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This work’s background combines Knowledge Management (KM), standard DevOps, enterprise architecture, heuristics/mathematical models, technology management, business transformation and business engineering fields. Building an iSDevOps based on a Decision-Making System (DMS) and KM is today the major strategic goal for business companies, as shown in Figure 1 (Cearley, Walker, & Burke, 2016; Thomas, 2015). The proposed iSDevOps is a generic and cross-business reasoning engine that contains basically qualitative research methods that manage sets of factors and can be used by a Business Transformation Project (BTP). The author based his research method on intelligent neural networks and behaviour-driven development, where both methods resemble to the human brain processing. This article is based on the author’s framework and it is recommended to refer to his framework to understand the methodology. The iSDevOps concept is business driven and is agnostic to a specific environment, as shown in Figure 1. It is founded on a genuine research framework that in turn is based on many existing industry standards, like the Architecture Development Method (ADM) (The Open Group, 2011a).
Figure 1. Technology Trends (Cearley, Walker, & Burke, 2016)
Today, enterprise architecture is a methodology used to develop BTPs (Gartner, 2017), requirements, architecture, knowledge modules and its technology components using DevOps procedures. The Business Transformation Manager (BTM) or an enterprise architect can integrate DevOps in the architecture of a BTP to support its DMS and KM systems (Trad & Kalpić, 2017b; Trad & Kalpić, 2017c; Trad & Kalpić, 2018a; Trad & Kalpić, 2018b; Thomas, 2015; Tidd, 2006). This iSDevOps proposal’s aim is to deliver recommendations for managing aligned DevOps procedures. The applied research methodology is based on literature review, a qualitative methodology and on a proof of concept for the related hypotheses. In a holistic DevOps architecture, the BTM’s role is important and his or her (for simplicity, in further text – his) decisions are aided by using factors within the AMM. A large set of factors can influence such an iSDevOps, like: a) the role of software control mechanisms; b) enterprise critical success factors; c) enterprise resources; d) operations skills; e) infrastructure technological conditions; f) tests predispositions; and g) monitoring and control mechanisms. A systems approach is the optimal choice to model such an iSDevOps (Daellenbach & McNickle, 2005; Trad & Kalpić, 2017d). As shown in Figure 2, the decision model interacts with the external world via an implemented framework to manage the iSDevOps’ factors and that is this chapter’s focus.
Figure 2. The research framework’s concept (Trad & Kalpić, 2017d)