Assessment – DevOps Pipeline Assessment Number1Assessment Type (andweighting)Portfolio Assessment (40%)As a group design, document and deploy appropriate solutions tothe problem briefAssessment NameDevOps PipelIneAssessment Submission DateIn class, week commencing 03rd May 2021 Learning Outcomes Assessed:1 Evaluate the literature on development and operations within the context ofinfrastructure management, deployment and automation.2 Critically Analyse various tools and techniques used in the field of DevOps includingthe management of appropriate technologies.3 Develop appropriate theoretical underpinnings to the approaches used within theDevOps environment/culture4 Apply approaches used in the continuous integration.5 Implement appropriate technical outcomes that meet the requirements of the briefand based upon research.Assessment BriefYou will be given a technical specification and an existing code base for a web-basedapplication. You are to be assessed on your ability to individually research appropriateprocesses and technologies surrounding DevOps and then, as a group, implement anappropriate solution. In terms of the development of the code, it is not expected (but hoped)that you will finish the application but in order to successfully demonstrate the implementationof your DevOps lifecycle it is expected that you will update and deploy the applications usingsolution as identified by your group. You will be summatively assessed on the individualresearch, group development, implementation and use of the DevOps Pipeline solution.As this assessment is portfolio based (No Exams) you will be required to make a number ofsubmissions and undertake a number of tasks – each of which contribute to the final portfolioof work.There are 4 elements to this portfolio:1) Research paper – Individual – Summative2) Implementation Proposal – Group – Formative3) Video Submission – Group – Summative4) Peer Review – Individual – SummativeResearch paper.Equivalent of up to 50% portfolio markLearning outcomes assessed LO1Evaluate the literature on development and operations within the context ofinfrastructure management, deployment and automation.LO2Critically Analyse various tools and techniques used in the field of DevOps including themanagement of appropriate technologies.LO3Develop appropriate theoretical underpinnings to the approaches used within the DevOps environment/cultureACME Developments is a software development house that is currently responsible for thedevelopment of web-based software Magister. Currently the ACME Development team havean SDLC as shown below in figure 1.0Figure 1 ACME Developments Development ProcessesYou have been brought in as a Senior DevOps consultant. You have identified that this is this isa poorly implemented, irrational and separates the workflow of both the development andoperations teams. As such the whole process requires significant investment andorganisational development. There are immediate issues that need resolving to help easesome of the pain and you have prioritised the following areas for research as part of thecreation of an appropriate DevOps pipeline:• DevOps Culture• Development & Operations Processes• Continuous Integration & Testing• Configuration Management• Automated deployment and monitoring solutions – as a blend of private and publiccloudFurthermore, your personal standing as a DevOps expert and academic researcher has beennoted and the prestigious Journal of all things DevOps (JOATDO) have insisted that you writeyour findings as a research article. As such, you are to present this as an academic paper thatmeets the standards for publication in the JOATDO. The document will therefore have tocontain in one form or another abstract, Introduction, Literature review/background, results,discussions and conclusion.In addition, a supplementary self-assessment appendix is to be required. This appendix willcontain your reflections upon how you approached the research task, what steps you feel youcould have improved upon and based upon the HE7 marking criteria what grade youobjectively give the work.Have a look at https://thescipub.com/journals/jcs/instructions for some indications of whatshould be in a computer science paper. Also note that the template that is available on this siteand in Moodle MUST be used.Pass mark, Expectations and Marking criteriaThis is a master’s level HE7 assignment and the minimum pass mark for an assessment is 50%.As such the expectations upon the levels of critical analysis and thinking are greater than whatyou may have been used to at undergraduate level.It is expected that the Reference List will contain between fifteen to twenty sources. As aMINIMUM the Reference List should include 6-7 refereed academic journals and fiveacademic/technical books/white papers. You will be graded upon ALL aspects of the GeneralMarking criteria for HE7 work which can be found in the Module guide. I recommend that youreview thatGroup ProposalEquivalent of 5% portfolio markPart of the implementation strategy at ACME Developments you are required to deliver is aproposal to the Technical Director in the form of a PowerPoint/Prezi presentation. It isexpected that you will use the research undertaken to develop a coherent manageable andcompatible set of processes and tools across the entire end-to-end DevOps ‘cycle’. Thus, thepresentation must include, but is not limited to, the Agile project development processes,continuous-* across the Dev, QA, and User Acceptance Testing and deployment pipelines. Thisis in addition to providing processes on systems reporting and monitoring processes.You are to also consider the actual technical implementation of the tools needed. This is toinclude technical specifications of:• hardware requirements – physical and virtual, including costs• software requirements – versions, licences (Open source/proprietary) and costs• Additional requirements needed to implement the Agile development processes andassociated communications/project management.• Roles and responsibilities of team members including potential wage costs• Proposed overall budgetThis proposal briefing will be no more than 10 mins and no less than 5. Marks will be awardedfor the technical feasibility of the pipelines as well as the interoperability between hardware,dev and ops processes. Helpful resource to get an overviewhttps://www.atlassian.com/agile/devopsVideo Log/Demonstration:Equivalent of 30% portfolio markLearning outcomes assessed LO4Apply approaches used in the continuous integration.LO5Implement appropriate technical outcomes that meet the requirements of the brief and based upon researchThe final aspect of the submission is the creation of a video that demonstrates the proposedpipeline in action. It is also expected that as a team you will vlog the processes of developmentas you go highlighting technical issues and how you resolved them. You will, as a team discussin the context of your roles your involvement in the processes and how each of the stages‘hands off’ and communications with the other. In addition you MUST provide a bibliographyof all sources used in the development and implementation of the solution. This will bedeployed onto the website as an appropriate menu item from the home page.This video is to be no more than 30 mins long and each member of the team must contribute.Peer review.Equivalent to +/- 15% Portfolio markEach student within a group must assess their colleagues by awarding a mark based on theirperceived effort for working as part of the team. You will not be asked to provide a mark foryourself.This will be carried out by providing either a positive or negative value based upon the criteriagiven in the table below. The results for an individual will be the sum of the marks given byeach team member which will then be applied to the overall mark from the tutor for thepresentation.For example, if there are 6 in a team an individual will be given 5 contributing points. Thesewill be averaged of marks and then multiplied by 20 to give a maximum out of 100 (negativeresults are allowed) and then weighted at 15% of the overall assessment mark for the groupwork. So, if you score an over all of -70 this will remove 15 marks from your group work marklikewise a mark of + 70 will result in an additional 15 marks over allUse the table below as a guide to providing the assessment mark for each of your colleaguesin the group based upon what you believe to be their performance contribution. You mustassess each of your colleagues individually and you cannot give the same value more than once,each member of your group must be awarded a unique mark. Peer mark awardedPerceived effort and contribution to the team+5Considerable effort put into the teamwork, contributedsignificantly more than the other team members.+3Above average effort put into the teamwork, contributedmore than the other team members.+1Average effort put into the teamwork, contributed on anequal level to the other team members.-1Just below average effort put into the teamwork, did notcontribute as much as other team members.-3Well below average effort put into the teamwork, littlecontribution to teamwork.-5No effort put into the teamwork, no contribution toteam work. Student Name _______________________________ Mark Given ______________Student Name _______________________________ Mark Given ______________Student Name _______________________________ Mark Given ______________Student Name _______________________________ Mark Given ______________
