The Visible Ops Handbook

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Visible Ops is a methodology aimed at enhancing controls and process improvement in IT organizations, focusing on increasing service levels, security, and auditability while managing costs. It comprises four prescriptive steps that guide organizations from any starting point to a state of continuous improvement. While ITIL offers valuable best practices, it lacks clear implementation guidance, making it challenging for organizations to know where to begin. The Visible Ops booklet provides a practical roadmap for those starting or advancing their IT process improvement journey. Developed in response to the common question of how to initiate IT process improvement, Gene Kim and Kevin Behr studied eight high-performing IT organizations since 2000, identifying key processes that led to their success. The Visible Ops methodology outlines these processes in four steps: 1. Stabilize Patient, Modify First Response – Address risky changes to reduce Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) and manage problems effectively. 2. Catch and Release, Find Fragile Artifacts – Inventory assets and services to identify those with low change success rates and high downtime costs. 3. Establish Repeatable Build Library – Implement effective release management to create repeatable builds for critical assets, making it more cost-effective to rebuild than repair. 4. Enable Continuous Improvement – Use metrics to foster ongoing enhancement of Release, Control, a