What is a software factory and why does the government care? A software factory is an organized collection of software assets, tools and processes that expedite the production and delivery of software solutions. A good software factory requires automation to connect the processes, tools and people into high-functioning pipelines to deliver software that is always deployment worthy. A common term for this approach is DevSecOps.

We have seen several best practices emerge regarding software delivery and achieving increased quality, security and speed of DevSecOps at scale. Enduring success for these organizations happens when they fold their program management and governance goals into the DevSecOps processes around their toolchains. The programs start to benefit from greater management insight into performance, and they have an easier time scaling their automation initiatives, which drives further efficiency and they gain the ability to automatically gather data from across their DevSecOps processes and delivery pipelines.

We will look at five key strategies driven by a software factory.

#1 - GitOps - Configuration as Code (CasC)
#2 - Supply Chain Security
#3 - Automating the Release Process
#4 - Metrics and Value Stream Management (VSM)
#5 - Hybrid Cloud/IT Modernization/Digital Transformation