Using Analytics to Guide Improvement during an Agile–DevOps Transformation

Over the past three years, Fannie Mae IT has transformed from a traditional waterfall organization to a lean culture enabled by agile methods and DevOps. Software analytics were used to guide improvements and evaluate progress. Project-level analytics enabled agile teams to improve structural quality and evaluate their practices as they delivered greater functionality over shrinking delivery intervals. Aggregated enterprise metrics displayed an average 38 percent improvement in structural quality, with some applications achieving 48 percent to 70 percent gains. These quality improvements accompanied a 28 percent increase in productivity. The frequency of releases shrank from cycles of nine to 18 months, down to releases every couple of one- to two-month sprints. The article discusses examples of how analytics were used, along with challenges in selecting measures and implementing analytics in an agile–DevOps transformation. This article is part of a special issue on Actionable Analytics for Software Engineering.