The core issue described is a siloed culture, not a lack of process or tools. The foundational Agile Service Management principle is to build a collaborative culture of shared responsibility. While processes and tools (like change management or monitoring) are important, they will fail without first addressing the cultural and collaborative disconnect between Dev and Ops.

Automation is a cornerstone of DevOps and Agile Service Management for eliminating waste, reducing errors, and increasing speed. It directly addresses the problem of time-consuming manual work. While documentation is good, it doesn’t solve the efficiency problem. Hiring a specialist merely moves the bottleneck, and longer testing doesn’t address the deployment and configuration waste.

In value stream mapping, a bottleneck is any point in the process where work arrives faster than it can be processed, causing queues and delays. A single approval point is a classic example. This is a flow efficiency issue, not primarily an SLA, incident management, or workload leveling problem.

“Shifting left” refers to integrating practices like testing, security, and performance checks earlier in the development lifecycle. This builds quality in from the start, making smaller, frequent releases more stable by design. While rollback plans and developer on-call are useful, they are reactive. Shifting left is a proactive, quality-focused practice that directly addresses stability concerns for frequent releases.

The core purposes of a Kanban board are visualization of work and workflow, limiting work in progress (WIP) to prevent overloading, and managing flow to identify and remove bottlenecks. It is a flow-based tool, not primarily for budgeting, compliance logging, or replacing ITSM records.

An effective Definition of Done must be a clear, unambiguous, and agreed-upon set of criteria that the *entire cross-functional team* commits to. It should be concrete (e.g., “code reviewed, tests passed, documented”) and shared to ensure a common understanding of quality and completeness, preventing the very disagreements described.

A key mindset shift in Agile Service Management and DevOps is that reliability and operational excellence are intrinsic parts of the product and its value proposition, not separate from development. Reframing operational work as a core part of delivering and sustaining value helps break down the Dev vs. Ops dichotomy and fosters shared responsibility.

The Agile retrospective is a regular ceremony for reflecting on what went well, what didn’t, and how to improve. This aligns directly with the purpose of the ITIL Continual Service Improvement (CSI) process, which is to consistently identify and implement improvements in services and processes. Both are focused on iterative learning and enhancement.

The primary benefit of Continuous Integration is rapid feedback. By integrating and testing code frequently, teams detect integration errors, bugs, and quality issues much earlier in the lifecycle when they are cheaper and easier to fix. This significantly reduces the risk associated with changes and improves overall service stability, aligning perfectly with ASM goals.

The core issue described is a siloed culture, not a lack of process or tools. The foundational Agile Service Management principle is to build a collaborative culture of shared responsibility. While processes and tools (like change management or monitoring) are important, they will fail without first addressing the cultural and collaborative disconnect between Dev and Ops.0