DNB implements DevOps methodology using ServiceNow automation

DNB sought to remain competitive by reducing time to market for innovative, relevant products. To achieve this, DNB Introduced DevOps methodology—reconciling differences between developers and change managers.

Reacting to market changes

DNB is Norway’s largest financial services group and one of the largest in the Nordic region in terms of market capitalization. The group’s forward strategy is that, to maintain competitive advantage, it must adjust quickly to changes in the market where there are higher expectations from customers, rapid technological developments, new regulations, more competitors, and large upheavals in the markets.

Developers versus Change Managers

At DNB nobody was happy. There was tension between Agile developers, who wanted to speed up time to market and Change Managers who had to adhere to strict processes. Also, the bank had unstable IT systems and wanted to improve speed of development.

Auditable DevOps was seen as a way to balance control against the go-to-market needs of the developers.

Automated tickets were key

DNB realized that the value stream management offered by ServiceNow DevOps would be the success factor for implementing DevOps Change Automation.

“ServiceNow was the key. We said to developers that we would automate all change tickets for them and use ServiceNow to remove any manual steps for them, if they just complied with some basic rules,” says Anne Kristine Naess, Enterprise Architect for Now Platform, DNB.

Quick, safe customer value

The result is that the goals of the change management team and the development team have now been aligned and efficiency improved. This has brought about a saving of 20 hours per week for the two teams processing change tickets and has now been accepted as the preferred solution for DevOps change handling. The yearly amount of capital bindings that can be reinvested in more lucrative ways makes it a good business case.

“One of the main strengths of ServiceNow is that it uses best practice frameworks to create processes and modules. This means by understanding and adjusting behavior, processes, and policies, you can reduce cycle times and create customer value quicker and safer. This is what we have done,” says Anne Kristine.

Agility aligned with control

DevOps is just one part of the bank’s impressive ServiceNow journey which has seen many modules used by thousands of people.

“We have now implemented auditable DevOps and we have seen that the development teams are far happier. They can be as agile as they want and at the same time we maintain change control via automated processes in ServiceNow,” concludes Anne Kristine.

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