What Does Operational Delivery Mean?

What does operational delivery mean? In this article, we will discuss its definition, purpose, and benefits.

What Does Operational Delivery Mean?

Operational Delivery is a methodology for software delivery that involves the implementation of new features and system changes. 

The goal of this process is to help the organization and team use their resources more efficiently.

The process involves defining requirements, developing, testing, deploying, and monitoring software changes to continuously improve the system.

Operational Delivery Process

The first step in the operational delivery process is requirement analysis. The team must create a list of what they need to deliver to the clients. 

Prioritizing these requirements is important. So, they can deliver it in a timely manner. 

However, it’s important to remember that not every requirement will be implemented immediately.

Following this, developers implement changes using Agile software development. This means that they implement changes in small, time-boxed iterations. 

This is called the development stage. The prioritize and implement research in small, iterative steps by teams of qualified professionals. 

After the requirements are developed, it’s time to test the changes. This is called the test stage. These tests are manual or automated based on customer requirements. 

This testing stage helps ensure that new features will work as they expect it when they see it to production environments. 

The next step is to deploy the changes to production environments. This is the deployment stage. It can be either manually or automatically based on customer requirements. 

Monitoring the system is also necessary during this step. So, they can ensure that there aren’t any errors or issues after the deployment of new features/functionality. 

It’s important to monitor systems during this step. For one, errors or issues may occur after new features/functionality has been deployed to production environments. 

And it could affect customer satisfaction and/or cause downtime for end-users of the application/system. 

This may also lead to an increase in support tickets for developers. Then, it requires additional resources (costs) for the betterment of the system/application.

The last step involves monitoring and reporting new feature implementations and any issues encountered. Especially during the process of delivering these features/functionalities. 

This is the post-deployment management (PDM). The purpose of this stage is to make sure that things are working as expected. Especially after they deploy new features to live systems (production environments). 

Purpose and Benefits of Operational Delivery

The purpose of Operational Delivery is to help the organization and teams use their resources more efficiently.

This process also helps them deliver high-quality features/system changes. And, this could lead to better customer satisfaction, increased revenue, and lower costs for operations/maintenance. 

The benefits of Operational Delivery are as follows:

Better Quality of Features/System Changes

Since Operational Delivery is an iterative process, it helps deliver high-quality features/system changes. 

These improvements can be seen during the development, testing, and deployment stages. 

Faster Time to Market

This process also helps organizations get features/system changes to market faster. It’s because the team only focuses on the highest priority requirements at any given moment. 

They don’t have to worry about other priorities until they finish implementing the current priority requirements. 

Reduced Risk

This method helps reduce risk. That’s because they have a better understanding of what will work well based on past experiences with similar implementations in the past. 

Conclusion

Operational delivery is a useful methodology for software delivery. It provides a better understanding of what will work well based on past experiences. 

This process also helps organizations and teams use their resources more efficiently. As a result, it helps deliver high-quality features/system changes faster.