which is open now through November 23, 2012. Please help support Serena and vote by clicking here and selecting Serena as the “Best Hybrid Cloud Solution” for this year’s UP-START awards.

Just recently, Serena conducted a survey with Agile2012 attendees and they tell us a similar story.  While agile software development was getting good marks for customer satisfaction, it was clear that communication across the enterprise was a major challenge facing IT organizations who wanted to make all of IT more “enterprise agile.” In fact, more than 50 percent of respondents indicated that understanding and also prioritizing customer demand needed the most improvement for agile to be successful. What’s more surprising is that when it came to deploying releases into production, only 30% – 40% of Support and IT Operations – the teams that are the first line of defense for helping customers – had any visibility into releases. Check out the full infographic.

With this in mind, it’s comforting to hear that many of our customers are already looking across the whole IT application and service delivery lifecycle and embracing the concept of Orchestrated IT. By orchestrating planning, development, deployment and service, while optimizing visibility through an executive IT dashboard, IT organizations can better understand how they can better deliver what the business really needs. In fact, Serena customers that have orchestrated information and communication across the whole IT lifecycle have realized some amazing results.  “What is Orchestrated IT? Check out this short 2-minute video that explains what Orchestrated IT can do for you.

Service Catalog was a hot topic.  The majority of customers were planning rollouts over the next 12 to 18 months.  Almost all had plans to go far beyond a traditional IT-centric catalog, and also include other services such as facilities, HR, legal and accounting functions.  And that’s how it should be.  For catalogs to be adopted, they truly need to be a one stop shop.  IT is just one group that supports line-of-business people.  In fact, the average employee probably only submits 4 or 5 IT requests a year.  But if you consider the number of requests they make to other supporting functions, then we’re talking some real numbers – scores, if not hundreds.  Now that’s some volume that can really drive adoption.  On average, only 40% of incidents and service requests come through a catalog or self-service portal.  To get better numbers, consider expanding the types of services you offer to go beyond IT.

Talk of Service Catalog then leads us into the broader topic of Demand Management.  More on that later.  In the meantime, if you’re going to Fusion 12 in Dallas later this month, come see my presentation on Demand Management.  The title is “IT Economics: Mastering Business Demand” and it’s scheduled for Tuesday, October 30, 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Apartments.com‘s technology teams were doing two-week sprints but found that releases needed to be managed better and automation was a must.  According to Matt Stratton, Director of Technology Operations at Apartments.com:

“In our business, we can’t afford to have 18 month projects for new features. That’s an eternity in the online world. How can you have a two-week sprint and then take three days to deploy an application or new feature? We were very good at creating new products, but we needed to get better at how we managed the releases of these products“

After considering a homegrown solution and consulting Gartner, Apartments.com discovered Serena to be the leader in the release management space and began evaluating our solutions.

In just six weeks Apartments.com implemented Serena’s DevOps solutions, going live with incident management, service request and release automation.  The result was a 70% reduction in environmental issues.  Such tremendous success led to Apartments.com winning a Serena Innovation Award at xChange12.

Want to learn more?  Check out the following links.

• Video of Matt Stratton, Apartments.com Director of Technology onstage at xChange12
• Video of Serena Innovation Award Presentation at xChange12
• Apartments.com Case Study

According to EMA: “There was virtually no aspect of NGITM functionality left unaddressed by Serena. While of recent vintage, its ITSM coverage includes full support for Change, Incident, and Service Catalog. Consistent with its origins, project portfolio and execution are both fully supported, and its support for requirements management is without peer in this report – few other vendors have a dedicated module for this, and Serena’s has been a leading industry product for years… Unlike most other vendors in this report, Serena has rich support for software configuration management, which makes them especially attractive for those seeking a full DevOps solution.”

Wow.

This EMA recognition comes on top of recent praise from other analyst firms such as Gartner, Ovum and Info-Tech Research. Of course, Serena was also fortunate to recently receive product awards from the Network Products Guide and from Pink Elephant.

Read the full EMA report.

Also, see snapshots of all recent analyst acclaim for Serena.

The Twitter-based contest called for contestants to submit a haiku poem expressing their gratitude for IT agility. Winners were selected based on creativity, humor and relevance and announced via Twitter today. The judging panel also verified that all submissions adhered to all of the contest rules and guidelines.

Raise your glasses, please…THE WINNERS AND WINNING SUBMISSIONS ARE:

Grand Prize Winner – Beer for a Year from Amazing Clubs

Chris Hoell ‏‪@MNBadgerDad

Quicker than before

How could we do without it

Beers on Serena

2^nd Place Winner – $75 Gift Certificate

Jason Siegel ‏@siegel_j

Agile Serena

With Orchestrated IT

Transform Speed and Cost

3^rd Place Winner – $25 Gift Certificate

Kaizeneer ‏‪@Kaizeneer

Meta-MORE-phosis

Turn problems into profits

With Agile IT lean

Thanks to the multitude of entrants and also to our judging panel for another fun and worthy contest!

Give us just 2 minutes and you’ll be able to see how Serena Orchestrated IT can get your Apps and Ops teams to work perfectly in sync. After watching the video, I encourage you to see Orchestrated IT in action by watching our Doug Serena CIO webisode miniseries that shows an IT leadership team using Orchestrated IT. Or, for a more detailed product tour, I recommend you watch the six-minute product demo.

The voice of the customer has always been the focus of xChange, it is, after all, where the name of the conference comes from. This year we were able to hear more of that voice and there was a real sense of progress and achievement in all the customer presentations. I got the sense that, after decades of striving for a direction, the IT professionals in the room were finally able to drive forward on IT infrastructure projects that would result in better service delivery to the end-user stakeholders.

Take Matt Stratton at Apartments.com. He talked about the transformation his organization effected that resulted in a 70% reduction in environmental issues during delivery and deployment. Consider the time wasted and frustration caused by a failed push to a test environment. Worse still, consider the consequences of a failed push to production. Matt modestly suggested that it was a minor achievement in a whole landscape of reform, but, as I said at the time, “if any organization made only a 7% reduction in errors they would declare victory!”

And Paula Callis at Shelter Insurance spoke about how her organization was critically reviewing service delivery systems. Her organization recognizes that IT must lead the innovation and provide service that excels even before the business asks for it. It is a great sign or organizational maturity when a cadence of review, redefinition and reform exists.

In so many individual conversations with customers this year there was a real sense of pride and achievement. Not only had they shepherded through successfully the applications and features the business demanded, but they had also taken the over the tempo and begun to invest in their systems to better help them continue to meet the demand of the business.

Perhaps we are no longer the cobbler’s children after all.

A demonstration of Serena’s Development Manager kicked things off for the early birds with Mike Troth from R&D describing the persona-based UI workbench and the evolving and rich user experience of Serena’s Orchestrated ALM solutions.  Armed with a second coffee, many then headed over to hear Iryna Lutsiuk from the Quality Assurance team reveal an internally developed SBM application for test case management being used to manage test cases, test requirements, test runs across all Application development teams…..oh boy, I lost count of the number of customers asking when they could have it. What a great moment for Iryna and her team. With customers now dazed with excitement, it was time to head over to hear the future of Software Configuration Management and here again, Alex Shevchenko from our R&D team orchestrated even more buzz and excitement and injected some tremendous humor as we neared the end of a terrific xChange12.

Speeding ALM implementations, Peter Raymond from R&D described Serena’s Orchestrated ALM reference architecture. Walking through domain models, artifact relationships and process models, the reference architecture provides a blueprint to help our customers coordinate and integrate processes and tools across the Application Development and Delivery lifecycle. He then described a customer implementation that was expedited through use of the reference architecture to simply revise and adjust forms, workflows and integrations quickly and efficiently.

There was plenty of excitement when Jack Leon, also from R&D, revealed the evolution of our process-based agile planning solution to achieve end to end agility across the ALM lifecycle. The level of audience participation and engagement revealed a high degree of appreciation from Product owners, Scrum masters, and Development managers and we look forward to working with members of our Special Interest Group as we continue to optimize the agile user experience across planning, development and release.

Matt Stratton from Apartments.com took the agile theme a stage further when he described their ITSM and Release Automation solution. Key highlights and learning included a heavy focus on automation of manual deployment tasks and activities, a need for a well-defined branching and merging strategy in development to streamline activity from the delivery teams, and a re-orientation of roles/responsibilities across Development, QA and Tech Operations. The resulting applause wrapped up a terrific day at Serena xChange12 as we headed to the xTravaganza party at the House of Blues.

After yesterday’s focus on Serena’s vision and roadmap, today was all about our customers.  We started off early this morning with 400 people assembled in general session, today’s consisting of an often inspiring set of presentations, including the Serena Innovation Awards, the now traditional Fact or Fiction customer panel and the new Serena Charity Challenge winner.

Serena founder Doug Troxel skyped in for the Innovation Awards ceremony, while they were handed out by Doug Serena, CIO.  The Douggie for Orchestrated Apps went to Katherine Chu of Navy Federal Credit Union, while the Douggie for Orchestrated Ops went to Peter Rizzo of Interactive Data Corporation and the Douggie for Orchestrated IT went to Matt Stratton of Apartments.com.

I then had some fun with three Fact or Fiction panelists: Craig Kaley of LenderLive, Paula Callis of Shelter Insurance, and Justin Arnoldi of Blue Turtle.  They gamely passed judgement on a series of provocative statements, providing interesting commentary about each.

We ended the morning on a truly uplifting note, as we awarded the Oregon Humane Society with a check for $5,000 AND a new surgery scheduling system built in Serena Business Manager.  This was the result of the Serena Charity Challenge, “won” by Robin Drummond of Kaiser Permanente, who nominated the Oregon Humane Society and built the app.  Serena’s contribution is the $5K check and freely providing access from the cloud for them to use their new system.  Almost as sweet as a new puppy!

After an afternoon of great breakouts and a great talk by Matt Stratton about the DevOps accomplishments at Apartments.com, we’re now assembling at the House of Blues for the 2012 xTravaganza!

Great day!

In her Release Train presentation, Kim Beckham, Director of PMO, talked about Serena’s change to the use of our Release Train technology (part of Serena Release Manager) to improve product delivery.  Several attendees are looking at doing just the same, took lots of notes and asked many questions.  Great session!

The last session of the day was presented by Jack Leon, Development Manager, and he discussed the ITIL V3 compliant Definitive Media Library (DML) as provided in Serena Release Manager.

Stay tuned for more updates and customer experiences from xChange12!  In the meantime, learn more about Serena Release Manager, the Enterprise DevOps solution.

One of the biggest considerations is an adoption plan. Yes unified tooling to provide orchestration and end to end visibility is a must have, but the beyond that, the biggest challenge is affecting cultural change. The organizations that are on the right track have appointed leaders that have served in both Development and Operations capacities. Those folks “get it”, and are well on their way to orchestrating IT in their respective companies!

More on adoption strategies after xChange. For those attending this week, you can look forward to a series of great customer presentations today and a fun time tonight. For those not at xChange, hope to see you here next year!

The morning keynote sessions were fun, informative and well received.  We had some 400 people in the room at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center with another 200 tuned into the live webcast.

Kevin Parker welcomed everyone, and then brought up a “surprise” attendee – Doug Serena, CIO.  Doug Serena updated everyone about how his company had acquired their largest competitor, the one they vanquished in the videos, and that he was here at xChange12 to learn how the newest advances in Orchestrated IT could help him bring the new people and systems up to snuff.

John Nugent’s keynote was passionate and informative, after which I had the privilege of interviewing Safeway’s Larry McAuley about his company’s transformation into an Online Agile Enterprise and how Orchestrated IT is helping them make that journey.

Killer demos of the latest in Orchestrated IT systems followed, as did an afternoon of breakouts.

My discussions with attendees indicated that everyone was getting lots out of the proceedings and that lots of ideas are indeed getting xChanged!

Can’t wait for tomorrow.

Development-Driven Release Management and Cloud Deployment

Serena Release Manager has added Development-driven release management to its already rich support for Operations-driven release management.  Development-driven releases are characterized by continuous delivery, which are especially useful during pre-production phases of the application delivery lifecycle.

Serena Release Manager also supports intelligent deployments, which deploy only what has changed, reducing deployment time and costs, and minimizing business risk.  Last but not least, Serena Release Manager now provides enhanced cloud deployment ability, including scheduling and tracking deployments to Amazon Web Services.

Social IT Collaboration

Serena Service Manager is the first Serena Orchestrated IT solution to incorporate the new Orchestrated IT Feed. Leveraging social IT capabilities to resolve issues quickly, the Orchestrated IT Feed allows stakeholders to monitor and participate in a customized activity stream and make more informed decisions as a team. Stakeholders can find and collaborate with an expert, “follow” an item, person or issue, and receive updates via Twitter, Yammer, email or SMS.

Mobile Catalog and Requests

The new Serena Mobile Request Center takes the request fulfillment process mobile, allowing both business and IT users to conveniently browse services and associated SLAs, as well as submit, monitor, fulfill or approve requests from any mobile device. With support including iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android, Serena Mobile Request Center enables approved users in the front of back office to monitor the status of requests and key metrics on the go.

Mobile IT Analytics

The new Serena Mobile Dashboard brings important IT analytics to the Apple iPad. With executive adoption of tablets for business on the rise, the Serena Mobile Dashboard lets IT executives use the iPad to access and interact with the latest KPIs and dashboards. Intuitive drill-downs, simple data manipulation and rapid personalization make it easy to find the right information at the right time to run IT more efficiently.

The Serena Mobile Dashboard is available now on the Apple App Store.

Social Capabilities for Process Management

Serena Business Manager is the process management platform at the core of all Serena Orchestrated IT solutions. The new Orchestrated IT Feed, Serena’s latest innovation in social IT, makes it easy for IT stakeholders to access and collaborate on the latest information relevant to their jobs. Stakeholders can choose to receive task-related updates in real time via Twitter, Yammer, email or SMS.

Discover the power of Orchestrated IT!  Watch a 2-minute video describing the challenges of coordinating Apps and Ops, and how Serena Orchestrated IT can get IT to work perfectly in sync.

Attendees will be choosing from breakout sessions across six tracks, encompassing Orchestrated IT for Engagement and Visibility, Orchestrated Application Development, Orchestrated Release Management, Orchestrated Service Management & Operations, Serena Business Manager, and Mainframe Solutions.  Many of these breakout sessions are delivered by Serena customers themselves.

The keynote sessions will provide visibility into Serena’s vision and roadmap, including demonstrations of Serena’s latest solutions.  We’re also going to announce several winners: of the Serena Charity Challenge and of the “Douggies”, innovation awards recognizing outstanding Serena customers.

Oh yeah, we’re also going to have a rocking party the last night at the House of Blues.

Stay tuned to the Serena Blog for regular updates from xChange.  You can also follow the goings-on via Twitter hashtag #SerenaXchange.

But first, what are Agile Enterprises?  Today’s business is increasingly conducted online, with those interactions increasingly involving phones, tablets, vehicles, sensors and other smart devices.  This ubiquitous connectivity of smart devices and online commerce is reshaping industries and birthing new ones.  Turning this trend to advantage requires that enterprises be agile in their use of applications and IT systems.  In short, it requires them to be Agile Enterprises.

Dot-coms – as pure online businesses – have the most obvious need for IT agility.  But they are far from alone.  Financial services have long been online dependent businesses.  Online agility has now spread to retail, government, hospitality, entertainment, manufacturing and transportation.  Indeed, the winning organizations in nearly every industry and public sector are now Agile Enterprises.

Agile enterprises use IT strategically, mastering the ability to sense and respond to IT requirements and opportunities faster and more assuredly than their competitors.  They can do this best by utilizing Orchestrated IT systems that leverage today’s technology imperatives.

To help spread the word about IT’s essential role in enterprise agility, we’re sponsoring a #GiveITaBeer haiku contest on Twitter.  Check it out.

This isn’t easy. Sure, there are usability and UX design principles and competencies, but there is nothing more telling and more accurate than learning the human using the application (you). And I don’t mean just learning your name, responsibilities, and background. I mean learning your psychology. Now. Don’t get all creeped out on me! Modeling systems after human behavior has led to many of the amazing gadgets and apps we enjoy today. And of course, as you might imagine, there’s no way to get it right — only to begin to engage, entice, and influence you, making your use of an application an enjoyable and seamless experience. And of course, we (designers) also try to create experiences that you may not know or even realize you’re going to like until you use them! And lastly, we try to design with intent (influencing behavior rather than modeling it). This approach has led innovation in app design and development to a new level. So in a nutshell, UX designers study what makes you YOU, so that we may understand how you perceive yourself, solve problems, make decisions, are influenced by others, and what motivates you to behave a certain way.

All this leads me to invite you to join my team at xChange12, our annual global user conference, for an ALM User Experience study. We’ll look at some cool stuff and ask you some interesting questions. You won’t want to miss it because you’ll be entered in to a grand prize drawing!

Studies are an hour long and will be held Monday through Wednesday, September 10-12, all day.  Take a look at all of the sessions and register to attend!  You can also email me at cglasgow@serena.com with any questions. Help us understand what makes you tick.

So we’re looking to celebrate IT agility through poetry, haikus in particular.  The winning haiku will win a full year of monthly craft beer deliveries.

Of course the contest is being held on Twitter under the hashtag #GiveITaBeer.

So tap into your creative side for a chance to win beer for a year or cash prizes.  Simply thank IT or describe IT agility in the form of a tweeted, 17-syllable Haiku. The contest will kick off on Monday, August 27, 2012 at 9:01 a.m. PT and ends September 21, 2012 at 12:01 p.m. PT.

To enter, write and submit a Haiku poem (Three lines of 5-7-5 syllables) showing your appreciation for IT Agility. Each line of the Haiku should be separated by a period, comma or slash. All entries must be submitted via Twitter to @Serena_Software and include the hash tag #GiveITaBeer.

This is your chance to win yourself or your IT department Beer for a Year!

A panel of judges will select winners based on creativity, humor and relevance. Winners will be announced via Twitter on Monday, September 24, 2012.

For official rules and prizes go to http://ser.so/ITagilitycontest.

According to a survey of global CIOs IDC published in Information Week, the primary focus for companies’ innovation plans is making business processes more efficient. Their top concern is that they won’t be able to innovate fast enough to meet business goals.

Process automation offers the most cost-effective way to make business and IT processes more efficient, reduce costs, ensure compliance and provide both speed and consistency in how organizations conduct and adapt business activities. Expanding process automation and using automation to connect business and IT are both major parts of ITIL best practices. But adoption of process automation typically lags well behind what is possible. Obstacles include lack of clear ownership for process automation initiatives, especially when the processes cross organizational boundaries; concern that automation will create frustrations by imposing inflexibility; experience with process-automation methods that are hard to adapt; lack of clear and complete metrics for deeply assessing how well process automation is working and where it can be improved.

In spite of the need for better automation that can be easily adapted, most IT service management (ITSM) solutions offer limited process automation capabilities – and what’s available for managing processes in these products is not designed to support the flexibility, visibility and extensibility that’s a critical need. This gap exists because ITSM products have traditionally been built to focus on databases and data management, not on process modeling and process orchestration.

Because of this key absence in capabilities, some IT organizations have “rolled their own” ITSM solutions, using platforms like Lotus Notes to take advantage of complex workflow features and easier report editing. But this approach carries high costs for licenses and development, no built-in ITSM-specific functionality or ITIL processes, and challenging upgrades. Rather than adding value by adapting a packaged ITSM product to meet needs, the IT staff spends time duplicating the work that ITSM products experts have built into their products.

To fully realize the advantages of process automation and IT service management best practices (as well as faster time to value), look for a new class of ITSM solutions that have a full-featured process management platform built in. The availability of graphical process modeling and reporting built into process management platforms means that IT organizations can expedite process automation, improve visibility, and adapt rapidly to address changing demands.  This ability to focus on process and adaptability without sacrificing data management also simplifies the extension of process automation to diverse business activities, not only improving IT service but also strengthening the interconnections with the business.

To see a process-based ITSM solution, click to watch the demo of Serena Service Manager in Action.

First the location: just inside the elbow of 101 and 92, it feels like we’re in Foster City, because, well, we’re across the street from Foster City, a mere block from the Metro Tower.  This puts us within walking distance of restaurants, hotels and all manner of stores.  Think of this spot as the commuting center-of-gravity for the entire Bay Area.  Our East Bay folks come off the San Mateo bridge right into the office, Bay-side and City commuters come right off 101, while western peninsula folks like me take 280 and 92, avoiding 101 altogether.

Most importantly to the evident happiness of everyone here at Serena HQ is the excellent layout, light and size of this full floor space.  Unlike our previous Redwood City HQ, which was always too large (but such a deal back in the day), this 21K sq. ft. space is roomy but cozy, which imparts an energy and sense of teamwork that our formerly wide open spaces lacked.  Light streams in from all four directions, along with views of water on the Bay side and fog creeping over the Santa Cruz Mountains on the Pacific side.  The renowned beauty of the Bay Area sure isn’t hidden here!

We’re still unpacking a bit, but are ready to host customers, not to mention Serena staffers from Hillsboro, Woodland Hills, Colorado Springs, Reston, the Big Apple, St Albans, München, Köln, Kiev, Paris, Milano, Madrid, Stockholm, São Paulo, Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul and Bangalore.  This isn’t the largest Serena facility, but it is one of the nicest.

How do you get here?  Fly into SFO, then drive four exits south on 101 and look for the Serena folks with smiles on their faces.

Serena’s Orchestrated IT solutions include Serena Dashboard, Request Center, Demand Manager, Requirements Manager, Development Manager, Release Manager and Service Manager, with orchestration powered by Serena Business Manager (SBM). Version 3.5 is the first unified release where all Serena solutions share the same revision number and are updated simultaneously, providing you with higher quality products, simplified installation, tighter integrations, better support for distributed and mainframe environments, and easier service and support.

The latest version of our solutions include significant enhancements, including the ability to coordinate both application and operations changes through a consistent user interface and with a unified IT inbox. Additional enhancements include:

• Dashboard 3.5: The NEW Serena Mobile Dashboard allows IT executives to use mobile devices like the iPad to interact with the latest KPIs and dashboards. Intuitive drill-downs, simple data manipulation and rapid personalization make it even easier to find the right IT metrics no matter where you are.
• Request Center 3.5: Serena Request Center now comes with over 30 pre-built services, or “starter packs,” making it easier for you to jump-start your rollout. Knowledge management articles can now be made available for public or internal use, and controlled down to departmental or individual level.
• Service Manager 3.5: The newest release of Serena Service Manager now makes it easier to assign tasks to groups or specific individuals and quickly review all tickets previously submitted by a user – further helping expedite issue resolution.
• Development Manager 3.5: The latest version of Development Manager includes enhancements such as work-area client compatibility, event hooks for validation, enhancements to refactoring views and much more.
• Requirements Manager 3.5: The latest updates to Requirements Manager include significant performance enhancements and diagnostics, enhanced dependent attributes and improved quick search capabilities.
  

Version 3.5 of Serena’s Orchestrated IT solutions can be downloaded from the My Downloads section of the Serena Support site.

The courses will be taught by our Education Instructors and begin immediately after xChange12 on Thursday, September 13 and conclude on Friday, September 14.  Courses that are normally 3-4 days will be collapsed into a 2-day intensive format.  Same classes, just packed into less time.

The perks you’ll enjoy:

• A huge discount off our regular listed price: each class is $1,000.
• The same low room rates for the extra nights.
• Breakfast and lunch during training days!
• The option to add additional students from your organization at the same discounted rate of $1,000 per student.

Available courses:

• 200 – SBM 10.1 Designer and Administrator Intensive class, 2 days, $1,000
• 300 – SBM 10.1 Advanced Designer class, 2 days, $1,000
• 400 – SBM 10.1 Advanced Orchestrations & Scripting Intensive class, 2 days, $1,000
• 200 – Dimensions CM Fundamentals Intensive class, 2 days, $1,000
• 300 – Dimensions CM Administrative Intensive class, 2 days, $1,000
• 100-200 – RM User/Advanced Intensive class, 2 days, $1000

See more detailed class descriptions and add Training to your xChange12 experience!

The breakout sessions are grouped into these six tracks, representing Serena’s Orchestrated IT solutions:

• Orchestrated IT for Engagement and Visibility, covering request and demand mangement and reporting
• Orchestrated Application Development, covering requirements, development and ALM
• Orchestrated Release Management, covering deployment and DevOps
• Orchestrated Service Management and Operations, covering IT service management
• Serena Business Manager (SBM)
• Mainframe Solutions

Also, we are proud to announce that 25 customers will be speaking about the above topics, specifically how Serena’s solutions have supported their business and IT success.  Here are a few that you won’t want to miss:

• Delta Airlines: Improving the Path to Production in CICS and DB2 Environments
• SunGard: Sharing Lessons Learned and Best Practices on the Journey to ITIL Maturity
• McGraw Hill Financial: Best Practices for Implementing SBM and Serena Service Manager

Read session abstracts and begin formulating your agenda now!  For ease of planning, the agenda builder gives you several options for viewing the sessions – by track, product and presenting company.

SHARE 2012 from August 5-10 in Anaheim, CA

SHARE Inc. is an independent, volunteer-run association providing enterprise technology professionals with continuous education and training, valuable professional networking and effective industry influence. As we continue to participate at SHARE, we’ll showcase our Orchestrated IT solutions for the mainframe, which include Serena Development Manager, Serena Release Manager, ChangeMan ZMF, ChangeMan SSM, Comparex, StarTool IOO, StarTool FDM and StarTool DA.

Agile2012 Conference from August 13-17 in Dallas, TX

At Agile2012 attendees will explore the latest Agile development methodologies, technologies, tools, leadership principles, management philosophies and processes.  Serena will communicate how our Orchestrated IT solutions help the entire IT lifecycle become agile, our philosophy on linking Dev and Ops, and what “self-service deployment” means.  Also, team members will be on hand to demonstrate the latest version of Serena Release Manager, the only release management offering on the market today that leverages a process-based approach.

Pink Forum 12 – ITSM Leadership Forum from August 16-17 in Scottsdale, AZ

This event features multi-tracks with 90-minute roundtable discussion style sessions, addressing 24 of today’s most pressing ITSM issues.  The goal of PinkForum12 is to provide ITSM Leaders with essential awareness, insight, guidance and strong advice for ensuring that critical issues are being addressed. We will present the updated Serena Service Manager, winner of the ITIL Innovation of the Year Award, Tech Awards Circle Bronze Award and Network Products Guide Best IT Product.

We hope to meet you at one of these locations!

• Runbook automation focuses on automating the standard procedures for operating the IT infrastructure and applications (the service supply). These workflows are typically standard routines with limited variations and notifications/reporting.
• Process automation focuses on automating the processes that deliver all kinds of services to users (the service demand). These workflows can be complex and sometimes are designed to include many notifications throughout the process, drawing in both other applications and people from IT and business to act on issues or exceptions. These workflows may require frequent review and adaptation.

Process automation is not limited to IT activities; it can also cover business activities such as hiring and provisioning new employees or fulfilling requests for training. Process automation can be developed using a variety of programs (not all with optimal outcomes, but more on that later…), from ERP systems to BPM platforms. The key for success with process automation – especially when it crosses organizational boundaries – is that the platform you use has these attributes that ensure simplicity, adaptability and visibility:

• A model that is designed specifically for managing processes, with a simple interface that enables authorized users to proactively orchestrate change – without having to wait
• A graphical process modeler that makes processes easy to create, review and modify so you can quickly adapt as needed – without having to write code
• Audit information presented in reports that are easy to create and modify so you can easily explore information ad hoc – without having to fly blind

Want to learn more about the most effective and flexible approach to process automation for IT and business services? Download Top 5 Reasons for Orchestrated Service Management.

Serena has indeed received four product and leadership awards so far in 2012, along with placement in some prominent Top Companies listings.  Together these add up to independent confirmation of our status as one of the most important software companies in the world and of Orchestrated IT as one of the most relevant concepts in the world of IT management.

The awards that have come Serena’s way include the Tech Awards Circle, for which Serena Service Manager was a Bronze winner in the Best Enterprise Software category.  Serena Service Manager was also recognized as the Best IT Product with a Network Products Guide Award.  Most impressively, Serena Service Manager and Serena Release Manager were jointly recognized by Pink Elephant as ITIL Innovation of the Year.

This last award is very meaningful given Pink Elephant’s status as the world’s leading ITSM consultancy.

Serena was also recognized as a member of the SD Times 100 for 2012, marking the ninth consecutive year that Serena has made that prestigious list.

Serena has also been recently recognized as a major Silicon Valley / San Francisco Bay Area company.  The San Francisco Business Times ranks Serena as the ninth largest software company on the peninsula, while the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal ranks Serena #18 on their Top 25 Software Companies list.

Taken together, this public recognition reflects the positive work that Serena people do every day, and the great results that our customers get from our software.

In spite of the risk of appearing foolish again, I asked him a different question yesterday: what’s the most important technology he uses? Easy: his phone. Because he can get most of what he needs from that one source.

This generation is used to technology as the delivery system. They expect the process of finding and requesting and getting anything to be centralized, straightforward and user-centric. He missed the decades when technology and applications were built in silos, and users had to be trained to know where and how to get what they needed.

When we’re at work, we increasingly rely on technology (and therefore on IT) to fulfill needs for all kinds of services and business activities. In response, the purpose and scope of the IT Service Desk has evolved, but expectations and impatience continue to grow.

Beyond Traditional IT Tasks

The Service Desk is no longer just for reporting problems – in many cases it’s Grand Central Station, providing access to requests for all kinds of services and information. Innovative IT organizations are adopting a centralized, straightforward and user-centric approach to fulfilling user requests and addressing their issues with a new kind of Service Desk that flips the focus from the controlling technology supply to delivering on service demand – while managing complexity without exposing it to users. Today’s Service Desk has become a unified User Request Center that allows both IT staff and users greater visibility and adaptability.

How has your IT organization expanded the role of the Service Desk? What are your plans for future enhancement?  For ideas on transforming your IT organization, listen to the on-demand webcast Serena on Serena: 30 Days to a Complete Makeover.  Serena’s own IT team shares how they rolled out Serena Request Center, showcasing over 90 business and IT services to 800 employees – in just 30 days!

The development teams are tasked with creating new systems to meet the needs of the business. The operations teams are concerned with availability of services. While the motto of Ops might be “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” the Dev teams are always eager to deliver “faster, smaller, cheaper.” The tension that results from this is compounded by who Release Management reports to. If they report to Dev, there is pressure to release more and more quickly to meet time-to-market constraints. If Release Management reports to Ops, the pressure is to slow the rate of change and reduce risk.

Not surprisingly then, the relationship between Dev and Ops has too often been adversarial. In any IT shop there are numerous stories told of the developers not testing before releasing and of change managers who never approve any changes.

The DevOps movement tries to address that by stating the obvious truth: without collaboration release management will fail. Getting Dev and Ops on the same page and getting them to understand each other’s needs is just the first step.

Getting Dev and Ops to trust each other is critical. Creating systems that integrate the activities of Dev and Ops makes the biggest single difference.  The most effective tool for that is an online release calendar, which shows both Dev and Ops what is planned to release and when. By making the updating of this calendar an automatic byproduct of the development activities, the Operations team is informed early on about proposed and in-motion releases.

Ops now can have a meaningful conversation with Dev about load balancing the release schedule months ahead of the release window instead of the morning before the release. Dev can see the open release holes and manage their project to those dates. And when the inevitable date change happens Dev and Ops stakeholders can be alerted and can react and even sign off to say they have absorbed the impact – or not.

DevOps is a collaborative approach to Release Management. But let me leave you with this thought: who should DevOps report to?

The very creative team here at Serena has come up with a fun and interactive Social IT Game that challenges IT executives to decide what is most important to them in the areas of Demand Management, Requirements Management, Development, Release Management and Service Management. But what is truly fascinating is seeing how those same executives rank the priorities of their peers.

All executives saw “Business Growth” as a priority but when it came to understanding what their colleagues wanted, the gaps revealed much about how deeply ingrained the siloed approach to IT continues to be. For example Release Managers rated “A Common Release Process” as their highest priority but Service Managers set “An Integrated Release Calendar” as their top pick. However, none of the Development Managers guessed that that would be number one for their Service Manager teammates.  We will publish the full results of the Social IT Game later in the year.

The show is on the road until October. If you come to the event we will provide you with your own personal score compared to the industry data we’re collecting.  Plus, we’ll feed you and give you the chance to win cool prizes. Look for an event near you.

See you there!  Oh, and bring your iPad or iPhone.

Step 1: Provide a polished and professional web experience.

IT should present its services in a consumer-quality interface designed from the consumers’ perspective. Make sure the site is easy to use by controlling the complexity in the background. And unify IT and business services in a way that makes sense to users. Sure, unifying lots of diverse services sounds like increasing complexity, but it doesn’t seem complex to users if the definition and presentation of their service options makes sense to them. The biggest challenge is hiding that complexity, which requires a well-connected and orchestrated system that unifies the information and automates the processes across business strategy, IT Ops and Application Development.

Step 2: Make search a central facility.

Customers are used to Googling for what they want on the web; provide the same interaction model. Of course, you need a well-written and fresh knowledge base so there are useful search results when users need information. The goal is getting needs met fast, with as little intervention as possible. Think of users the same way the business thinks of its customers.

Step 3: Be transparent: set expectations up-front on service cost, turn-around time, etc.

Give users insight into choices, let them discover answers on their own, and give them real-time access to the status of requests or issues they submit. Let them help you continually improve (and avoid follow-up calls or tickets) via satisfaction surveys that rate the service, quality of knowledge articles, etc.

Step 4: Measure and adapt.

Doing this right is a continual improvement journey. You’re looking for ways to make processes smarter, to trim costs and time, to add and extend services and options, to satisfy users. With good metrics and reporting – which means also having the ability to drill down and explore – you can find areas that need to be adapted. And you can communicate your progress to stakeholders.

What do you think? Would this meet your needs for service management and delivery?  Please add your comments here.

User interface for approvals

When coupled with the Serena Dashboard, Requirements Manager gives customers many new metrics to help manage their requirements process. Pre-configured metrics include KPIs for requirements approval status, iterations, orphaned requirements and more.

Requirements Manager Dashboard

We’ve also released several important updates to our other Orchestrated IT products, including Serena Dashboard 2.1, Release Manager 2.1 and Development Manager 1.2.

• In addition to the new requirements KPIs, Serena Dashboard now offers over a dozen metrics for ChangeMan ZMF
• Serena Release Manager continues to provide leading-edge features, including tighter IT Operations integrations with Serena Service Manager, visibility into release train scope, and even more release calendar views

Out of a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 being “Excellent,” here’s how the survey respondents rated the different Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) processes:

• Development management: 2.78
• Demand management: 2.74
• Release management: 2.65
• Requirements management: 2.58

The biggest challenges? Deploying on time without issues, clarifying business needs, reusing requirements – these were just some of the top challenges our survey respondents highlighted.

So what should IT organizations do? In a nutshell, they should revisit their deployment process and find the right balance between speed and control in order to ensure they can repeatedly, quickly and confidently deploy their applications. They also need to invest more in requirements processes to help everyone share requirements across a complex technology and organizational landscape.

To get more personalized recommendations and to see how you stack up against your peers, take the IT Benchmark for Application Development. You can download the full research report “IT Trends and Outlooks: Why IT Should Forget About Development” immediately after filling out the 5-minute questionnaire.

SunGard is a leading software and technology services company with more than 20,000 employees serving 25,000 customers across 70 countries. SunGard Institutional Asset Management is an application service provider (ASP). With global financial institutions relying on their services to be available 24×7, the company needed to streamline processes and phase out its aging IT Service Management (ITSM) solution that was built using Lotus Notes.

Quinn goes through:

• Challenges with an outdated Lotus Notes-based service desk solution
• Key requirements for a modern ITSM solution
• Evaluation and selection criteria
• Implementation and rollout plan
• ITSM vision for the company

Check out the video on YouTube and see why Serena was this industry giant’s solution of choice!

Why DevOps?  With online applications being the business, enterprises cannot afford long delays in application development and application enhancement.  Every new feature that can be delivered can generate additional income; and the sooner that feature is delivered, the sooner the income is realized.  DevOps addresses the long-standing divide between App Dev and IT Ops and improves the speed that applications are delivered.

How are they working together?  Sometimes organizationally they are merging or teams are being created.  Recently, at the DevOps Days in Austin, I met development and release engineers who are parts of newly formed DevOps teams.  But these DevOps teams are still in the minority when considering how organizations are delivering DevOps.  More often than not, DevOps is being realized by improved collaboration by the different Development and Operations teams.

How do these disconnected teams, Dev and Ops, work together, especially after so many years of division?  They have different goals and different processes; yet these goals and processes must be combined, connected, or consolidated in order for DevOps to succeed.  Regarding goals, Dev is all about creating new apps and features to reduce risks, reduce costs, improve performance, and/or increase revenue.  Meanwhile, IT Ops’ role is to move new features and apps into production as expediently, efficiently, and effectively as possible.  Traditionally, this meant that App Dev moved quickly and IT Ops moved prudently, often butting heads in the process.  Now, they can’t butt heads; they must work together.

Regarding processes, each group has had its own set of processes which haven’t been well connected.  The hand off between the groups has thus been negatively affected.  And this is one of the most critical challenges that needs to be addressed for DevOps to succeed.  Orchestrating Development Management processes with Release Management processes will ensure that critical application release information is not lost and that DevOps can deliver on its goal – to deliver new apps and new features expediently, efficiently, and effectively so that the business can increase revenue and reduce costs.

If you’re looking for a DevOps solution, read the Ovum Rainbow Map for DevOps, a third party analysis of available DevOps vendors.  According to the report, Serena Software demonstrates comprehensive coverage for a DevOps solution.

We created Doug Serena, CIO to educate people about the benefits of Orchestrated IT in a fun and fresh way.  The results have been gratifying, both anecdotally and quantitatively.  We’ve heard from customers, analysts and journalists that it provides insight into the real goings-on of senior IT leadership teams in a way never before seen.  And now we see that the videos have been viewed a couple thousand times.

Keep a look out for more Doug Serena, CIO news and tweets!

Respondents of the Federal User Group survey include a mix of IT people working in the Federal sector, including at civilian agencies, defense agencies, system integrators and government contractors. The results were particularly interesting when compared to a similar, private sector-focused study that Serena performed last year at Gartner’s AADI Summit.

For instance, Standardizing Methodologies was the number one application development priority in the Federal survey, but ranked number four with private-sector respondents (there were a total of eight priorities in both studies). In addition, Automating Tasks was more important to the Federal group, reported as the number three priority, but was near the bottom of the responses from the Gartner AADI Summit. At the other end of the spectrum, respondents from the Gartner AADI Summit ranked Agile Development near the top in importance (number two priority), whereas it fell near the bottom in overall importance for Federal respondents. Interestingly enough, the hype of cloud computing was lost on both sides as both Federal respondents and those surveyed at the Gartner AADI Summit had Moving Apps to the Cloud as their least important priority.

While development priorities may differ according to the research, all IT organizations agree on key initiatives including these three in the order below:

1. Management of application development as a business process;
2. Central or federated repository for all application development artifacts;
3. End-to-end traceability from production back to requirements.

So what does this research tell us? While the Federal sector may consider Agile less important among all their different IT priorities (compared to the private sector adopting Agile methods more often), it has in fact adopted more forward-thinking automated development processes than the private sector.

Reducing overall application development costs and delivering applications faster are undoubtedly key priorities to both sectors. How each sector gets applications released into production is what varies.

Read more details about the top development issues for Federal IT professionals.

This year we are looking for topics in the following categories:

• Orchestrated Business Engagement & Visibility – your Serena solutions that support how the business interacts with IT
• Orchestrated Application Development – for those implementations of Serena solutions you have created that support the software development teams
• Orchestrated Application Delivery – how you have used Serena solutions to automate the release and deployment processes
• Orchestrated Service & Operations – how your Serena solutions control your service management environment
• Mainframe Solutions – your opportunity to show how you use Serena mainframe solutions in your business
• Serena Business Manager (SBM) – how you have used the SBM platform to build solutions in support of your business and IT needs

You should aim to present for about 30 minutes with 15 minutes for questions. The audience loves detail and really likes to hear about the challenges and how you overcame them.

When you submit your idea, make your description as interesting as possible. Remember, we want the very best of the very best for the conference. If you are selected to speak, we will give you a free pass to xChange 2012 (worth $1,995).  You will be notified whether or not your proposal has been accepted.

Submit your ideas now!  The closing date for submissions is May 31, 2012.

Good luck and see you in Vegas!

I was in China to work with a technology component manufacturer who was looking to overhaul their development processes and toolsets. They need to keep pace with the business which operates in the fastest growing area of technology and faces serious global competition. In the past two decades they have brought in numerous tools to address the individual needs of the developers, testers, business analysts, project managers and so on. And, while these had clearly improved the work delivered by the individual groups in the lifecycle, the client felt there must be something more they could be doing.

Serena’s Value Engineering team set about the analysis and discovered that the client was correct. Productivity and quality was indeed very high from each of the individual groups. But the developers were frustrated by trying to use agile development methods with tools designed for a different time: “we’re trying to go faster but we’re wearing wooden sneakers” one team leader said. The release managers were struggling to coordinate changes across the heterogeneity of the code streams for back office systems and mobile apps, embedded code and web code. The development teams were using individual and siloed instances of many different code repositories. And these code repositories were also decades old and not designed to meet the needs of modern, configuration-based release management.

But most of all, the real issue that was draining resources, was the lack of traceability between the lifecycle stages. The incomplete, inaccurate or inconsistent content that was handed off downstream in the lifecycle was adding many days of rework, duplication and error correction to the whole process. It seems as though everyone had fixed all the problems in their own organization but had not fixed the boundary conditions. Estimates of the wasted effort varied but a picture soon emerged that it could be as much as 20% per person. This figure alone represents tens of millions of dollars (USD) of value in the organization that should be liberated and turned into improved quality, product content and time-to-market. When the other areas of improvement, such as error reduction and the elimination of duplicated effort, are factored in, the potential capacity that can be returned to the organization represents staggering amounts of value.

This client also wants to preserve their existing investment tools that they have purchased, and the ones they have developed themselves. They do not want to sweep away the tools they know and trust with something new and generic.

Serena’s Orchestrated IT approach surprised and delighted them. They realized they would get the connections between the siloes addressed and they’d get to keep their investment in tools with proven heritages and important historical data. But what really impressed them was the ability to derive role specific dashboards in real time that combined data from their existing tools and from their process being automated. The current process is all based on spreadsheets and is entirely manual.

I am looking forward to going back there and seeing their success in a few months after our deployment team has completed their work.

Last week, in episode four, the tension between “Team Doug” and “Team Brad” grew to a boiling point as the release date for Millennium quickly approached. We were also introduced to Doug’s “kids”, and the important trip to India he and his wife hoped to take to finally meet them. Not only the future of Doug’s company, Qlarius, but also the chance of meeting his sponsored children hinges on Millennium’s success!

In the final episode, Doug and his team celebrate a successful early release of Millennium. With a simple keyboard click, Doug releases Millennium into production, turning his team into instant Qlarius rock stars and heroes. While Brad is relieved about the application’s success, something new grips him, stress, as it is now the sales team’s turn in the company spotlight to capitalize on the new application by closing some new business in a hurry. In the end, the development and release of Millennium using Serena’s Orchestrated IT System helped Qlarius turn a corner, and also helped some orphan children in India to meet their sponsors from the other side of the world.

Enjoy the show and don’t forget to participate in our daily trivia contest, which runs through April 20^th, for a chance to win prizes.

Among those responsible for both distributed and mainframe application development and delivery, there was surprise and delight that the upcoming Serena Dashboard will extend out of the box KPI metrics (process and data) across both distributed and mainframe environments; and with the news that ChangeMan ZMF will be encompassed in Serena Development Manager and Serena Release Manager solutions. As today’s increasingly multi-tier applications span platforms and technologies, it is comforting to note that the Serena Dashboard will provide a single pane of glass for insight and visibility across Application Development and IT Operations, enabling timely decisions for faster cycle-times, streamlined collaboration, and elimination of waste.

Try out the Serena Dashboard yourself with the interactive demo!

• Serena Service Manager for the IT Products and Services for Service Delivery category;
• Serena Release Manager for the Application Delivery category.

Winners will be announced on May 8, 2012 during an awards dinner and presentation in Las Vegas.

Coming on top of the recent Pink Elephant ITIL Innovation of the Year Award, which also recognized these two solutions, this latest accolade burnishes Serena’s IT management credentials, especially in the areas of DevOps and ITSM.

See all of the Network Products Guide category finalists.

It’s been an award-winning year for Serena so far in 2012.  In addition to the above, Serena has also been named to the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal’s Top 25 Software Companies list and was named Champion in the Agile ALM category in Info-Tech Research Group’s most recent Vendor Landscape report.

Wow.  And it’s only April.

What is “IT Intelligence” exactly? IT Intelligence is insight into all IT processes, tools, infrastructure, mainframe and more. It’s not just reporting on release status or seeing the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for a help desk team. It’s understanding how all IT processes, data and metrics all relate to each other, so IT can be as effective as possible.

IT Intelligence allows everyone from IT executives to team members to external stakeholders to understand what’s going on across all IT. For example:

• IT management: can see cycle times for each step needed to deliver what the business needs, as well as potential bottlenecks across all teams and projects
• Business users: know the status of all their enhancement requests and have visibility into which release trains they are slated for
• Business analysts: have full traceability across all requirements, code, test plans associated with the business demands
• Developers: can view cross-project development and QA cycle times, amount of turnovers, requirements and test coverage, etc.
• Service reps: can view SLA metrics for different types of requests

IT Intelligence isn’t just BI reinvented. IT needs insight without all the custom programming, long deployments and rigid modeling that plague traditional BI tools. In order for IT to gain better knowledge and understanding, IT Intelligence should be:

• Quick to deploy
• Work across any IT process, platform and tool
• Easy to adapt to changing tools or processes
• Highly personalizable for anyone in the IT value chain

I encourage you to see IT Intelligence for yourself. You can try out an interactive demo of our new Orchestrated IT Dashboard.

In episode three, the point was driven home that the fate of not only Doug’s team, but also the entire company hinges on the success of the release of the Millennium application. This knowledge has Brad even more on edge about Doug’s abilities as CIO, though he does make time to spy in on a working session of Millennium in action. It is in this working session that optimism grows for Doug’s team about the application’s success as they witness the powerful performance metrics of the IT team in action through the Serena Dashboard.

Episode four highlights the growing tension between “Team Doug” versus “Team Brad” as the release deadline for Millennium nears. In fact, Doug sees firsthand Brad’s level of trust, or lack thereof, on the chances of Millennium’s success. We are also introduced to a personal side of Doug as he discusses the orphans living in India that he and his wife proudly sponsor. If all goes well, Doug and his wife will have the opportunity to finally fly to India and meet “their” children in person.

You too can help a child in need by donating to SOS Children’s Villages, an international aid organization that supports orphans around the world. Sponsor a child online here: https://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/sponsor.

Enjoy the show and don’t forget to participate in our daily trivia contest for a chance to win prizes.

In fact, we’re even using some of the lessons learned from Malcolm’s seminar to improve our own measurements to heighten an already high focus on our customer outcomes, like successful implementations and customer reference-ability.  Because at the end of the day, if our measurements are completely in line with yours, then that heightens everyone’s chances of success.

For a look at our award-winning ITSM solution, come see us at the HDI 2012 Conference & Expo in Orlando from April 24-27.

We launched the Doug Serena, CIO web miniseries a couple of weeks ago and it’s already a big YouTube success. To add to the fun, we decided to kick off a related Twitter contest. This scavenger hunt-style trivia contest offers @DougSerenaCIO Twitter followers a chance to win Starbucks Cards for watching the series and answering simple questions about his show.

The contest kicks off today, Monday, March 26,2012 at 12:01am ET and will end on Friday, April 20, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Anyone care to guess where in the world Doug and his wife are hoping to travel on the trip mentioned in episode three? There is a hint in the episode of a certain mountain that might be close to their destination. Figure it out and you could win the prize.

Each business day, our favorite CIO will pose a question like this via Twitter about a past episode of Doug Serena, CIO. Anyone who follows @DougSerenaCIO and watches the miniseries can easily find the answer and submit for a chance to win a $20 Starbucks Card.

Questions can come at anytime of the day, so make sure you are keeping an eye on @DougSerenaCIO via Twitter. When you know the answer to one of the Doug Serena, CIO trivia questions, just tweet it to Doug!

Enjoy the show…

For official rules and prize information, please visit:

www.serena.com/ScavengerHunt

In episode two, we learned how a potential hurdle was crossed when Doug’s earlier decision to Orchestrate IT helped solve what could have been a project-killing operational issue. In addition, we saw how Serena Service Manager helped Qlarius save $600K.  We also got some color on Doug’s nemesis, Brad, the ever so skeptical SVP of Sales.

Episode three is dominated by a strategy session where Doug’s team witnesses first-hand the process visualization benefits of deep dashboard metrics. The team’s ability to deliver the Millennium project hangs in the balance. Monday’s episode also provides insight into why Michelle is the “Tigris” of Doug’s team, and why the timing of Jason’s latest family edition could have been better. You’ll also see Brad’s continued “enthusiastic support” of the project.  

Anyone care to guess where in the world Doug and his wife are hoping to travel on the trip mentioned in episode three? There is a hint in the episode of a certain mountain that might be close to their destination. Figure it out and you could win a $20 Starbucks Card in the upcoming Doug Serena, CIO trivia contest that will soon kick off on Twitter. Starbucks Cards will be awarded daily and at random to someone who answered the trivia question correct that day in this scavenger hunt-style contest. Stay tuned to @DougSerenaCIO for details!

The Info-Tech Research Group Vendor Landscape reports recognize outstanding vendors, assessing them by the strength of their offering and their strategy for the enterprise. The report pays tribute to the contribution of exceptional vendors in a particular category, in this case Agile ALM.  Serena has a proven history of success delivering innovation in the field of agile-based application delivery and lifecycle management for more than a quarter century, so it is quite an honor to be recognized. 

Using Serena’s orchestrated agile development, IT organizations can coordinate disparate processes, multiple tools and globally distributed teams from initial business request all the way to final production release. Serena orchestrates agility by helping IT engage more rapidly and accurately with the business, accelerate globally distributed water-scrum-fall development, and deliver more frequently to production – all while maintaining enterprise visibility and compliance to corporate and regulatory standards. 

Info-Tech highlighted Serena as the only vendor included in the report to earn “Feature Fully Present” across all 11 evaluated features. They characterize Serena as “a complete package controlled by a complete business process engine.” This underscores our commitment to offering our customers a complete tool set of features and functionality, powered by a flexible process-driven platform. And even if a customer chooses not to 100 percent “rip-and-replace,” their ALM suite with ours, Serena’s ALM products integrate with other products. This is truly unique to the development industry.

The miniseries includes five 5-minute webisodes, viewable here at Serena.com/DougSerenaCIO or on our YouTube channel. While it features Serena’s Orchestrated IT solutions, it’s designed to be entertaining and of interest to non-Serena technology shops as well.  

In last week’s premier episode we were introduced to the crisis engulfing Qlarius and the idea on how IT can save the day through the development and delivery of a sales application, Millennium. We are also introduced to the main players, including Doug’s stellar team and the ever so skeptical SVP of Sales, “Brad”. 

Tune in on Monday to see how a potential hurdle is crossed when Doug’s earlier decision to Orchestrate IT helps solve what could have been a project-killing operational issue. Also see how the use of the award-winning Serena Service Manager system helps save the company $600K and tons of time through its innovative visual composition capability. 

Brad and Doug’s team weigh in on working with Doug, and past Qlarius CIO’s, which includes a white board diagram you have to see to believe.

While Orchestrated IT may be revolutionary, it has come about through evolutionary means, having evolved from our early work orchestrating application delivery and more recent work orchestrating IT service management.  

Watch the new Doug Serena, CIO miniseries that just premiered to see the transformative power of Orchestrated IT.  In five short videos, this savvy CIO and his intrepid team show how they developed, delivered and serviced a breakthrough app that allowed their company to turn the tables on an arch competitor. 

We hope that Doug Serena, CIO will spark lots of conversation in the industry about how IT leaders can rise up to help lead their companies to huge commercial success. 

We’re also taking Orchestrated IT on the road, with a world tour that will touch down in nearly 30 cities over the coming months.  Is one of them near you?  Please join us if it is. 

Finally, we believe that enterprise IT matters more than ever in our online, personalized, mobile economy.  We believe that every industry can benefit from Orchestrated IT.  We believe that it is insane to rip out tools that are working, especially when you can orchestrate them into a new and better whole.  And we believe that giving IT stakeholders an easy way to engage in critical IT processes is the path to huge success for IT and IT leaders. 

Orchestrated IT is our solution for acting on those beliefs.  Send me a note if it makes sense for you.

We created the new web miniseries “Doug Serena, CIO” to answer these questions and to show the benefit of orchestrating IT.  It’s a hero’s journey through major business challenges, setbacks and personal frustrations to the Promised Land of boardroom-level business success. 

It was fun to bring this idealized story to life and we think it will be fun to watch.  But the goal is to be informative about how IT leadership teams can use Orchestrated IT systems to help them take their rightful place as boardroom players and heroes. 

The miniseries includes five 5-minute webisodes, viewable here at Serena.com/DougSerenaCIO or on our YouTube channel.  While it features Serena’s Orchestrated IT solutions, it’s designed to be of interest to non-Serena shops as well. 

The premiere episode is viewable now.  It sets the stage by dramatizing a crisis engulfing the business and the need for IT to come to the rescue.  I hope you find it an interesting and worthwhile way to spend 5 minutes. 

Follow @DougSerenaCIO or subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified next Monday and each week thereafter when new episodes get posted.

In recognition of this achievement, Serena President and CEO John Nugent awarded the 108-strong Serena xChange team the Gold Award for customer excellence, which comes with a monetary prize. The team decided that this money should be used to create a legacy that would bring some value outside Serena. Much discussion spawned the idea for the Serena Charity Challenge. 

At xChange 2012, customers, partners and Serena employees will be invited, individually or in small teams, to compete to develop a workflow application for a selected charity.  The SCC will take place on Sunday, September 9 and the winner will be announced the same day. The winning process app will be donated to the selected charity, along with the computers, communications and software licenses necessary for the charity to operate it.  We are in the process of choosing  the charity and welcome your suggestions. 

To contend in the Serena Charity Challenge please contact me or the SCC project leader Siddhartha Goel.  We look forward to a great competition that will benefit a fantastic cause! 

Register for xChange 2012!

This leads to several observations:

1. ITSM is undergoing a generational revolution.  First gen systems from Remedy, Peregrine (now HP), CA and others are at the bitter end of their duty cycles.  Customers in this most mature of IT management markets are actively looking for something new.
2. First gen cloud-based ITSM systems aren’t cutting the mustard.  I spoke with more than a few SaaS ITSM pioneers who are stymied by inflexibility, lack of upgradability and poor response time.  Wow.  Weren’t those problems supposed to be left behind with the ERP-like systems of the past?
3. ITSM and Release Management go together like sugar and spice.  The Innovation Award judges were clearly taken with the novelty of how Serena Service Manager and Serena Release Manager both bridged the DevOps divide and provided a new level of service responsiveness.
4. Serena was so right to accept our customers’ invitation to provide an ITSM solution.  Many had made great progress with their ITIL initiatives using Serena Business Manager alone, but figured that an off-the-shelf, Pink-certified solution from Serena that incorporated a highly effective CMDB would help them go to the next level.  Thank you for pushing!
5. Pink Elephant runs a great conference.  Educated, passionate attendees streamed to our booth, each one bubbling about what they were getting out of the sessions they’d attended.  We vendors also felt appreciated.  Thank you David and George.

Want to see the 1 minute video we submitted along with the Serena highlight of the award ceremony?  Click here.

The good news is that people are getting better. In fact, the International Institute of Business Analysts (IIBA) is just one example of an organization promoting best practices for requirements management. And on February 16, Serena will be participating in an IIBA webcast on requirements traceability. This should be a very enlightening webcast, as requirements experts will be sharing their experiences from the field. Serena will share how our customers have been experiencing increased satisfaction by looking at the entire requirements process and managing traceability from initial request all the way to release. I encourage you to register for the webcast on the IIBA website.

Registration is now open and we have held the 2007 price for another year! Register by June 1^st and save $400! Get even more savings when you take your whole team. 

It’s about the community exchanging ideas.

This year, more than ever before, xChange will be about you. With more customer speakers, more sessions devoted to real world application of Serena solutions and more opportunities to interact with your peers, xChange 2012 will honor its name. 

We are currently looking for customer speakers. If you have used a Serena solution to solve a real world problem and you want to share that with the xChange community please write to me and let me know what you’d like to talk about. 

We will focus  on the practical application of the product sets and will group the sessions according to the Orchestrated IT approach we introduced at xChange 2011. The tracks will be:

• Orchestrated Apps: the application development process
• Front office: Serena’s new solution for demand management
• Application delivery: what’s new with requirements management and configuration management
• Development management: the visibility necessary to run a development organization
• Release management: the latest in release control and release automation
• Orchestrated Ops: service management processes
• IT service management: how ITIL and other best practices are implemented
• Lifecycle dashboards: tracking and controlling the whole of Orchestrated IT from a single user interface 

I look forward to hearing from and seeing you all again. Mark your calendar now for September 10^th – 12^th at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV. Register today.

The six steps are to synchronize people with processes, to systematize demand management, to automate repetitive tasks, to integrate people with system processes, to rally around an ops calendar, and to orchestrate service management. 

Together these steps make ops processes automated, transparent, configurable and connected.  In a word, ops will become orchestrated.  Orchestration creates dramatic improvements in cycle time, compliance, agility and accountability. 

The good news is that the responses suggested in the paper can and should be implemented step-wise, and they will leverage the tooling infrastructure already in place.

The result will be significant incremental gains, consistently achieved.  Such gains soon add up to a crushing competitive advantage.

That’s the benefit of Orchestrated Ops.

I hope the paper is helpful to IT Ops leaders whether or not they are Serena customers.  Let me know if it is helpful to you.

Get the whitepaper, “Orchestrated Operations Management.”

The traditional on-premise ERP service management vendors, like their ERP cousins, subscribe to the tenets of the ERP economic model:  high license and maintenance fees, implementation fees 2x-3x license fees, long and costly upgrades, hard to use and extremely rigid.  These on-premise ERP-like service management systems live by the ERP maxim, “once up and running…don’t touch”!   

So why do companies looking for an on-premise service management solution accept the ERP cost model?   Well for one reason, they don’t have much choice in the matter.  It’s either the classic on-premise ERP approach or the cloud…nothing in between.  While many companies have chucked their costly on-premise ERP service management system and moved to the cloud, still many others are looking for an affordable on-premise alternative.   A second reason is that companies have been buying enterprise software for 30 years and seemingly just accept high prices and complexity as part of the package.  So what to do? 

Serena, a finalist for the Pink Elephant ITSM Innovation Award, provides an affordable on-premise service management solution that is the antithesis of the on-premise ERP approach.  Serena’s on-premise service management solution can be bought and implemented in a 10^th of the time at a 10^th of the cost compared to traditional on-premise ERP-like service management solutions.  But how can this be? ERP-like systems were built over a 20 year period by many different development teams, using many different development tools and methodologies.  They’ve bolted on so many different technologies that the systems have taken on a Frankensteinian look to them.  This is why these systems, like their ERP cousins, are so costly, complex and hard to customize.      

With Serena’s affordable on-premise approach, we deliver business/IT service packs, all model developed, no programming, fully integrated with our powerful, agile business process platform.  Leveraging our Visio-like service modeling capability, customers can easily customize, add and extend the delivered Serena IT Ops service packs to satisfy their ever-changing requirements.    

When compared against 20-year-old, on-premise ERP like solutions, Serena Service Manager customers can be up and running in a matter of a few months vs. a year, upgrade their Serena solution in a week vs. months, and customize the delivered services functionality in a few days vs. several months.  This is why we can say that Serena’s service management system can be up and running in a 10^th of the time at a 10^th of the cost compared to on-premise ERP service management solutions.  For those customers who wish to move their business/ IT services to the cloud while still maintaining the ability to customize the delivered services…yup, we have an app for that!

Software is at the heart of high tech, while Silicon Valley is the most concentrated and vibrant tech region in the world. Thus Serena’s ranking as a Top 20 Silicon Valley software company speaks to Serena’s position as one of the most important tech companies in the world.

The Grand Prize winner received an iPad 2 and a $500 donation towards the charity of his choice, while the category winners received $50 gift cards and $250 donations to their favorite charities. 

…AND THE CHARITIES ARE:  

Grand Prize
Technology Category:
@Kaizeneer
Charity: “Dads Camp” The Indianapolis Church of Christ
The Dad’s Camp is comprised of local mothers and fathers who donate their time and effort to make a fun, spiritual and affordable church camp for boys.

Runner-up Winners
Holiday Category:
@JadenRuby
Charity: The Ronald McDonald House
The Ronald McDonald House program provides a “home-away-from-home” for families so they can stay close by their hospitalized child at little or no cost. The Houses are built on the simple idea that nothing else should matter when a family is focused on healing their child – not where they can afford to stay, where they will get their next meal or where they will lay their head at night to rest.

General Category:
@jodeepups  
Charity: Shana’s Last Chance Dog Rescue
Shana’s Last Chance Dog Rescue is dedicated to saving the lives of innocent animals that are homeless and scheduled to be euthanized.

Donating $1,000 to charity is always gratifying! 

The Twitter-based contest called for contestants to submit Plusisms for three categories: Technology, Holiday and General. Inspired by Serena’s very own Plusism of “People + Process = Business In Sync,” we saw a little bit of everything from the hilarious to the bizarre. 

…AND THE WINNERS AND WINNING SUBMISSIONS ARE:  

Grand Prize (iPad 2) and $500 to Charity of Choice
Technology Category:
@Kaizeneer
Poor Release Management + Frazzled Service Desk = Pain Management @Serena_Software #PlusIs

Runner-ups and Winners of the Cash Prizes and $250 Donations to Charity of Choice
Holiday Category:
@JadenRuby
NBA + Lockout = 7 Christmas Day Knockouts YEA! @Serena_Software #plusis

General Category:
@jodeepups 
Creative Tweets + @Serena_Software = A Win Win Situation for my Favorite Charity & me! #PlusIs

Winners were selected based on creativity, humor and relevance and announced via Twitter on January 20^th, 2012. Judges also verified that all submissions adhered to the published contest rules and guidelines. 

Thanks to the multitude of entrants and our judging panel for another great contest!

1. Agile grows up. 
   Agile development will no longer be defined by sprints alone. In 2012, Agile will move from a development practice into an extended business process. This leads forward-looking organizations to adopt more modern release management solutions that alleviate the agile bottleneck that still exists at the point of application.
2. Release management becomes a CIO priority. 
   As its importance to the software organization grows, release management will no longer report to the apps or ops teams. Always struggling to “serve two masters” – apps teams prioritize velocity while operations wants stability – release management actually serves the business and therefore will increasingly report directly to the CIO.
3. IT Service Management (ITSM) gets a facelift. 
   Innovative new approaches to service management will gain a foothold in the enterprise and challenge ERP-like ITSM providers. Mergers and acquisitions within the market will also add to the dynamic nature of the space this year.
4. Outsourcing becomes survival of the fittest. 
   New ways to measure outsourced IT performance shift the balance of power from the outsourcer to the CIO, encouraging competition for outsourced IT (highest performance at the lowest cost). New demand management systems help CIOs identify and predict high performers and outsource accordingly.
5. New DevOps teams emerge. 
   Executive leadership will push for more collaboration between application development and IT operations. This transition results in the formalization of DevOps, while also giving these teams a stronger leadership position within the IT organization (in ITIL, known as “Service Transitions” organizations).

These and related trends make an orchestrated approach to IT a new enterprise priority. While most software delivery organizations today have many of the right tools in place, the biggest challenge will be orchestrating these disparate elements toward gaining new efficiencies across all of IT.

At the Gartner AADI Summit in December 2011, we surveyed IT executives about their top application development and delivery priorities for the coming year and discovered some notable results.  68% of respondents confirmed that faster delivery of applications is the top priority.  Expanding the use of Agile and reducing application development costs were the second and third highest priorities, coming in at 52 percent and 49 percent respectively.

We found that delivering applications faster is also growing in importance, up almost ten percent from the 2010 survey.  Interestingly enough, performance has outpaced cost as a priority, according to the survey, as the reduction of application development costs dropped in importance in this year’s survey—replaced as the number two priority with Agile use.

While most software delivery teams today have the right tools, roles, and functions in place, we see the biggest challenge in finding a way for these elements to effectively work together from initial request to release into production, so the entire IT organization can be as efficient and cost effective as possible. By putting effective processes in place, even the largest global enterprises can better orchestrate, measure, predict, and accelerate the overall software delivery process.

See complete results from the survey in the graph below.

Creative Intellect Consulting (CIC), a prominent UK analyst firm, has written a “creative short” – a short paper filled with expert insights – on what leading IT organizations are doing to be truly agile across the entire enterprise. Learn how you can successfully extend agile from a core development focus to a standard that stakeholders across the entire application delivery lifecycle can embrace.  

Read the “12 Strategies for Delivering End-to-End Agility” to learn how to: 

• Focus on end-to-end IT processes to help all IT be more agile.
• Maintain governance and auditability without sacrificing agile benefits.
• Enable IT Operations to more easily manage the higher volume of agile sprints and releases.
• Overcome organizational and technological challenges with hybrid water-scrum-fall techniques.

• “The combination of better traceability reports offered by Dimensions CM and new reversible headers features will make the adoption of the CM platform from PVCS much easier.”
• “The performance numbers from Dimensions CM 12.2 look very promising.  Anything that is done to reduce the amount of time required to deliver changes translates directly into increased developer productivity and satisfaction with CM.”
• “The new expanded keywords in Dimensions CM 12.2 are critical for our teams. They provide parity with what our developers were used to in PVCS and allow our developers to be more consistent in the information that is delivered via the variables.”

I’m very proud of all the extensive enhancements that the Serena R&D team has done with CM 12.2. Here are just some of the key highlights:

• Parallel development enhancements to drive customer satisfaction
• Certified integrations, especially for systems development tools, to increase productivity for manufacturing customers
• PVCS-style support to facilitate PVCS → CM migration opportunities

In addition, significant work has been done on CM 12.2 to continue improving product performance, product quality and customer satisfaction. Here are just a few key metrics highlighting Serena’s attention to product quality:

• Almost 6x performance improvement in delivering files into a stream against a request
• Up to 45% improvement in scanning file work-area to calculate differences
• 20% more test cases compared to CM 12.1
• 17.5% customer backlog reduction
• 20.5% customer regression backlog reduction 

For more information on Dimensions CM 12.2, I encourage you to see the full release notes for all the details.

For those who attended the VUG, we would like to apologize for a couple of technical issues.  While the content that John provided was excellent, there were glitches in the execution due to both technical and human error.  We have learned from these mistakes and can assure you that they will not happen again.  Please accept our apologies. 

As promised, here are the questions that we did not get to, along with the answers: 

Q: ­Is there any work being done specifically related to CICS Web services; related to WSDLs and WSBIND files?­ 

A:  ZMF will treat those files like any other in the repository.  The Eclipse platform provides built-in editors for working with WSDL files.  As the WSBIND files are generated from a CICS utility, the ZMF build process that creates the WSBIND files (DFHWS2LS/DFHLS2WS) can be customized to store the files in ZMF.   

Q: ­Can you expand on editors that will be available?  I am interested in the Eclipse components in conjunction with Compuware Eclipse plugins and SlickEdit language intelligent editor.­ 

A: The various editors are part of the Eclipse platform.  Different editors may be installed/enabled from a variety of sources and vendors.  Serena has already assisted customers in running the ZMF4ECL plugin in the Compuware Workbench environment.  I would anticipate integrations with SlickEdit to work as well.   

Q: ­Is Serena planning to provide a build procedure for SQLJ Java Stored Procedures­? 

A: We don’t have one at this time.  This sounds like an excellent enhancement request. 

Q: ­Is there a facility to copy HFS files to multiple LPARs in a single system when installing a package in ZMF v7?­ 

A: This may be accomplished by customizing the ZMF install  SKELS at your site.  There are a number of ways to accomplish this depending on your environment/setup. 

Q: ­Is DB2 Connect supported with ZMF v7?­ 

A: Not at this time.  In the past, ChangeMan ZMF worked with DB2 Connect via a REXX interface into DSNTPSMP that IBM has since stopped supporting.  The equivalent to DSNTPSMP procedures supplied by IBM are modules without exit or integration  points, so there is currently no way to access this from ZMF.  A solution to this is currently being researched by the ZMF development team (ENH184950).

The #PlusIs contest is a chance to use Twitter + your imagination to get creative, have fun and win great prizes, such as a leading tablet computer or a donation of $250 to the charity of your choice. Three category winners will receive $50 gift cards and the $250 charitable donations, and one Grand Prize winner earns a leading tablet computer.

The contest will officially conclude on January 19, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. ET, so get your submissions in now for your chance to win. To be a part of this contest, write and submit a PlusIs about your favorite combination in the Information Technology, General or Tis the Season categories. All entries must be submitted via Twitter to @Serena_Software, and include the hash tag #PlusIs.

Leading contenders (so far) include:

Russian protestors clash with police + ballot box “stuffing” = Dis-Putin @Serena_Software  #plusis

SBM + ARMY = ITIL in place @Serena_Software #PlusIs

Employees + Christmas Party = Gossip filled next day! @Serena_Software #PlusIs

Teenage Libido + Internet = Security Nightmare for you @Serena_Software #PlusIs

Creative Tweets + Serena_Software = A Win Win Situation for my Favorite Charity & me! @Serena_Software #PlusIs

A panel of judges will select winners based on creativity, humor, relevance and frequency of submissions. The winner will be announced via Twitter on January 20, 2012.

For official rules and prize information, please visit: www.serena.com/PlusIs

The questions came from all angles, probably ones that you’ve even asked like:

• What exactly does it mean for DevOps convergence to take place?
• Cloud and virtualization have muddied the DevOps waters even more. Can you explain where these two environments fit in?
• Where does automation technology fit into DevOps?
• Does adoption of ITIL v3 within the enterprise impact DevOps and co-existence?

The answer to the overall question of bridging the gap is yes.  Development and operations can work together, with the right mindset and processes in place.  Get all the insight and the solution by reading the article, “Q&A: Can Developers and Admins Co-exist and Improve the Enterprise?”

Please take just a few minutes to answer 20 questions on application delivery. If you’re the 100^th valid response, you’ll win an iPad!*  After the survey results are compiled, you’ll get a complimentary copy of the research report and be able to see how your IT organization’s practices compare to others. 

Fill out the Survey Now! 

*The 100^th valid response to the survey will win an iPad2. Serena Software will contact the respondent via the email address provided in the survey. A valid survey response must contain a full name, work email address and phone number. Multiple survey responses are not considered valid. Serena employees and partners are not eligible for the survey and iPad.

Now it’s your turn. The two-month-long PlusIs contest is a chance to use Twitter + your imagination to get creative, have fun and win great prizes, such as an iPad 2 and a $250 donation to the charity of your choice. Three category winners will receive $50 gift cards and $250 charitable donations to the charities of their choice. With three categories to submit for—technology, general and holiday—there is something for everyone in Serena Software’s PlusIs Twitter contest.

Together we’re awarding $1,000 to the charities of the four winners’ choice!

The contest will kick off on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 12:01am ET and end January 19, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

To be a part of this contest, write and submit a PlusIs about your favorite combination in the Information Technology, general or Tis the Season categories. All entries must be submitted via Twitter to @Serena_Software, and include the hash tag #PlusIs.

For example:

People + Process is Business In Sync. @Serena_Software #PlusIs
Rip + Replace is Expensive. @Serena_Software #PlusIs

Mistle + Toe is Kiss @Serena_Software #PlusIs
Turkey + Stuffing is Reason for a Nap @Serena_Software #PlusIs

A panel of judges will select a winner based on creativity, humor, relevance and frequency of submissions. The winner will be announced via Twitter on January 20, 2012.

For official rules and prize information, please visit: www.serena.com/PlusIs

Register Now! All attendees will receive our white paper, 8 Ways to Business Value with Release Management. 

Glenn and Serena experts will demonstrate and discuss how you can leverage revolutionary improvements in release management solutions to:

• Improve release visibility
• Increase release flow
• Reduce downtime
• Simplify compliance

Reserve your spot today.  Even if you can’t make the live event, registering now will ensure you are notified when the recording is available.

In the planning phase of version 6, and with the growing popularity of Web Services, we could no longer assume that requests coming into ZMF were simply from TSO users as in the past. With product integrations, web service calls embedded in application code,  and initiatives for Release Management and Orchestrated ALM, many requests were coming into ZMF and we needed to again address scalability. Along with a growing backlog of customer-driven enhancement requests that could only be achieved through major architectural changes, the time certainly arrived for the architectural overhaul of ZMF. 

Sernet was redesigned to better accommodate the volume and diverse types of requests coming into the system. With this redesign, we moved away from 32K chunking/chaining to a continuous data stream. Redundant and obsolete code that was more relevant in previous releases was removed, and particular focus was placed on scalability and error recovery. 

Impact Analysis (IA) was redesigned to reside in a data space and stored in a Linear Data Set when the task is down. Benefits of the redesign of IA :

1. To improve performance.
2. To expose XML/Web Service enablement to our customers.
3. To position for Java support (which came in v7).
4. To accommodate the new unlimited component history capabilities. 

Promotion was enhanced to accommodate renames and scratch requests; the addition of a promotion scheduler was added, too. 

Component Meta-data Rewrite/Expansion 

Customers, particularly in the financial sector, have the requirement of maintaining unlimited component history. Previously, only 24 levels of component history were maintained. With the arrival of each new version, the 24th was pushed off the stack.  ChangeMan ZMF Version 6 supports unlimited numbers of component history; it also accommodates variable length records and allows the storage of user meta data and/or parameters. 

Today, more application development is being done off the mainframe to reduce costs and because new developers prefer to work in the environment of their choice. ChangeMan ZMF supports a variety of these development environments.  For several years, Serena has offered ChangeMan zDD, which provides a Windows Explorer view and has worked very well for many of our customers. Other developers prefer to work in IDEs, such as Eclipse. We’ve provided WD4ZMF (WebSphere Developer for ZMF) and an Eclipse plugin allowing access into ZMF using WDz.  Most recently, we introduced the ChangeMan ZMF Client Pack, which combined zDD, an Eclipse plugin that allows for native Eclipse access to ZMF, and a plugin for IBM Rational Developer for z/OS (RDz) – the rebrand of WDz. 

Screenshot from the latest Eclipse plugin from ChangeMan ZMF v7

In addition to this support for off-platform development, Serena aligned with the trend to support the large increase in hybrid application deployments — use of Java, XML and Web Services.  This not only maintains its leading position with regard to managing legacy assets, but also provides ChangeMan ZMF governance for modern application development on the mainframe, including:

1. Full Java support tightly integrated into the product, including build, promotion, audit, and impact analysis.
2. Support of native file systems: HFS/zFS, which includes full support for 255-byte file names and 1024-byte path names within the product. This includes Development, Staging, Promotion and Baseline libraries.
3. PDS/PDSE is still supported as well for legacy components. This support was incorporated into not only zDD and Eclipse, but into ISPF and all service interfaces as well.  

While we have never expected ISPF to be the interface of choice with Java programmers, you never know.   So, all of the appropriate panels have zoom capabilities to show the full names (in accordance with ISPF standards). 

I mention this  because this is where the Evolution vs. Revolution discussion is important.  Support for the new trends of mainframe modernization (IDEs, deployment of hybrid applications, management of modern languages and file systems) built upon a quarter-century of stability, rigor and integrity. Like rings around a tree. 

The ChangeMan ZMF team has been busy!  We had 3 major product releases in the last 4 years with 9 maintenance releases across 3 versions.  It’s a continuous effort to balance investment in the existing feature set with addressing customer enhancements and aligning with the market — all while ensuring the future of ChangeMan ZMF.  

Thanks for all the feedback on my last post.  I still welcome your comments below!

Join in on a special customer webcast on Thursday, November 3 as QBE FIRST discusses the 5 key development metrics they use to effectively manage a complex distributed team of developers, QA professionals, business analysts and operations personnel. QBE FIRST will go through:

• Challenges the company faces as part of a regulated industry
• Key development processes and metrics, and
• Best practices for their distributed teams

As a bonus, Greg Harder of Serena R&D will show how the new Serena Lifecycle Dashboard provides IT organizations rapid insight into their end-to-end application delivery metrics and tools. See how you can use new dashboards to capture the key metrics you need – no matter what tools you use – and streamline development processes across all your distributed teams and tools.

Register for the webcast: Top 5 Development Metrics You Can’t Ignore on Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 8:00 am Pacific / 11:00 am Eastern/ 4:00 pm UK / 5:00 pm CET.

When it comes to agile in enterprise IT, the tension of speed versus control can seem impossible to resolve. However, some IT organizations have taken a process-based view to make the entire application delivery process more agile. They evaluate the process touch points between stakeholders across the entire lifecycle – from initial request to final release into production – to become truly agile. Orchestrating agility has helped IT organizations realize dramatic results, including 40% faster development, 50% lower costs, and 15X more releases.

How do they do it? Here are 4 steps to deliver agility across the entire IT organization, and not just within development.

1. Orchestrate Development to Deployment: IT organizations must not only coordinate development, operations and business – they need to automate this collaboration.
2. Develop with Agility: Development needs to more tightly integrate multiple disciplines and practices, multi-tier application development and global development teams, while taking advantage of virtualization and cloud computing.
3. Orchestrate Dev and Ops: Development needs to work more closely with Operations to meet the increasing velocity and volume of releases, while maintaining a closed-loop process with Service management to minimize the impact on data centers.
4. Orchestrate visibility and insight: IT is run as a business. So, IT organizations need unified visibility and insight from demand through development to release and ongoing service and maintenance.

To get more detail about these 4 steps and learn more about orchestrating agility across the entire application delivery lifecycle in your organization, attend my presentation at the ALM Expo, a virtual conference from November 9-10. Register – it’s free!

These enhancements, combined with everything done in ChangeMan ZMF v6, would make it easy to assume “revolution”. But let’s take a step back and trace the history of ZMF and how it has evolved over time.

Change Man vs. ChangeMan

In its earliest carnation, ZMF (which was then called Change Man) had many of the same constructs — the package orientation (which was pioneered by Serena) and a package lifecycle — so, in many ways it looked very similar from the outside. However, on the inside it was quite different. For starters, it was purely an ISPF-driven application. Hence, there was no started task, just ISPF users serializing on the VSAM package master, log and delay files while the physical artifacts were moved or copied as appropriate.

With Change Man gaining traction in the market and higher customer adoption, the product found that it was hitting the upper bounds of the workload it was capable of managing under the then-current design. In subsequent releases, the product ran as a started task where MVS facilities such as ECB lists, Cross Memory Services and the Subsystem Control Table (SSCT) allowed better coordination and multiple instances of the product, therefore allowing for higher concurrent usage while maintaining data integrity.

Then came Sernet, the underlying architecture which was introduced to facilitate all session, program, data and storage management, a subsystem interface, and a communications layer that allowed for cross-platform communication. As things moved forward, most of the heavy lifting done by the user (which in those days were TSO and batch) were beginning to get done on the server side. New features such as Remote Promote were added in addition to a new API set known as Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs). The RPCs allowed for an interface to ChangeMan outside of the usual ISPF interface, however, it was still a very data-driven API. It relied strictly on DSECTS and correct data mappings, so data structures had to map out accordingly.

Name Change to ‘ChangeMan ZMF’

With v5, ChangeMan ZMF emerged. The name, ‘Change Man,’ became ‘ChangeMan’ and ‘ZMF’ was added. In v5, most of the processing was moved from the client side to the server side. A new API set was introduced, which was then known as the Extended Services. Functions that previously existed in the ISPF programs were service enabled, which modularized the code base and allowed for code reuse. Extended Services were reworked into what is now known as the XML Services. No more sensitivity to offsets, record layouts and pairing of DSECTs to data structures. With XML’s extensibility, the user no longer needed to be concerned with offsets changing from release to release. The XML Services are the basis of what are now ChangeMan ZMF’s Web Services although the XML Services remain in use as well. Version 5 is also where ERO, LBO, cross-application support for auditing and IA and WD4ZMF were all introduced.

In my next post, I’ll go through the evolution of ChangeMan ZMF v6 and v7. Let me know what you think about ChangeMan ZMF and write a comment below!

Ultimate Software has thousands of servers and multiple deployments running daily from pre-production to production. At such a fast pace and high volume of application changes, it’s absolutely critical that they employ a streamlined process-approach to release automation. 

Previously, Ultimate Software was using Symantec Altiris but decided to evaluate other deployment solutions in search of one that could manage their complex applications, improve operational efficiencies and streamline the deployment process. Serena’s Release Automation solution addressed these criteria and is expected to reduce their application release deployment times and significantly decrease operational costs.

The tech company’s Director of Infrastructure and Deployment Strategy, Brian Goldberg, told us: “Following months of meticulous research, we identified Serena as the best application deployment solution on the market. We realized that existing infrastructure automation solutions, such as Altiris, can do a good job when you need to provision new servers, but when it comes to application releases and deployments, it’s a different story. We look forward to leveraging Serena’s Release Automation solution as our unified deployment solution and ensuring the highest level of security and reliability.”

Learn more about Serena Release Automation, powered by Nolio, which is a component of Serena’s end-to-end Release Management solution.

Some IT organizations have been turning to SaaS for IT management applications. Reasons driving the decision are the same ones behind the sales organization adopting SalesForce.com. Besides the cost and service-level standards, IT organizations are frustrated that the continuing complexity of legacy ITSM products means many of their features are underused and rarely modified after the long initial implementation. That underuse of features makes it easier for IT to accept that SaaS products are typically not as full-featured as the legacy brands. After all, why buy the super-sized meal if you can’t eat all of the small size?

But wouldn’t it make sense not to have to make a trade-off between easy deployment and a rich feature set? Why not first select the ITSM product that meets your needs and then determine the deployment model that makes the most sense? Every ITSM vendor should be able to offer the same functionality regardless of the deployment model. And you should be able to choose not just SaaS or on-premises but also a flexible hybrid that seamlessly combines these models – with your choice of capabilities hosted by the vendor and others still deployed on premises.  In other words, the deployment model shouldn’t be an issue in the selection of the solution. Instead, you should be able to deploy the solution you want in the way that makes sense for your organization.

To learn about how Serena Service Manager can be deployed anyway you want – SaaS, on-premises or a flexible hybrid, download Top 5 Reasons for Orchestrated Service Management or join us for an October 11th webinar on Transforming IT with Process-Based ITSM, featuring insight from Forrester’s Eveline Hubbert Oehrlich.

This customer wants a solution that’s more flexible and adaptable than what they have today, that can be modified on the fly by regular help-desk staff, and that can support their goal of measurably improving service to their users. They also want to be sure they don’t lose ground on key capabilities and are able to offer a better user experience and expanded self-service. And they want to avoid the arduous implementation process and high costs they went through with their legacy solution.

Another key topic they wanted to cover was the pros and cons of SaaS. As one director said, “If SaaS meets my capabilities and cost goals without sacrificing security and adaptability, I’ll go there. But I’m not convinced that I can get that mix.” Since some of the stakeholders were advocating SaaS, this director wanted to resolve this issue before we dove into a discussion of product capabilities.

Here are the main deployment-model topics this director wanted to compare for each deployment model:

• License cost
• Implementation cost and time
• Adaptation cost and time
• Security and control
• Service level and responsiveness guarantees
• Integration with related applications
• Solution features and product roadmap
• Visibility, reporting, metrics – and can these be easily customized and adapted?

I’d like to hear from you about these concerns around deployment models. Are yours similar? Got anything to add? What’s your most important issue in weighing options for ITSM deployment? What are you concerned about losing if you go the SaaS route?

In my next post, I’ll write more about Serena’s no-trade-off approach to deployment options, including a flexible deployment model that is a hybrid of SaaS and on-premises. Later I’ll compile your responses and other customer feedback and write a follow-up blog to share what your peers are thinking about IT deployment options.

The 100 percent Twitter based contest asked contestants to reveal their best or worst help desk experience in the form of a Haiku.  From the hilarious to the bizarre, we saw a little bit of everything. The judging panel had an extremely difficult time choosing a winner and therefore decided to not only award the grand prize winner with the iPad2, but award the runner-ups with cash prizes and honorable mentions. 

…AND THE WINNERS ARE: 

Grand Prize (iPad 2)
@Kaizeneer (See picture to the right.  Winner Dan Lafever, on the right, is pictured with Serena VP of Product Marketing Carl Landers at the FUSION 11 Conference.)
Help Desk horror flick:
rogue tech kills main router in:
“Silence of the LANS”

Honorable Mentions (cash prize)
@JadenRuby
Help desk sent a hunk
Man I didn’t get his name
Oh look, broke again!

@humor_q
Called from hospital
Help told me to pull the plug
Grandma almost died 

Winners were selected based on creativity, humor, and relevance and announced via Twitter. Judges also made sure all submissions adhered to the contest rules and guidelines. 

Thanks to the multitude of entrants and our judging panel for a great contest!

Well, the “Dev and Ops Divide” has just narrowed with the release of two breakthrough solutions: Serena Service Manager and Serena Release Manager.

Serena Service Manager provides an easily configurable and flexible process-based approach to delivering IT services, along with a unified service portal, and integrated service management dashboards.  The business user interface, Serena Request Center, gives end users one convenient view of all the services available to them and offers IT one funnel for routing requests.

Serena Release Manager dramatically speeds application delivery and introduces a new visual enterprise release calendar for both application development and IT operations.  Both solutions are fully integrated and build upon Serena’s Orchestrated Application Delivery product strategy, which emphasizes process and automation. 

Dev and Ops Divide.  What Dev and Ops divide?

Get more information about our new ITSM and ALM solutions.  On this page, you’ll find links to 2-minute demos, the full press release and an invitation to attend a webcast series on best practices for IT operations.

And for even more, tune into Serena’s YouTube channel.  Watch Serena experts demonstrating Serena Release Manager and Serena Service Manager.  Ben Cody, VP of Service Management Solutions, shares in detail the exciting features in Serena Service Manager.  Plus, you’ll see a video of me explaining why Orchestrated Application Delivery and Release Management are resonating so well with our customers.

Here’s what you can expect from the new solution:

• A Flexible, Process-Based Approach: Serena Service Manager provides customers service management processes that encapsulate ITIL best practices. Customers can graphically change these processes to match their unique way of addressing constantly changing business demands – without having to rely on an army of vendor consultants that drive up costs and create upgrade headaches down the road. Intuitive, easily configurable forms and screens result in a lower learning curve and improved agent productivity.
• Integrated Visibility: The new ITSM solution provides an integrated Configuration Management Database (CMDB), dashboards, ad-hoc reporting and audit trail, which provides greater control over infrastructure changes by delivering contextual information that speeds incident and problem investigation. 
• A Single, Friendly End User View: Serena Service Manager gives business users a single view of all the services available to them through a unified service request portal and service catalog called Serena Request Center.   It’s incredibly easy to use as well as administer.

Get a comprehensive view of Serena Service Manager and learn how it can help you combat your current ITSM challenges around flexibility, visibility, and usability inherent in legacy ITSM solutions.

xChange is well and truly back!

We started planning xChange 2011 in November 2010 and thousands of hours have gone in to making it such a success. A massive amount of credit goes to the xChange team led by Jen Melvin, Serenity Thompson, Shirley Miller, Vickie Schira, Kath McKeever and Renee Scullin whose tireless efforts delivered up one of the most intensive, content rich, solution focused and fun events I have ever seen.

Attendee reactions were positive, upbeat and excited with many customers ready to sign up for next year’s conference. We haven’t picked a location yet, but will soon, so let me have your suggestions for xChange 2012.

I estimate that the 95 hours of conference content over three days came from 20,000 hours of preparation over 10 months by more than 100 people.

To that list of 100+ Serena staff, partners and support organizations, and on behalf of a very happy customer base, I say a heartfelt ‘Thank you.”

The best of the best

Of course it was all great but for me the top five highlights were:

• John Nugent describing the new corporate vision of “Orchestrated Apps + Orchestrated Ops = Orchestrated IT”
• Ali Kheirolomoom and Steve Brodie demonstrating how the vision is now a reality
• The customer Rapid-Fire Comment Round with lively and interesting debate told with great humor and experience
• The packed breakout sessions, especially for the newly launched Serena Service Manager
• And the unforgettable Bella Electric Strings who got us off to a great start and rocked the house during the partner party

Magic Moments

There are always the unexpected magic moments in any conference and they came in surprising ways and surprising places at this year’s xChange.

A breathless customer sought me out after one session to tell me “I know exactly what to do when I get home: upgrade to SBM … that stuff is cool!”

The Serena Account Manager who told me that three of her customers had told her that they had got answers to problems they had been wresting with in the AnswerZone that more than paid for the their trip to Las Vegas.

The customer who told me that that after his presentation another customer came up to him and said “We use your service, we were thinking of moving off it. Now I know how you develop applications I am going to recommend we stick with you.”

The Serena “geek” who told me that she’d been demoing her solution constantly since early in the morning, had had a crowd 4-deep at lunchtime and 6-deep in the evening session and had not done the demo the same way twice because of all the questions she was getting.

The mainframe customer who told me that he only gets to go to one conference a year and he was so happy he chose xChange.

And most poignant of all: the wife of a customer who told me she had never seen her husband so animated about anything as when he came back from the first day’s sessions. She told me he was getting ready to retire: now he has a whole new list of fun things he wants to do and retirement is the last thing on his mind. She seemed relieved about that!

Where next?

If you were there: you know what a great event it was. If you weren’t: you won’t want to miss the next one.

xChange 2012 will most likely be in September but we have not chosen the venue. We need your help. Please comment on this blog with your ideas and your reasons for wanting your favorite city.

Today was all breakout sessions in each of the 6 tracks from 8:00 to 3:00 pm. This year the tracks were organized around our solution sets:

• The Orchestrated ALM track looked at all the solutions as part of the overall Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and included some great customer sessions featuring CVS and Carefirst who have gone a long way to full automating their development process.
• In the IT Service Management and Serena Business Manager track we showed off all the great new innovations in SBM and in Serena Service Manager. This was the most popular track by far with every session having more than 80 people in attendance. This was the liveliest track too with much interaction between the speakers and the audience. Good job we put them in the largest room!
• For those customers wanting to improve the front end of the lifecycle the Demand and Requirements Management track provided the latest information about Prototype Composer and Dimensions RM.
• The Development Management track is where we took a deep dive into the distributed solutions around software development and featured our flagship Dimensions CM and PVCS/Version Manager products. It was great to see about 10% of the customers at the conference were still using PVCS/VM in some way or other.
• And those customers facing the daunting challenge of deploying software had the Release Management track where we were able to showcase our Release Control, Release Vault and Release Automation solutions and hear from customers who were already implemented and having success like Nationwide Mutual Insurance.
• About a third of the customers present attended the Mainframe track to hear about what was happening to ChangeMan ZMF and were rewarded with Belgian chocolate from one of our partners are they are every year.

If you’d like to take a peek inside the conference: have a look at some of the photographs we’ve loaded on to Flickr.

We started off day 2 with the Serena Innovation Awards, or “The Douggies”. They were presented by our Founder Doug Troxel to those companies that had done something extraordinary with our solutions.

The Application Development Award went to Dale Clark of Carefirst for the end-to-end automation of their SDLC which included the integration of Clarity, Quality Center, Dimensions CM, ChangeMan ZMF, Systems Architect, SharePoint, PeopleSoft and Beeline.

The Release Management Award was given to Prakash Balakrishnan of Nationwide Mutual Insurance for the remarkable integration of their web-based business-policy management system with ChangeMan ZMF.

And the Process Automation Award was presented to Tony Mattravers of AgustaWestland for changing how spare parts were managed such that order confirmation times went from 6 weeks to 6 minutes.

Of course we heard from Doug a little about our Serena history and customers were really touched to see our founder still engaged.

Peter Sianchuk told the customers about the many ways we Ensure Customer Success from helping them develop a business case through Value Engineering, to our Services Organization with education and training offerings in the classroom and in the cloud, to the residency program and implementation and mentoring programs, to our Support Team’s extensive global coverage and rapid response times.

The most fun of the morning was the Rapid-Fire Customer Comment round where we had Dale Clark (Carefirst), Sheila Stephens (QBE FIRST) and Ken Vane (Navy Federal Credit Union) answer tough industry questions posed by David Hurwitz. They each had “Fact” or “Fiction” paddles and voted on questions such as “Release Management should be its own department and not report into Apps or Ops: fact or fiction?” or “More money can be saved by automating deployment than automating testing: fact or fiction?” The answers were lively, thought provoking and often very funny. The audience loved the interaction and were cheering for their favorite answers. Best answer of the sessions went to Sheila in response to “Getting Apps and Ops to collaborate is easy: fact or fiction?”, her answer, one word “Chocolate!”

And the last session of the day was an open forum for customers to ask the Serena Executive Team anything that came to mind. And ask they did with questions about licensing, stability of the company, commitment to our current path and product direction.

In the evening we had an event at Studio 54 with music from the 70’s and 80’s and we had guest celebrities attend including Andy Warhol (played by Carl Landers), John Travolta (played by Patrick Merritt) and the Village People (played to synchronized perfection by the Field Marketing team of Serenity Thompson, LeeAna Valkovschi, Marina Selepouchin and Jasmine Hakki).

John got us off to a roaring start with the Serena Vision and Direction and brought all the customers up to date with the latest developments. He introduced us all to the easy to understand and easy tell message:

Orchestrated Apps + Orchestrated Ops = Orchestrated IT

He spoke about customer successes and convinced the crowd that we are back to the core businesses that make us so successful.

The “Serena Players” took us through the End-to-End Demo and customers were very visibly impressed. We showed the Request Center and the Dashboards and the integrations amongst the solutions and the crowd was on the edge of their seats. At the break the demo booths were packed with customers wanting to get their hands on the latest solutions and ask questions.

The morning highlight for many was Roadmap and Vision Sessions delivered by Steve Brodie and Ali Kheirolomoom showing the directions the solutions are taking. They both received rapturous applause for the path they are taking us on.

And David Hurwitz rounded out the morning with interviews of Peter Rizzo of Interactive Data and Quinn Lanus of Sungard talk about their experiences of their current Service Management solutions and why these chose to move to Serena Service Manager.

The afternoon was full of in depth breakout sessions with one TeamTrack customer telling me “I know exactly what I am going to do when I get back: I’m upgrading to SBM … that stuff is so cool!”

And if you talk to anyone who attended the conference they will certainly remember the string quartet, Bella Electric Strings, who opened the show with acoustic Light Classical and rocked the partner party with Electric Pop. Check out their YouTube video.

End-to-end breakouts make up today’s final day schedule, some three dozen sessions in all.  Most attendees will then head home, while many will stay for the intensive training sessions occurring here the rest of the week.

Unfortunately I have to jet off to Boston today for the Forrester Application Development & Delivery Forum tomorrow and Friday.  While I’m looking forward to learning a lot there, I’m sad to leave xChange early.

But I fly off knowing that xChange is well and truly back, and so is Serena.

The good feelings were evident last evening in the Solutions Showcase.  With the ever delightful Bella Electric rocking out in the middle of the joint, a dozen demo stations were humming around the perimeter.  I guess this proves that IT types get inspired by both great software and great music.

The great ideas came fast and furious.  For instance, a Six Sigma Black Belt informed me last night “My biggest epiphany today was…”, going on to describe how he could use the new Serena Request Center to bring his thousands of business users into revenue generating workflows.  Come to think of it, I never got around to asking him what his other epiphanies of the day were.

This morning was devoted to customers.  But first Doug Troxel transfixed the audience telling Serena’s founding story.  Everybody loves Doug.  (Hey, that could be the title of our next demo skit!)

Then he and maestro Kevin Parker gave out the Serena Innovation Awards to three very deserving customers: Carefirst, Nationwide and AgustaWestland.  Their stories were inspiring.

I then led a fun and surprising Fact or Fiction roundtable with Dale Clark of Carefirst, Sheila Stephens of QBE First and Ken Vane of Navy Federal Credit Union.  These three good humored and extremely wise IT leaders responded to a series of ten provocative statements by declaring each as Fact or Fiction and then explaining their answer.  The results were insightful.

All of the above took place in the first two hours.  The next six hours included countless breakout sessions.

Tonight is the xTravaganza party at Studio 54.  Wonder what’s going to happen there?

Instead we had well over 300 people packing a large room at the brand new MGM Grand convention center in Las Vegas.  Customers came from all over Europe, Latin America, Asia and North America.

The day began in beautiful fashion, with the four beauties of Bella Electric strings playing beautiful concertos while attired in long black concert dresses.  xChange Maestro Kevin Parker then orchestrated the assembled throng into humming the five note theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  This summoned Bella Electric back on stage, this time in their Vegas outfits and playing their hot set.  Michael Jackson, Journey and even Led Zeppelin sound great when performed by four electric string musicians.

John Nugent, Serena’s President and CEO, then described a powerful vision for Orchestrated IT, talking in detail about several Serena customers who are already reaping the benefits.

Then some fun: a skit entitled “Doug Serena, CIO.”  This day in the life production used a case study of modern IT challenges and showed how Serena’s ability to orchestrate application delivery and IT operations can go a long way to solving them.  (Hint: I played Doug Serena.  So now I can say that while I’m not a real CIO, I once played one in front of almost 1,000 people, the total who were in the room and watching the live webcast.)

All of the above came in the first 90 minutes!  After the break, we delved into the substance of our vision and roadmaps for dev and ops, and took time to invite a couple of customers on stage.

Great morning.  More later…

As explained by Dr. Dobb’s Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Erickson,
“Dr. Dobb’s Jolt Awards recognize the most innovative, trend-making, ahead-of-the-curve products in software development. From mobile phones to massive data centers, open source or proprietary, Jolt Award winners represent the products, books and technologies that “jolt” the industry with their significance.”

Winners will be announced in October and selected by a panel of software development experts, such as industry writers from Dr. Dobb’s and other leading application development outlets, analysts and other industry pundits. Serena is proud to have “Jolted” industry gurus and be named to this prestigious list!

Our discussion included topics that are relevant to any organization that is exploring alternatives to the traditional big and cumbersome ITSM vendors: costs, flexibility, visibility, usability, and satisfaction.

What are your main issues with your legacy ITSM solution?

One thing that was very important to this customer was improving self-service, which they see as one key way to reduce costs and increase user satisfaction. They want to consolidate various online business services so users have a single service desk where they can explore, submit and track issues and requests. We talked about the role of process automation in realizing this vision. Oh, and cost. They want to be able to implement and frequently adapt this unified service fulfillment desk while spending and waiting less than they do today. That imperative means that each of the criteria listed above is urgent and important to them.

I’d like to hear from you about your most pressing issues, so please add your comments.

Key attributes of this model include:

• Process-based: Today’s Service Desk should include significant process automation – not just basic tasks like approvals, but connecting human and system tasks throughout request fulfillment, spanning IT and business areas such as Finance or HR.
• Insight and transparency:  IT staff, line-of-business owners and users all need role-based visibility.
• Easy to measure and adapt: You need good metrics and simple methods for adapting to change.

To achieve this vision, I recommend starting with a self-assessment. Here are some questions that can help you examine your current state.

If your answers are not overwhelmingly yes, then you are ready to investigate and evaluate a new approach to ITSM. Do you have comments or additional assessment questions to add?

IDC has identified the drivers for enabling business agility with release management improvements, including the following requirements: 

• A consistent repository as a single source of truth to help application deployments and to retain essential governance across software releases.
• Managing the release process with notifications and visibility into audit from requirements to deployment.
• Appropriate workflow and transition from development to deployment to manage a challenging handoff. 

The cost of a poorly coordinated release varies within each company but the impact is the same.  I know of one company that was unsure about which changes needed to go into release and what was being fixed specifically by the software update. When rollbacks needed to occur due to problems with the software release, they were time-consuming and challenging. Release problems occurred as frequently as two to three times per month.

Without automation, the manual process of reconciliation compounded the challenges. The company didn’t have tight control over the release process prior to bringing in automation — releases occurred in an ad hoc fashion, and the chance for things to go wrong was much higher as a result. Manual processes don’t enable confidence. As a result, I have heard on more than one occasion the cry of “Fix It Now!” from executive management fed up with the negative impact to their business. 

The requirement to contain long-term high costs in a volatile economy also remains problematic and can constrain business competitiveness and stifle growth and innovations when not proactively addressed and governed.  To drive release agility in your organization and learn three tips for improving release management strategies, read the paper Automate to Thrive: Driving Business Agility with Effective Release Management.

Serena is kicking off a Twitter Help Desk Haiku Poem Contest to capture these experiences in verse.

We want you to tap into your creative side for a chance to win an iPad 2 and hear your most horrendous or utopian help desk stories in the form of a Haiku poem. The contest will kick off on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 and end on September 26, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

To enter, write and submit a Haiku poem (17 syllables total with three lines of 5-7-5 syllables) on a help desk experience. Each line of the Haiku should be separated by a period, comma or slash. All entries must be submitted via Twitter to @Serena_Software, and include the hash tag #HelpDeskHaiku.

A panel of judges will select a winner based on creativity, humor and relevance. The winner will be announced at Fusion 11 hosted by itSMF and via Twitter on September 27th, 2011.

For official rules and prize information, please visit: www.serena.com/helpdeskhaiku

1. Exploit the real requirements lifecycle: when looking at improving requirements, you should look at the entire requirements process – from initial request to release into production.
2. Define and manage requirements collaboratively: your entire team needs to collaborate and focus on requirements quality – and that doesn’t mean testing.
3. Increase your use of pictorial artifacts: you should use pictures to help drive better understanding of requirements.
4. Establish a program of requirements reuse: reuse is critical to achieve economy of scale, especially across related products, applications and platforms.
5. Take an adaptive, process-driven approach: tools alone won’t help you deliver better requirements – you need to think about people and process too.
6. Measure and continuously improve: continuously measure business, project and end user metrics to determine if you’re really delivering quality requirements.

If you’re looking for expert advice on improving the quality of your products through good requirements practices, I highly encourage you to listen to our entire discussion on requirements management.

One important way for IT to deliver great customer experience is to provide a satisfying environment for users to resolve problems and ask for service. Enabling powerful user self-service requires more than providing tickets and forms for users to submit to the Help Desk. To maximize user autonomy when solving issues and making requests – and to reduce costs and repetitious tasks for Service Desk staff – IT needs to offer users: 

• An intuitive user interface that guides them through options and steps.
• Automated, simple-to-follow procedures for common tasks that you want users to be able to perform on their own.
• Access to knowledge needed to solve problems.
• Transparency and updates throughout a process so expectations are set.
• Options for requesting help when needed.
• Ability to suggest enhancements and track the fate of the submission.

Where is your IT organization in user self-service maturity? Keep an eye on this space for a questionnaire to help you assess your user self-service capabilities.

For much of them, the driver is not simply the replacement of one tool with another, but the increasing need to accommodate modern development practices, to more efficiently leverage globally distributed teams, and to simplify complex processes and technologies across the application development lifecycle, while leveraging some of their existing investments.

Then last week at a Customer Advisory Board meeting I heard, on multiple occasions, an organization’s desire to seek an alternative practitioner tool – requirements management or quality assurance tool, while maintaining an orchestrated product development process that enables rather than penalizes an evolution of individual practitioner tools.

And in terms of visibility, customers are seeing the value in an orchestrated ALM dashboard that can capture data from one or more practitioner tools, displaying both data and process KPI metrics.

I sense an increasing realization by our customers and prospects that ALM is becoming an instance of the practice of business process management, through which software delivery is automated through common workflows and practitioner tools -implementing methods, activities and change management in an orchestrated flow of software development and delivery.

That is what we’ve been focused on here at Serena, of course. If you’ll forgive me for pointing to some marketing material, we’ve encapsulated our view in the following presentation. Let me know what you think.

Watch Serena’s App Vision presentation: Orchestration & Visibility Across Teams, Processes & Tools.

KP: Thank you George for taking the time to talk to me. I know the mainframe track is one of the most popular each year. What’s exciting for 2011?

GP: Innovation in the products has continued at a blistering pace this year. We are going to show how ChangeMan ZMF fits into the Orchestrated ALM story, and how it actually leads the story.

KP: That is a bold claim, why is that?

GP: Simple: the ChangeMan ZMF ERO (Enterprise Release Option) is on fire! Customers all over the world are adding this option so they can coordinate their releases. Release complexity and the need for a solution that scales have never been greater.  Plus, customers will learn to use the power of ChangeMan ZMF Web Services to integrate mainframe SCM into development and release management processes.

KP: It sounds like you’re going to take these sessions deep.

GP: The REXX and XML Services are powerful and productive utilities. One of our partners will walk through the most commonly used ChangeMan ZMF customizations.

KP: And what about more routine updates?

GP: We’ve changed a lot of the internal file structures for ChangeMan ZMF. So, we will show why and what you get from that update. Plus, we’ll feature how one customer is using the new and improved INFO/MAN Option for ChangeMan ZMF and the HTTP SOAP Call System interface.

KP: What surprises are in store?

GP: Did you know that you can now put your Java apps under ChangeMan ZMF? And our Professional Services group is the best way to prepare your organization, your systems, and most importantly, yourself for the next upgrade.

KP: But we’re not just talking about ChangeMan ZMF I assume?

GP: Absolutely not.  You must come and see how ChangeMan SSM can protect your system infrastructure. We’re going to blow you away with how the new Dimensions for z/OS extends Dimensions CM’s reputation to the mainframe, delivering a consistent user experience across distributed and mainframe platforms.

KP: That’s quite a list. Anything more?

GP: Of course we’ve got sessions for all the mainframe products but the one I am most eager to see is the StarTool IOO where we will see dramatic performance improvements in the VSAM file system without changing any code!

KP: Sounds like you’ve done it again. Thanks George.

Register for xChange and take home a free Kindle! See you in Vegas.

Interesting question. Many of our customers report that application-centric deployments into pre-production and production environments are largely manual and script driven, with much dependence and reliance on the few resources currently tasked with defining and executing deployment tasks and activities. There comes a point with deployment when rewarding the fireman becomes akin to rewarding the arsonist, only they’re one and the same and the only resource who knows it, sees it, and can do something about it.

In a recent separate call with a customer, I met with two release analysts, a DBA, a resource responsible for middleware, and the release and production control manager. We learnt of 12 application types, 8 of which are web-based applications using WebLogic and Tomcat, and a backend Oracle SQL database. The customer reported an increase in application deployment requests to 60 per month, and has an average application deployment time of 38 minutes. The release analysts spend all their time creating and maintaining deployment scripts, managing the coordination of manual tasks and activities with DBAs and IT infrastructure and executing the deployments in pre-production and production environments. They both report an ever-increasing backlog of release planning and business priorities that currently remain undone. The release window is shrinking and the volume and velocity of deployment requests simply do not fit. Moreover, there is a high dependency on the release analysts and DBAs as they are working around the clock, becoming dangerously close to burning out.

We should reward where it makes sense, but we also need to ensure we optimize our release processes and practices. And I now know of two release analysts who would welcome their weekends back.

For more information about release automation, get the whitepaper Automate to Thrive: Driving Business Agility with Effective Release Management.

KP: I know you are a strong advocate of the importance of the requirements phase. What is your philosophy?

CC: Great software is driven by quality requirements. In other words, how well you deliver releases is highly dependent on how well you capture demand, mock up prototypes, and develop requirements.

KP: How have you made that part of the xChange track content this year?

CC: We have ensured that the Demand and Requirements xChange track will focus on how IT and product development organizations use Serena’s Demand Management products to capture, define and deliver on customer needs. We show real-world customer examples, best practices, product updates and we have intense technical sessions focused on Serena Demand Management products, including Dimensions RM, Prototype Composer, Agile Planner, SBM and PPM.

KP: I know you are excited about some of the customer presentations we have this year. What can you tell me about them?

CC: It is all about best practices. Our customers are in the real world and have deadlines, budgets and compliance needs to meet. Their best practices are far more effective. So, for example we are going to hear from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which is using Dimensions RM and SBM to ensure their releases meet their customers’ exact requirements for precision-made treasury certificates and security documents.

KP: I hear a lot about agile requirements. Are you going to talk about that?

CC: Good question. Our customers are navigating the dichotomy of agile/waterfall and not just that but also the ever more important intersection between hardware/software requirements to deliver quality products and applications, such as those in cars and phones and medical devices. So we are very excited to be able to announce some interesting and related developments from Serena’s product experts as they reveal what’s next for Serena’s Demand Management products.

KP: Intriguing, Chris. Thank you for sharing that. I am eager to see and hear what you have in store for us all.

Register for xChange now and receive a free Kindle loaded with the conference proceeding

SSM is built on top of Serena Business Manager (SBM).  Therefore, SSM inherits the ease-of-use, time-to-value, and custom fit capability of SBM.  Customers no longer have to tolerate the complexity, rigidity, and on-going operational and professional services costs associated with current ERP-like service management solutions.  SSM allows you to enjoy a time-to-value and TCO model that can’t be matched by traditional ERP-like service management systems.  This is why we can say that Serena can be implemented, modified, and extended to your existing in-house systems in a 10^th of the time and at a 10^th of the cost compared to traditional ERP-like service management systems.

Serena Service Manger can operate in our cloud, your cloud, hybrid cloud or on-premise.  SSM can be custom fitted to your needs in all these environments, fully supported by Serena.  Traditional cloud-based offerings ascribe to the “one-size-fits-all” model for use on their cloud.  Serena Service Manager offers a custom fit solution, in all environments, while providing the necessary integration to existing ALM tools and business applications behind your firewall.   This can all be performed in a 10^th of the time at a 10^th of the cost compared to traditional one-size-fits-all solutions.

Learn how SSM can benefit your organization by registering for the July 27 webcast, Top 5 Ways to Boost End User Satisfaction with IT: A Live Demo of Serena Service Manager.  I hope to meet many of you at xChange 2011, our upcoming Serena User Conference in September!

KP: So, our last poll indicates that more than 60% of those registered for the conference want to know what’s new and exciting with SBM. What do you have in store for them?

AA: We’re thrilled about all the interest in SBM! Our customers have quickly recognized that they can leverage the power of SBM to automate processes well beyond the application and product development realm – to streamline IT service management (ITSM) processes as well as those that support their core business operations. So we’ve packed our “SBM and IT Process Automation” track with sessions led by their peers and our product experts that will focus on how to get the most out of their SBM investments – best practices, product deep dives, and a slew of case studies.

We will also showcase the newest release of Serena Service Manager, our SBM-powered solution for IT Service Management (ITSM).

KP: Why the focus on ITSM and what can our customers expect to take away from the sessions on Serena Service Manager?

AA: We polled our customer base and found that 300+ customers use SBM to automate ITSM processes today. Another 1/3 of our base has been clamoring for an alternative to complex packaged ITSM solutions of old from the likes of BMC, CA and HP that are unintuitive and expensive to use and maintain and the “my way or the highway” SaaS offerings for ITSM that are out there. Since Serena Service Manager is powered by SBM, it has all the right ingredients to alleviate those challenges around flexibility, visibility and usability. And you can automate other core IT processes with the same solution.  Whether a customer is considering extending or replacing their ITSM capabilities, the sessions that we have lined up will be of value.

KP: I see that there are a lot of customer-led sessions. Which ones are you looking forward to?

AA: Without a doubt, WebMD and Worthington Industries.  They will talk about why they focused on a process-based approach to ITSM – from incident, problem, and change management right through to release management. Also, I wouldn’t miss AgustaWestland, the helicopter manufacturer.   They used SBM to reduce customer service request response times from 6 weeks to 6 minutes. And CareerBuilder is going to speak about uniting the power of SBM with existing investments in SharePoint – a “don’t miss” for customers that use SharePoint as their document store and portal.

KP: Thanks, Amita.  Going to be a great track.

Register for xChange 2011 now and take home a Kindle!

During the “Ask the Experts” session at the Serena Mainframe Virtual User Group meeting earlier this month, a few questions about the newest version of ChangeMan ZMF went unanswered due to the lack of time.  Mark Levy, Serena Software Mainframe product manager, and I went through them and provide the answers here.

Q: For ChangeMan ZMF v6, the product moved from DB2 to linear VSAM.  What are the benefits and risks that you have seen? 

A: In ChangeMan ZMF v6, the Impact Analysis function was moved from being based on DB2 to a z/OS data space, backed by linear VSAM. This was done for several reasons: performance, ability to better manage Java components, and the ability to expose Impact Analysis XML services, which could not be done under the DB2 implementation. In doing so, we have provided a utility which will allow users to offload this data back into a DB2 table in case they have SQL that they would like to continue to run against this data. This move eliminates the requirement for DB2 for dynamic IA updates. Now everyone has the benefit of real-time updates to their Impact Analysis data, even if they do not have DB2. 

Q: Is there a plan to manage data through ChangeMan ZMF also? 

A: ChangeMan ZMF has the ability to manage data components throughout the lifecycle, assuming that these are components that do not get built, compiled, have external dependencies that would require audit or impact analysis.  However, ZMF is primarily used for managing objects that relate to code (src, load, JCL, DBRM etc.) 

Q: Is the Eclipse plug-in part of ChangeMan ZMF? 

A: The Eclipse plug-in is an option that is part of the ChangeMan ZMF Client Pack, which also includes an Eclipse Plugin for Rational Developer and ChangeMan ZDD. 

Q: What exactly is in ChangeMan HANA? What are the exciting features? 

A: HANA is the code name for the next major release of ChangeMan ZMF.  The proposed features are still in the early stages of research. 

Q: Are you going to integrate PeopleSoft systems? 

A: There are no current plans for a PeopleSoft implementation at this time. With ChangeMan ZMF’s web and XML services, customers or Serena Professional Services have the ability to do these types of integrations. 

Q: What platforms will ChangeMan ZMF support for managing and deploying WebSphere?

A: ChangeMan ZMF will support the deployment of WebSphere applications and components on z/OS.

If you have additional questions, feel free to post a comment below or visit the ChangeMan ZMF page.

I just met with Steven Cronin from our German support team about the Release Management track at Serena’s annual user conference, xChange 2011, from September 19-21 in Las Vegas.  Steven is leading a worldwide team of Serena experts who have built the Release Management conference agenda.

KP: Who should attend this track?

SC: Anyone interested in or responsible for deployment and release management.

KP: Tell me about some of the highlights.

SC: We have one customer who will talk about the benefits they’ve gained from our release management solutions, like achieving a 90% reduction in deployment time. Some of our leading consultants and product managers will present on how release management can be utilized with your existing Serena products, including Version Manager, SBM, Dimensions CM and our Mainframe products.

KP: Which is the one session you are most excited about?

SC: In one session we are going to show how to deploy and manage releases with the click of a button in our Release Automation and Orchestration sessions. I’m also excited about showing the exciting new deployment features of Dimensions CM 12. They are going to be a huge benefit to our customers.

KP: You know I’ve challenged you to come up with at least one idea that customers can implement which will pay for the cost of the conference.  How will you be able to accomplish that during the Release Management session?

SC: Serena will share best practices for deploying applications across multiple platforms and provide examples on how to use Dimensions CM to implement continuous builds with integration frameworks such as Hudson and CruiseControl.  Also, we will show how to extend and customize the Release Management process by using pre- and post-deployment scripts.  Finally, we will share the many customer successes in using application-centric release automation.

KP: Are there going to be any announcements we should be eager to hear?

SC: We will introduce our new Serena Release Manager solution, which is an integrated solution addressing the release management needs of all stakeholders.

KP: Thank you Steven, and thanks to your whole team. There is something for everyone in this track and we look forward to welcoming customers to these exciting sessions.

Learn more about the Release Management Track at xChange 2011.  Then, register to attend!

KP: This is a pretty big track; it covers the entire lifecycle from demand to development to deployment. How did it come into being?

AO: While most customers have been using various Serena products to manage specific application development and deployment processes, many have also integrated multiple Serena solutions with third-party products to automate and orchestrate their entire application lifecycle process. We call this “Orchestrated Application Lifecycle Management” or Orchestrated ALM.

KP: What areas are you focusing on in the track?

AO: This year at xChange we have a concentration on real-world customer case studies and best practices and, from the product teams, updates and technical sessions focused solely on Orchestrated ALM. Everyone who attends will hear how customers are using combinations of Dimensions CM, Dimensions RM, HP Quality Center, SBM and other products to orchestrate their ALM processes.

KP: Clearly, this is a huge landscape to cover. How will customers be able to put all of this in context?

AO: The sessions on the Orchestrated ALM Reference Architecture, the blueprint for Serena’s future solutions, provide recommended best practices on how to integrate our products. You can hear from customers, like Carefirst, who have integrated SBM and Dimensions CM in a multi-methodology environment to provide complete software change and release management across the SDLC and into production.

KP: I am glad to hear there are so many sessions that customers will deliver. What is the one you are most interested to hear?

AO: CVS Caremark. They are saving time without sacrificing control and traceability for their complex application development ecosystem. There will be some amazing insights in this session.

KP: Thanks, Ash. Going to be a great track.

See detailed track and session descriptions for the Orchestrating the Entire Lifecycle track.  And to register click here.

We’ll see you in Vegas.

Over the last six weeks the product teams have been working through the submissions and their task has been very difficult. So many excellent presentations and so few speaking slots. Indeed we have actually opened up additional space to accommodate more of the ideas.

This week the top 80 suggestions went online and you can now review them on the xChange web site. Here are the links to the individual tracks:

• Orchestrating the Entire Application Lifecycle
• Demand and Requirements Management
• Development Management
• Release Management
• SBM and IT Process Automation
• Mainframe

Record breaking: Over 22 of the 83 sessions are customer presentations, again another Serena xChange record.

This year the content is more intense and in-depth than ever with customer, partner and Serena experts leading critical sessions that address some of the most advanced demand and requirements management, software development, release management, service management and process automation issues in the world today.

Keep an eye on the blog for more exciting announcements in the next week.

See you in Vegas in September!

Register now.

Our relationship with Nolio is a timely one, as the Release Management market is growing 35 percent annually. At the same time, IT environments are becoming increasingly complex with multiple platforms and n-tier applications; all of which have growing interdependencies. In order to release and deploy new capabilities into these complex environments, large-scale updates to multiple systems and integrated software releases are critical. This requires considerable coordination and orchestration to minimize the impact to production, delivery schedules, quality imperatives, and compliance mandates. Automating release management addresses these challenges and delivers dramatic boosts to an organization’s competitive edge.

We are thrilled to offer our customers a way to implement a true process that improves visibility and alignment across business, IT and application development—and proud to be the first company to offer release automation as part of an end-to-end ALM suite.

Learn more about Serena’s OEM agreement with Nolio.

Why does Office continue to lure organizations?

• It’s “free”: everyone already has a license on their computer.
• Easy to use: everyone knows how to use Excel and Word.
• Extreme flexibility: it’s easy to capture exactly what you want, how you want it with PowerPoint and Visio.

But those strengths are also Office’s biggest problems. Here are just some of the dangers with the Microsoft siren song:

• It’s not really “free”: I’ve conducted many workshops where companies showed me how Office wasted millions in rework, communication errors, and delays.
• Ad hoc communication: Communicating requirements is often done via email or SharePoint, and the lack of process often results in wasted workforce productivity.
• The impact of change: if a customer changes a requirement, how do you communicate that change to all impacted projects?
• Reinventing the wheel: it’s so hard to find something buried in thousands of Word and Excel documents, so it’s easier to just reinvent instead of reuse.

I continually preach against this insanity that circumvents the basics of a good requirements process, and I’ll continue doing so. If I do it enough, I hope one day that unsuspecting IT organizations will no longer be lured by the call of Microsoft Office’s requirements mediocrity.

John Carrillo is a thought leader in requirements management and application lifecycle management, with over 20 years experience in the commercial software and manufacturing industries. In his current role at Serena Software, he provides strategic counsel to organizations regarding technologies, process, and best practices for application. development and delivery.

1. Integrate existing lifecycle tool investments within an automated SDLC. You need to have a standard development process that helps you understand what’s going on. But it also needs to be flexible enough to have localized processes and different tools “plug in” so you have complete app vision.
2. Automate a lifecycle process with practitioner tool flexibility.  Don’t be coerced to change your processes and systems to fit a single vendor’s toolset. You should be able to get app vision with the tools, processes, and platforms that you want.
3. Create total clarity with process metrics such as cycle time and duration, in addition to data metrics.   App vision is more than development data like the number of defects or baselines. You also need visibility into process metrics, like cycle times and lag times between development phases.
4. Ensure role-based accessibility to relevant information at the right time.  You have to serve relevant information to the right people. You have to give them app vision when they need it. You can’t expect them to dig around a data warehouse to find the right information.
5. Empower the team and contributors; think beyond specific tools. Serena’s Orchestrated ALM Dashboard  is just one example of a solution that goes beyond specific tools. It gives you app vision into both the development data and process metrics across all your tools.

While releasing applications into production environments is a critical part of application development, we believe customer success is not just about speed alone. Success also means being able to provide a straightforward and secure path to production. Enter Dimensions CM.

Role-based security in Serena Dimensions CM helps you work more easily with outsourced development teams.

The technology provides a repeatable, reliable release management process that saves companies time and money, provides a high degree of visibility and also lets tools play “nice” with others. Dimensions CM integrates with many popular application lifecycle tools straight out of the box, including IDEs such as .NET and Eclipse, defect tracking, build, test management tools and help desks. Product enhancements in the new version enable Dimensions CM users to provide a gold repository for all release-ready code, which is especially critical for IT organizations that have multiple development tools in use by various development teams.

New features and capabilities in Dimension CM version 12 include:

• New Deployment View to provide a centralized console for release managers to view, execute and schedule deployments and rollbacks;
• Greater granularity and flexibility in managing promotions and deployments, demotions and rollbacks, simplifying role-based security and separations of concerns;
• Enhanced capabilities allowing customers to promote and deploy at a later date, enabling alignment with resource availability.

View more information on the latest version of Serena Dimensions CM.

This inevitably led to a white board where he proceeded to sketch their release process and draw attention to a number of their challenges.  I listened intently as I’m a firm believer in the principle that prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.  We quickly agreed on what appeared to be all too familiar problems:

• The increasing volume and velocity of application releases.
• The translation of development scripts and guidelines into deployment tasks and activities for pre-production and production.
• The manual sequencing of these tasks and activities across application tiers and infrastructure environments.

The following day I was invited to visit the Delivery Manager at the insurance company location. Sadly, it was announced that an application outage had occurred shortly before we arrived, and while we continued to understand the complexity and extent of their release processes and activities, it became apparent quickly that a DBA operation had been incorrectly applied, before the application was deployed. Troubleshooting an issue through a variety of largely manual deployment scripts is hard without an automated audit trail, and worse still, the automated backup recovery had failed to work also, thus causing a longer outage than would have been the case.

Their problem essentially became ours to help resolve.  And now together we are working to automate their release management process, simplify the complexity, eliminate handoff tasks and assignments, and automate service tasks while eliminating errors and optimizing the integrity of application-centric deployments.  Just another day’s work on the road!

Historically, it took 30 to 60 days to release a new application into production and a team of 25 people to execute the manual tasks and scripts required to complete the production deployment.  With Serena’s Release Management solution, the manual effort for a production deployment has been reduced by 60% and application releases are now deployed in 24 hours or less.  This faster cycle time provides a major competitive advantage for our customer.  Based on this success, this customer is expanding the use of the Serena solution across their application portfolio.  By year end, 90% of their revenue ($1.5B) will be generated by the application deployed with Serena.

It’s incredibly satisfying to speak to customers realizing this level of business value.  In a recent survey of our customers, 52% of respondents told us they are using Serena solutions to deploy their applications into production.  We’ll be sharing more of these customer stories in future posts.

But if requirements are so critical, why do so many organizations do such a poor job at managing them? Why have decades-old tools failed to resolve the problem? And why has agile still had limited success across the enterprise despite “light” management of requirements? 

The unfortunate truth is that many of the tools that were originally designed to help developers manage requirements are actually responsible for holding them back from delivering on customer requirements. According to Forrester, “Application development and program management professionals searching for the right requirements management solution often get tripped up by ambition…This leads them to purchase a tool that’s more complex, more difficult to use, and more expensive than is necessary.” 

Development organizations also sometimes get stuck in a feature-function analysis focused solely on “requirements management” that includes factors such as baselining, versioning, linking, and traceability, while ignoring the broader lifecycle of everything they need to do to capture requirements, understand their complexity and impact, and validate features. Instead of focusing solely on “requirements management,” often the best solution to development’s problems is looking at the entire process and how it’s impacted by change. 

Learn more about the process and phases of orchestrating the requirements lifecycle by reading the white paper, Orchestrating Your Requirements Process.

Thankfully, many of the corporations I have the pleasure of working with are doing well, and they are experiencing growing pains.  One such pain is frequent mainframe upgrades.  In the past, upgrades occurred years apart.  Now they are months apart.  An upgrade on the mainframe is a significant cost and one that isn’t always budgeted.  When your company grows, so do the jobs you submit.  Most times a customer doesn’t realize that if there was a way to make jobs run faster they’d not only get time back and stop the windows from shrinking, but they could slow down that impending upgrade price.

IBM provides us with all the mainframe machine resources we need, but it’s up to us to make the best use of them.  You might not realize this, but you’ve got two choices:

1. Have your best sysprog do some performance tuning 8 hours/day against generic scenarios.
2. Have it done dynamically in real-time for each and every job, 24/7.

Yes, we can instantly adjust all those resources on the fly automatically to improve the I/O throughput of your jobs.

Think about that – you’d get time back.  How much is that worth?  What could you do with more time?  Would your increased productivity allow you to get more done, and you’d generate more revenue?  You betcha!  I’ve seen customer jobs cut in half and the customers fell out of their chairs with delight.

Job Optimization is a solution of pure cost savings, cost avoidance, and increased productivity.  That’s got to fit into every CIO’s action plan.  It may be time to shrink your mainframe windows.

I got a sneak peak at Glenn’s part of the presentation.  I’m not going to divulge too much but I will say that it has both an Ops and software engineering slant.  He drives home the point about applying some engineering principles to managing the release, and the importance of managing release packages. His bottom line: Dev and Ops must come together and get in the same boat.  Glenn also does a good job of explaining adoption of ITIL v3 and growing interest in Release Management from all stakeholders.

This webcast is the 2^nd in a series of 3 Release Management webcasts with Forrester Research, Inc. The first one was with principal analyst Jeffrey Hammond – Five Ways to Streamline Release Management.  He provided “next practices” for improving release visibility and speed and a full report disclosing his research.  In the last webcast we’ll discuss the impact of agile development on release management.  Watch for it!