1. Visualisation of technical processes helps testers and developers work together
2. Data driven quality control ensures an early and continuous view of the integration of components developed by multiple teams.
3. Using operational intelligence tools is an investment that will pay itself back in faster development, higher quality and better prepared operations engineers

Albert Witteveen has been working both as an operations manager and a professional tester for nearly two decades now. The combination of setting up complex server environments and professional testing almost automatically led to a specialisation in performance testing. He wrote a practical guide to load and stress testing which is available at Amazon. This books discusses how to do performance testing, how to provide real value and how to assess the performance in an objective way. It describes how to perform the tests, what and how to monitor, how to design the tests, how to setup the team and how to report. As a test manager he employs the lessons learned in operations to make testing, more efficient as well as more effective.

I’ve often mentioned as a side note how using operational intelligence software helped our testers better understand the technical processes. This helped them communicate issues to the developers in a way that they understood. They went from ‘something was maybe fixed’ to looking at eachothers screens and discussing the real issue. Key to this was the visualisation of the process.
This is only part of the reason why operational intelligence software can help devops. One the challenges of devops teams is that we have multiple teams producing parts of a larger and complex landscape. Almost as a knee jerk reaction we default back to chain testing teams with formal test cycles that bring back memories of waterfall development.
Data driven quality can help us get a grip on monitoring if the components as developed integrate with the development of the other teams early on and continuously. It gives a clear role to operations early on in the development allowing them to have a better role the development phase as well as prepare for handling the systems after releasing in production.