ACIT4410 Agile Service Delivery and Developer Operations Emneplan

This course has a focus on the practices and technologies used for network-based services such as large web sites and backend systems. It provides topics specific to large architectures, such as: containers, service architectures, load balancing and service continuity. In addition, topics which are relevant for working with software projects often found in this context are covered, such as release management, automated testing and agile development principles.

No formal requirements over and above the admission requirements.

The student should have the following outcomes upon completing the course:

Knowledge

Upon successful completion of the course, the student will:

• have advanced knowledge of service architectures and how they are applied in the industry
• have advanced knowledge of the techniques and methods used to build large-scale network-based services
• have a deep understanding of the principle of service continuity and the techniques and methods used to make services robust to infrastructure failure
• have a deep understanding of agile development methodologies and how they apply to system administration
• have expert insight into release management from an operations perspective

Skills

Upon successful completion of the course, the student:

• can evaluate and discuss a service architecture in relationship with the intended service function with regard to performance, scale and robustness
• can apply load balancing and failover techniques in order to create robust network-based services
• can define release-management strategies
• can evaluate and discuss a release-management plan in relationship to an agile development project

General competence

Upon successful completion of the course, the student:

• can analyze release management in the industry
• can communicate challenges, analysis and conclusions in developer operations with regard to service architectures and release management to specialists as well as the general public

The beginning of the course will focus of familiarizing oneself with the technologies used in building and delivering high-volume services. This will include containers and similar technologies, load balancing, automated testing and revision control systems. The students will put these technologies to the test in exercises in our lab environment. Towards the middle of the course, we will start to cover more of the organizational aspects of a lean and agile software delivery pipeline and how the technologies from the beginning of the course fit in.

During this phase, case studies will be used. The last phase of the course will cover advanced topics, such as site-reliability engineering and service discovery.

This course combines lectures and lab in order to cover topics in its theoretical form and let students experience them with hands-on work. Students work individually in order to complete technical assignments that focus mostly on setting up and configuring services and methods for load balancing and failover. Students also have assignments that cover analysis and evaluation of their setup with regard to the theoretical content. Software engineering topics such as agile development and release, will be covered the same way, with lectures and class. Lab-work is supervised by the teacher who provides feedback to the student along the way.

Students will organize their work surrounding three reports. Each report will based on a concrete task which they can choose from a compendium. The task will be a combination of technical work along with a theoretical discussion.

The following required coursework must be approved before the student can take the exam:

Two online questionaires addressing their progress and reflections. Each questionnaire should take between 10 and 15 minutes to complete.

Exam autumn 2020 due to Covid-19:

The students will work individually to complete two tasks of a technical nature. The results are documented in a portfolio as two technical reports. The total amount of text should be about 10000 +/- 1000 words, not including appendix with scripts etc.

The portfolio will be graded as a whole, with the equal weight of the two reports.

All exams must be passed in order to pass the course.

The exam grade can be appealed.

[Exam earlier:]

The students will work individually to complete two tasks of a technical nature. The results are documented in a portfolio as two technical reports. The total amount of text should be about 20000 +/- 2000 words, not including appendix with scripts etc.

The portfolio will be graded as a whole, with the equal weight of the two reports.

All exams must be passed in order to pass the course.

The exam grade can be appealed.

All aids are permitted.

For the final assessment a grading scale from A to E is used, where A denotes the highest and E the lowest pass grade, and F denotes a fail.

Two internal examiners. External examiner is used periodically.