Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a software engineering approach that allows developers to manage and provision infrastructure resources through machine-readable configuration files or scripts, rather than manually configuring hardware or virtual machines. IaC enables organizations to automate the provisioning, deployment, and management of infrastructure components, such as servers, networks, and storage, using code-based tools and techniques. This approach brings agility, consistency, and scalability to infrastructure management and supports DevOps practices by integrating infrastructure provisioning into the software development lifecycle.

AspectExplanation
Concept OverviewInfrastructure as Code (IaC) is a software engineering approach to managing and provisioning infrastructure. It involves defining and managing infrastructure resources through code rather than manual processes or physical hardware configurations. IaC treats infrastructure components like servers, networks, and storage as code artifacts, allowing for automation, version control, and repeatability. The goal is to achieve agile, efficient, and consistent infrastructure deployment and management. IaC plays a crucial role in the DevOps and cloud computing landscapes.
Key PrinciplesIaC is guided by several key principles:
1. Codification: Infrastructure components are defined and configured using code, often in domain-specific languages. 2. Version Control: Code repositories enable versioning and change tracking of infrastructure definitions.
3. Automation: Infrastructure provisioning and management processes are automated to reduce manual work.
4. Consistency: Code-driven configurations ensure uniformity across environments.
5. Collaboration: IaC promotes collaboration between development and operations teams.
ProcessThe process of implementing IaC typically includes the following steps:
1. Code Development: Infrastructure is defined and configured using code in IaC templates or scripts.
2. Versioning: Code is stored in version control systems (e.g., Git) to track changes and facilitate collaboration.
3. Testing: IaC code undergoes testing, including syntax validation and automated testing for desired infrastructure states.
4. Automation: Automated tools or platforms deploy and manage infrastructure based on the code definitions.
5. Continuous Monitoring: Infrastructure is continuously monitored to detect and address deviations from the desired state.
6. Scaling and Optimization: Code can be adjusted to scale resources as needed and optimize performance and costs.
BenefitsImplementing IaC offers several benefits:
1. Agility: Rapid and automated infrastructure provisioning supports agile development practices.
2. Consistency: IaC ensures that infrastructure configurations are consistent across environments.
3. Version Control: Code-based definitions enable versioning, rollback, and collaboration.
4. Efficiency: Automation reduces manual work, errors, and deployment time.
5. Cost Savings: IaC allows for resource scaling and optimization to minimize costs.
Challenges and RisksChallenges in adopting IaC include the learning curve associated with coding infrastructure, managing code complexity, and addressing security concerns related to code repositories. Risks may arise from misconfigurations or inadequate testing.
Tools and TechnologiesVarious tools and technologies support IaC, including Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager, Ansible, and Chef. These tools provide infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and automation capabilities.

Key Components

  • Declarative Configuration: IaC relies on declarative configuration files or scripts written in formats such as YAML, JSON, or domain-specific languages (DSLs) to specify the desired state of infrastructure resources and their interdependencies.
  • Version Control: Infrastructure code is managed and version-controlled using systems like Git, enabling teams to track changes, collaborate, and roll back to previous versions if needed, ensuring consistency and reproducibility in infrastructure deployments.
  • Automation Tools: IaC tools and platforms such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, or Azure Resource Manager automate the provisioning and management of infrastructure resources based on the specified configuration, eliminating manual intervention and reducing the risk of errors.

Methodologies and Approaches

IaC can be implemented through various methodologies and approaches tailored to the specific needs and objectives of the organization.

Infrastructure Orchestration

Infrastructure orchestration frameworks like Kubernetes or Docker Swarm automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications and microservices, providing a platform-agnostic approach to infrastructure provisioning and management.

Configuration Management

Configuration management tools like Ansible, Chef, or Puppet automate the configuration and management of server environments, ensuring consistency, compliance, and security across distributed infrastructure deployments.

Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

CI/CD pipelines integrate infrastructure provisioning and deployment processes with software development workflows, enabling automated testing, validation, and deployment of infrastructure changes alongside application code changes.

Benefits of Infrastructure as Code

IaC offers several benefits for organizations managing infrastructure:

  1. Agility and Flexibility: IaC enables organizations to provision, deploy, and scale infrastructure resources rapidly and efficiently, supporting agile development practices and enabling faster time-to-market for applications and services.
  2. Consistency and Reproducibility: By defining infrastructure as code, organizations ensure consistency and reproducibility in infrastructure deployments across different environments, reducing configuration drift and minimizing the risk of errors or misconfigurations.
  3. Scalability and Elasticity: IaC enables organizations to scale infrastructure resources up or down dynamically in response to changing demand, optimizing resource utilization and minimizing costs associated with over-provisioning or under-provisioning.
  4. Cost Optimization: By automating the provisioning and management of infrastructure resources, IaC helps organizations optimize costs by reducing manual effort, minimizing downtime, and improving resource efficiency.

Challenges in Implementing Infrastructure as Code

Implementing IaC may face challenges:

  1. Learning Curve: Adopting IaC requires developers and operations teams to acquire new skills in infrastructure automation, version control, and configuration management, which may require training and investment in learning resources.
  2. Tool Selection: Choosing the right IaC tools and platforms that align with organizational requirements, technology stack, and infrastructure architecture can be challenging, requiring careful evaluation and consideration of factors such as scalability, compatibility, and vendor lock-in.
  3. Security and Compliance: Managing security and compliance in IaC environments requires implementing best practices for securing code repositories, managing credentials and secrets, and enforcing security policies across infrastructure deployments.

Strategies for Implementing Infrastructure as Code

To address challenges and maximize the benefits of IaC, organizations can implement various strategies:

  1. Start Small, Iterate: Begin with pilot projects or proof-of-concepts to experiment with IaC tools and practices, gather feedback, and iterate based on lessons learned before scaling up to production environments.
  2. Collaboration and Communication: Foster collaboration and communication between development and operations teams to align on infrastructure requirements, share knowledge, and collaborate effectively on infrastructure automation initiatives.
  3. Infrastructure as Code as Culture: Promote a culture of automation, collaboration, and continuous improvement across the organization, encouraging teams to embrace IaC as a core practice and integrating infrastructure provisioning into the software development lifecycle.
  4. Monitoring and Governance: Implement monitoring and governance frameworks to track infrastructure changes, monitor resource usage, and enforce compliance with security and regulatory requirements in IaC environments.

Real-World Examples

Many organizations across industries have successfully adopted IaC to streamline infrastructure management and accelerate application delivery:

  1. Netflix: Netflix uses IaC tools like Spinnaker and AWS CloudFormation to automate the provisioning and deployment of infrastructure resources for its streaming platform, enabling rapid scaling and high availability to support millions of concurrent users.
  2. GitHub: GitHub leverages IaC practices to manage its infrastructure across multiple cloud providers, using tools like Terraform and Kubernetes to automate infrastructure provisioning, deployment, and scaling for its code hosting and collaboration platform.
  3. Spotify: Spotify utilizes IaC tools and practices to manage its distributed infrastructure for music streaming, employing tools like Kubernetes and Helm to automate container orchestration, deployment, and scaling across its global infrastructure footprint.

Conclusion

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a software engineering approach that enables organizations to manage and provision infrastructure resources through machine-readable configuration files or scripts, automating the deployment and management of infrastructure components. By defining infrastructure as code, organizations achieve agility, consistency, and scalability in infrastructure management, supporting agile development practices and enabling faster time-to-market for applications and services. Despite challenges such as learning curves and security considerations, organizations can implement strategies and best practices to successfully adopt IaC and realize its benefits in today’s fast-paced and dynamic IT environments.

Related FrameworksDescriptionWhen to Apply
DevOps Practices– A set of software development and IT operations practices aimed at improving collaboration, automation, and agility in software delivery and infrastructure management. DevOps Practices include continuous integration, continuous delivery, automated testing, and infrastructure automation to streamline software development and deployment processes.– When accelerating software delivery or enhancing infrastructure agility. – Adopting DevOps Practices to automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration, and deployment, enabling faster and more reliable software releases and infrastructure updates effectively, fostering collaboration and innovation in IaC environments.
Configuration Management– A process for managing and controlling changes to software and hardware configurations in IT environments. Configuration Management involves documenting, tracking, and auditing configuration changes to ensure consistency, reliability, and compliance with organizational standards and policies.– When maintaining consistency or enforcing compliance in infrastructure environments. – Implementing Configuration Management practices to manage and track infrastructure configurations, enforce standardization, and mitigate configuration drift effectively, ensuring reliability and security in IaC deployments.
Infrastructure Automation Tools– Software tools and platforms that enable the automation of infrastructure provisioning, configuration, and management tasks. Infrastructure Automation Tools include tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Chef, and Puppet, which provide declarative or imperative approaches to defining and managing infrastructure as code.– When automating infrastructure deployment or scaling operations. – Leveraging Infrastructure Automation Tools to automate provisioning, configuration, and management tasks, reducing manual effort, minimizing errors, and improving scalability and consistency in IaC environments effectively.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)– A software development practice that involves integrating code changes into a shared repository frequently and automating the deployment of software applications to production environments. CI/CD Pipelines automate build, test, and deployment processes to deliver software changes rapidly, reliably, and consistently.– When accelerating software delivery or promoting collaboration in development teams. – Implementing CI/CD Pipelines to automate software builds, tests, and deployments, integrating infrastructure changes seamlessly with application code changes, enabling faster time-to-market and improved quality assurance in IaC environments.
Immutable Infrastructure– A concept in infrastructure management where infrastructure components, such as servers and containers, are replaced or rebuilt rather than modified or updated in place. Immutable Infrastructure ensures consistency, reproducibility, and reliability by treating infrastructure as disposable and immutable entities.– When ensuring consistency or reducing configuration drift in infrastructure deployments. – Adopting Immutable Infrastructure principles to create and deploy immutable infrastructure components, minimizing configuration drift, and simplifying rollback and recovery processes effectively, enhancing reliability and security in IaC environments.
Microservices Architecture– A software architecture pattern that structures applications as a collection of small, loosely coupled services, each running in its own process and communicating via lightweight APIs. Microservices Architecture enables agility, scalability, and resilience in software development and deployment by decoupling functionality and promoting autonomy and independence among services.– When designing scalable and resilient software architectures. – Adopting Microservices Architecture to modularize applications, decouple infrastructure dependencies, and enable independent deployment and scaling of microservices effectively, improving agility and flexibility in IaC environments.
Version Control Systems (VCS)– Software tools that enable developers to track changes to source code, configuration files, and other artifacts collaboratively. Version Control Systems such as Git provide features for versioning, branching, merging, and collaboration, facilitating code review, collaboration, and change management in software development projects.– When managing configuration changes or collaborating on infrastructure code. – Utilizing Version Control Systems to track and manage changes to infrastructure code, enforce versioning, and facilitate collaboration among development and operations teams effectively, ensuring traceability and auditability in IaC environments.
Containerization Technologies– Technologies that enable the packaging and running of applications and their dependencies in lightweight, portable containers. Containerization Technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes provide isolated execution environments for applications, enabling consistent deployment across different environments and infrastructure platforms.– When ensuring portability or scalability of applications in infrastructure deployments. – Leveraging Containerization Technologies to package and deploy applications and dependencies as self-contained units, enabling consistent and scalable deployment across diverse infrastructure environments effectively, enhancing agility and flexibility in IaC deployments.
Infrastructure Testing Frameworks– Frameworks and tools for validating and testing infrastructure configurations, deployments, and changes systematically. Infrastructure Testing Frameworks include tools such as InSpec, ServerSpec, and Testinfra, which enable automated testing of infrastructure code against desired state configurations and compliance policies.– When ensuring reliability or compliance in infrastructure deployments. – Implementing Infrastructure Testing Frameworks to automate testing and validation of infrastructure configurations, ensuring adherence to security, compliance, and reliability requirements effectively, reducing risk and increasing confidence in IaC deployments.
Cloud Computing Platforms– Platforms that provide on-demand access to computing resources, such as virtual machines, storage, and networking, over the internet. Cloud Computing Platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offer infrastructure services and APIs for provisioning, managing, and scaling infrastructure resources dynamically.– When provisioning scalable and elastic infrastructure resources. – Leveraging Cloud Computing Platforms to provision and manage infrastructure resources dynamically, scale applications on demand, and optimize costs effectively, enhancing agility and scalability in IaC deployments.

Connected Agile & Lean Frameworks

AIOps

aiops
AIOps is the application of artificial intelligence to IT operations. It has become particularly useful for modern IT management in hybridized, distributed, and dynamic environments. AIOps has become a key operational component of modern digital-based organizations, built around software and algorithms.

AgileSHIFT

AgileSHIFT
AgileSHIFT is a framework that prepares individuals for transformational change by creating a culture of agility.

Agile Methodology

agile-methodology
Agile started as a lightweight development method compared to heavyweight software development, which is the core paradigm of the previous decades of software development. By 2001 the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was born as a set of principles that defined the new paradigm for software development as a continuous iteration. This would also influence the way of doing business.

Agile Program Management

agile-program-management
Agile Program Management is a means of managing, planning, and coordinating interrelated work in such a way that value delivery is emphasized for all key stakeholders. Agile Program Management (AgilePgM) is a disciplined yet flexible agile approach to managing transformational change within an organization.

Agile Project Management

agile-project-management
Agile project management (APM) is a strategy that breaks large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks. In the APM methodology, each project is completed in small sections – often referred to as iterations. Each iteration is completed according to its project life cycle, beginning with the initial design and progressing to testing and then quality assurance.

Agile Modeling

agile-modeling
Agile Modeling (AM) is a methodology for modeling and documenting software-based systems. Agile Modeling is critical to the rapid and continuous delivery of software. It is a collection of values, principles, and practices that guide effective, lightweight software modeling.

Agile Business Analysis

agile-business-analysis
Agile Business Analysis (AgileBA) is certification in the form of guidance and training for business analysts seeking to work in agile environments. To support this shift, AgileBA also helps the business analyst relate Agile projects to a wider organizational mission or strategy. To ensure that analysts have the necessary skills and expertise, AgileBA certification was developed.

Agile Leadership

agile-leadership
Agile leadership is the embodiment of agile manifesto principles by a manager or management team. Agile leadership impacts two important levels of a business. The structural level defines the roles, responsibilities, and key performance indicators. The behavioral level describes the actions leaders exhibit to others based on agile principles. 

Andon System

andon-system
The andon system alerts managerial, maintenance, or other staff of a production process problem. The alert itself can be activated manually with a button or pull cord, but it can also be activated automatically by production equipment. Most Andon boards utilize three colored lights similar to a traffic signal: green (no errors), yellow or amber (problem identified, or quality check needed), and red (production stopped due to unidentified issue).

Bimodal Portfolio Management

bimodal-portfolio-management
Bimodal Portfolio Management (BimodalPfM) helps an organization manage both agile and traditional portfolios concurrently. Bimodal Portfolio Management – sometimes referred to as bimodal development – was coined by research and advisory company Gartner. The firm argued that many agile organizations still needed to run some aspects of their operations using traditional delivery models.

Business Innovation Matrix

business-innovation
Business innovation is about creating new opportunities for an organization to reinvent its core offerings, revenue streams, and enhance the value proposition for existing or new customers, thus renewing its whole business model. Business innovation springs by understanding the structure of the market, thus adapting or anticipating those changes.

Business Model Innovation

business-model-innovation
Business model innovation is about increasing the success of an organization with existing products and technologies by crafting a compelling value proposition able to propel a new business model to scale up customers and create a lasting competitive advantage. And it all starts by mastering the key customers.

Constructive Disruption

constructive-disruption
A consumer brand company like Procter & Gamble (P&G) defines “Constructive Disruption” as: a willingness to change, adapt, and create new trends and technologies that will shape our industry for the future. According to P&G, it moves around four pillars: lean innovation, brand building, supply chain, and digitalization & data analytics.

Continuous Innovation

continuous-innovation
That is a process that requires a continuous feedback loop to develop a valuable product and build a viable business model. Continuous innovation is a mindset where products and services are designed and delivered to tune them around the customers’ problem and not the technical solution of its founders.

Design Sprint

design-sprint
A design sprint is a proven five-day process where critical business questions are answered through speedy design and prototyping, focusing on the end-user. A design sprint starts with a weekly challenge that should finish with a prototype, test at the end, and therefore a lesson learned to be iterated.

Design Thinking

design-thinking
Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO, defined design thinking as “a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” Therefore, desirability, feasibility, and viability are balanced to solve critical problems.

DevOps

devops-engineering
DevOps refers to a series of practices performed to perform automated software development processes. It is a conjugation of the term “development” and “operations” to emphasize how functions integrate across IT teams. DevOps strategies promote seamless building, testing, and deployment of products. It aims to bridge a gap between development and operations teams to streamline the development altogether.

Dual Track Agile

dual-track-agile
Product discovery is a critical part of agile methodologies, as its aim is to ensure that products customers love are built. Product discovery involves learning through a raft of methods, including design thinking, lean start-up, and A/B testing to name a few. Dual Track Agile is an agile methodology containing two separate tracks: the “discovery” track and the “delivery” track.

eXtreme Programming

extreme-programming
eXtreme Programming was developed in the late 1990s by Ken Beck, Ron Jeffries, and Ward Cunningham. During this time, the trio was working on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (C3) to help manage the company payroll system. eXtreme Programming (XP) is a software development methodology. It is designed to improve software quality and the ability of software to adapt to changing customer needs.

Feature-Driven Development

feature-driven-development
Feature-Driven Development is a pragmatic software process that is client and architecture-centric. Feature-Driven Development (FDD) is an agile software development model that organizes workflow according to which features need to be developed next.

Gemba Walk

gemba-walk
A Gemba Walk is a fundamental component of lean management. It describes the personal observation of work to learn more about it. Gemba is a Japanese word that loosely translates as “the real place”, or in business, “the place where value is created”. The Gemba Walk as a concept was created by Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System of lean manufacturing. Ohno wanted to encourage management executives to leave their offices and see where the real work happened. This, he hoped, would build relationships between employees with vastly different skillsets and build trust.

GIST Planning

gist-planning
GIST Planning is a relatively easy and lightweight agile approach to product planning that favors autonomous working. GIST Planning is a lean and agile methodology that was created by former Google product manager Itamar Gilad. GIST Planning seeks to address this situation by creating lightweight plans that are responsive and adaptable to change. GIST Planning also improves team velocity, autonomy, and alignment by reducing the pervasive influence of management. It consists of four blocks: goals, ideas, step-projects, and tasks.

ICE Scoring

ice-scoring-model
The ICE Scoring Model is an agile methodology that prioritizes features using data according to three components: impact, confidence, and ease of implementation. The ICE Scoring Model was initially created by author and growth expert Sean Ellis to help companies expand. Today, the model is broadly used to prioritize projects, features, initiatives, and rollouts. It is ideally suited for early-stage product development where there is a continuous flow of ideas and momentum must be maintained.

Innovation Funnel

innovation-funnel
An innovation funnel is a tool or process ensuring only the best ideas are executed. In a metaphorical sense, the funnel screens innovative ideas for viability so that only the best products, processes, or business models are launched to the market. An innovation funnel provides a framework for the screening and testing of innovative ideas for viability.

Innovation Matrix

types-of-innovation
According to how well defined is the problem and how well defined the domain, we have four main types of innovations: basic research (problem and domain or not well defined); breakthrough innovation (domain is not well defined, the problem is well defined); sustaining innovation (both problem and domain are well defined); and disruptive innovation (domain is well defined, the problem is not well defined).

Innovation Theory

innovation-theory
The innovation loop is a methodology/framework derived from the Bell Labs, which produced innovation at scale throughout the 20th century. They learned how to leverage a hybrid innovation management model based on science, invention, engineering, and manufacturing at scale. By leveraging individual genius, creativity, and small/large groups.

Lean vs. Agile

lean-methodology-vs-agile
The Agile methodology has been primarily thought of for software development (and other business disciplines have also adopted it). Lean thinking is a process improvement technique where teams prioritize the value streams to improve it continuously. Both methodologies look at the customer as the key driver to improvement and waste reduction. Both methodologies look at improvement as something continuous.

Lean Startup

startup-company
A startup company is a high-tech business that tries to build a scalable business model in tech-driven industries. A startup company usually follows a lean methodology, where continuous innovation, driven by built-in viral loops is the rule. Thus, driving growth and building network effects as a consequence of this strategy.

Minimum Viable Product

minimum-viable-product
As pointed out by Eric Ries, a minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort through a cycle of build, measure, learn; that is the foundation of the lean startup methodology.

Leaner MVP

leaner-mvp
A leaner MVP is the evolution of the MPV approach. Where the market risk is validated before anything else

Kanban

kanban
Kanban is a lean manufacturing framework first developed by Toyota in the late 1940s. The Kanban framework is a means of visualizing work as it moves through identifying potential bottlenecks. It does that through a process called just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing to optimize engineering processes, speed up manufacturing products, and improve the go-to-market strategy.

Jidoka

jidoka
Jidoka was first used in 1896 by Sakichi Toyoda, who invented a textile loom that would stop automatically when it encountered a defective thread. Jidoka is a Japanese term used in lean manufacturing. The term describes a scenario where machines cease operating without human intervention when a problem or defect is discovered.

PDCA Cycle

pdca-cycle
The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle was first proposed by American physicist and engineer Walter A. Shewhart in the 1920s. The PDCA cycle is a continuous process and product improvement method and an essential component of the lean manufacturing philosophy.

Rational Unified Process

rational-unified-process
Rational unified process (RUP) is an agile software development methodology that breaks the project life cycle down into four distinct phases.

Rapid Application Development

rapid-application-development
RAD was first introduced by author and consultant James Martin in 1991. Martin recognized and then took advantage of the endless malleability of software in designing development models. Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a methodology focusing on delivering rapidly through continuous feedback and frequent iterations.

Retrospective Analysis

retrospective-analysis
Retrospective analyses are held after a project to determine what worked well and what did not. They are also conducted at the end of an iteration in Agile project management. Agile practitioners call these meetings retrospectives or retros. They are an effective way to check the pulse of a project team, reflect on the work performed to date, and reach a consensus on how to tackle the next sprint cycle. These are the five stages of a retrospective analysis for effective Agile project management: set the stage, gather the data, generate insights, decide on the next steps, and close the retrospective.

Scaled Agile

scaled-agile-lean-development
Scaled Agile Lean Development (ScALeD) helps businesses discover a balanced approach to agile transition and scaling questions. The ScALed approach helps businesses successfully respond to change. Inspired by a combination of lean and agile values, ScALed is practitioner-based and can be completed through various agile frameworks and practices.

SMED

smed
The SMED (single minute exchange of die) method is a lean production framework to reduce waste and increase production efficiency. The SMED method is a framework for reducing the time associated with completing an equipment changeover.

Spotify Model

spotify-model
The Spotify Model is an autonomous approach to scaling agile, focusing on culture communication, accountability, and quality. The Spotify model was first recognized in 2012 after Henrik Kniberg, and Anders Ivarsson released a white paper detailing how streaming company Spotify approached agility. Therefore, the Spotify model represents an evolution of agile.

Test-Driven Development

test-driven-development
As the name suggests, TDD is a test-driven technique for delivering high-quality software rapidly and sustainably. It is an iterative approach based on the idea that a failing test should be written before any code for a feature or function is written. Test-Driven Development (TDD) is an approach to software development that relies on very short development cycles.

Timeboxing

timeboxing
Timeboxing is a simple yet powerful time-management technique for improving productivity. Timeboxing describes the process of proactively scheduling a block of time to spend on a task in the future. It was first described by author James Martin in a book about agile software development.

Scrum

what-is-scrum
Scrum is a methodology co-created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland for effective team collaboration on complex products. Scrum was primarily thought for software development projects to deliver new software capability every 2-4 weeks. It is a sub-group of agile also used in project management to improve startups’ productivity.

Scrumban

scrumban
Scrumban is a project management framework that is a hybrid of two popular agile methodologies: Scrum and Kanban. Scrumban is a popular approach to helping businesses focus on the right strategic tasks while simultaneously strengthening their processes.

Scrum Anti-Patterns

scrum-anti-patterns
Scrum anti-patterns describe any attractive, easy-to-implement solution that ultimately makes a problem worse. Therefore, these are the practice not to follow to prevent issues from emerging. Some classic examples of scrum anti-patterns comprise absent product owners, pre-assigned tickets (making individuals work in isolation), and discounting retrospectives (where review meetings are not useful to really make improvements).

Scrum At Scale

scrum-at-scale
Scrum at Scale (Scrum@Scale) is a framework that Scrum teams use to address complex problems and deliver high-value products. Scrum at Scale was created through a joint venture between the Scrum Alliance and Scrum Inc. The joint venture was overseen by Jeff Sutherland, a co-creator of Scrum and one of the principal authors of the Agile Manifesto.

Six Sigma

six-sigma
Six Sigma is a data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating errors or defects in a product, service, or process. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola as a management approach based on quality fundamentals in the early 1980s. A decade later, it was popularized by General Electric who estimated that the methodology saved them $12 billion in the first five years of operation.

Stretch Objectives

stretch-objectives
Stretch objectives describe any task an agile team plans to complete without expressly committing to do so. Teams incorporate stretch objectives during a Sprint or Program Increment (PI) as part of Scaled Agile. They are used when the agile team is unsure of its capacity to attain an objective. Therefore, stretch objectives are instead outcomes that, while extremely desirable, are not the difference between the success or failure of each sprint.

Toyota Production System

toyota-production-system
The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an early form of lean manufacturing created by auto-manufacturer Toyota. Created by the Toyota Motor Corporation in the 1940s and 50s, the Toyota Production System seeks to manufacture vehicles ordered by customers most quickly and efficiently possible.

Total Quality Management

total-quality-management
The Total Quality Management (TQM) framework is a technique based on the premise that employees continuously work on their ability to provide value to customers. Importantly, the word “total” means that all employees are involved in the process – regardless of whether they work in development, production, or fulfillment.

Waterfall

waterfall-model
The waterfall model was first described by Herbert D. Benington in 1956 during a presentation about the software used in radar imaging during the Cold War. Since there were no knowledge-based, creative software development strategies at the time, the waterfall method became standard practice. The waterfall model is a linear and sequential project management framework. 

Read Also: Continuous InnovationAgile MethodologyLean StartupBusiness Model InnovationProject Management.

Read Next: Agile Methodology, Lean Methodology, Agile Project Management, Scrum, Kanban, Six Sigma.

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