Overview
Dow Jones, owned by News Corporation and headquartered in New York, is well known across the world for their news and financial information and fast moving and innovative use of digital. With primary competitors of Bloomberg and Reuters, it is essential that Dow Jones continue this innovation to stay ahead.
Client Challenges
A Dev/Ops approached allowed Dow Jones to reduce time to market and maintain their innovation led approach to IT development but, introduced risk into service resulting in outages.
Aveas was asked to review their approach to Dev/Ops and the interlock with Service Management to propose ways of working that would introduce essential controls without stifling their fast time to market.
Agile delivery brought Dow Jones competitive edge through reduced time to market. Cumbersome IT processes impacted time to market, yet remained essential to ensure robust controls and minimise disruption to business critical IT services. These opposing forces created tension between Dev/Ops and Service Management or the Development and the Support organisations.
What did Aveas do?
Although not mature in the USA, Aveas were asked to implement ITIL processes that allowed this agility to continue while retaining essential controls. To achieve this, we designed and implemented a set of process and procedures, based on the ITIL framework and adapted for agile, that brought new controls without time to market but which did result in a more stable IT service.
We worked closely with a third-party provider to implement new service management toolsets that integrated with their existing agile toolsets enabling MI to prove the approach worked.
This required market engagement, an RFP, subsequent supplier evaluation and selection, and contract development and negotiation. We were then appointed as the SI and the Business Change lead, taking accountability for the integration of the tools alongside the agreed processes.
We worked with the business to enable Dev/Ops to flourish but in a controlled manner that did not impact release times.
What were the outcomes?
The outcomes of this engagement were directly measurable with the most noticeable effect being no restrictions around releases (driving innovation) and a significant improved service performance with faster resolution times.
However, by providing better MI through the tooling, the support team were able to ruggedize the systems which were most at risk, and implement effective monitoring controls. They were able to target awareness and training to drive down outages, all the while, without stifling the dev/ops innovation.
What the client said
“Taking industry recognised standards, Aveas brought a higher level of experience and professionalism in their engagement, finding practical solutions that met the traditional needs of an IT support organisation and the demands of a digital media company constantly seeking innovation” – CIO, Dow Jones