Assessment – DevOps Pipeline

Assessment Number
Assessment Type (and
weighting)
Assessment Name
Assessment Submission Date
1
Portfolio Assessment (40%)
As a group design, document and deploy appropriate solutions to
the problem brief
DevOps PipelIne
In class, week commencing 1st May 2021

Learning Outcomes Assessed:

1 Evaluate the literature on development and operations within the context of
infrastructure management, deployment and automation.
2 Critically Analyse various tools and techniques used in the field of DevOps including
the management of appropriate technologies.
3 Develop appropriate theoretical underpinnings to the approaches used within the
DevOps environment/culture
4 Apply approaches used in the continuous integration.
5 Implement appropriate technical outcomes that meet the requirements of the brief and
based upon research.

Assessment Brief
You will be given a technical specification and an existing code base for a web-based
application. You are to be assessed on your ability to individually research appropriate
processes and technologies surrounding DevOps and then, as a group, implement an
appropriate 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
implementation of your DevOps lifecycle it is expected that you will update and deploy the
applications using solution as identified by your group. You will be summatively assessed on
the individual research, 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 of
submissions and undertake a number of tasks – each of which contribute to the final portfolio
of work.

There are 4 elements to this portfolio:

1) Research paper – Individual - Summative
2) Implementation Proposal – Group - Formative
3) Video Submission – Group - Summative
4) Peer Review – Individual - Summative
Research paper.
Equivalent of up to 50% portfolio mark

Learning outcomes assessed

LO1 Evaluate the literature on development and operations within the context of
infrastructure management, deployment and automation.
LO2 Critically Analyse various tools and techniques used in the field of DevOps including
the management of appropriate technologies.
LO3 Develop appropriate theoretical underpinnings to the approaches used within the
DevOps environment/culture

ACME Developments is a software development house that is currently responsible for the
development of web-based software Magister. Currently the ACME Development team have
an SDLC as shown below in figure 1.0

Figure 1 ACME Developments Development Processes

You have been brought in as a Senior DevOps consultant. You have identified that this is this
is a poorly implemented, irrational and separates the workflow of both the development and
operations teams. As such the whole process requires significant investment and
organisational development. There are immediate issues that need resolving to help ease
some of the pain and you have prioritised the following areas for research as part of the
creation 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 public
cloud

Furthermore, your personal standing as a DevOps expert and academic researcher has been
noted and the prestigious Journal of all things DevOps (JOATDO) have insisted that you
write your findings as a research article. As such, you are to present this as an academic
paper that meets the standards for publication in the JOATDO. The document will therefore
have to contain 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 will

contain your reflections upon how you approached the research task, what steps you feel you
could have improved upon and based upon the HE7 marking criteria what grade you
objectively give the work.

Have a look at https://thescipub.com/journals/jcs/instructions for some indications of what

should be in a computer science paper. Also note that the template that is available on this
site and in Moodle MUST be used.

Pass mark, Expectations and Marking criteria

This 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 what you may have been used to at undergraduate level.

It is expected that the Reference List will contain between fifteen to twenty sources. As a
MINIMUM the Reference List should include 6-7 refereed academic journals and five
academic/technical books/white papers. You will be graded upon ALL aspects of the
General Marking criteria for HE7 work which can be found in the Module guide. I
recommend that you review that
Group Proposal
Equivalent of 5% portfolio mark

Part of the implementation strategy at ACME Developments you are required to deliver is a
proposal to the Technical Director in the form of a PowerPoint/Prezi presentation. It is
expected that you will use the research undertaken to develop a coherent manageable and
compatible set of processes and tools across the entire end-to-end DevOps ‘cycle’. Thus, the
presentation must include, but is not limited to, the Agile project development processes,
continuous-* across the Dev, QA, and User Acceptance Testing and deployment pipelines.
This is 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 to
include 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 and
associated communications/project management.
 Roles and responsibilities of team members including potential wage costs
 Proposed overall budget

This proposal briefing will be no more than 10 mins and no less than 5. Marks will be
awarded for the technical feasibility of the pipelines as well as the interoperability between
hardware, dev and ops processes. Helpful resource to get an overview
https://www.atlassian.com/agile/devops

Video Log/Demonstration:
Equivalent of 30% portfolio mark

Learning outcomes assessed

LO4 Apply approaches used in the continuous integration.
LO5 Implement appropriate technical outcomes that meet the requirements of the brief
and based upon research

The final aspect of the submission is the creation of a video that demonstrates the proposed
pipeline in action. It is also expected that as a team you will vlog the processes of
development as you go highlighting technical issues and how you resolved them. You will, as
a team discuss in 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
bibliography of all sources used in the development and implementation of the solution. This
will be deployed 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 mark

Each student within a group must assess their colleagues by awarding a mark based on their
perceived effort for working as part of the team. You will not be asked to provide a mark
for yourself.

This will be carried out by providing either a positive or negative value based upon the
criteria given in the table below. The results for an individual will be the sum of the marks
given by each team member which will then be applied to the overall mark from the tutor for
the presentation.

For example, if there are 6 in a team an individual will be given 5 contributing points. These
will be averaged of marks and then multiplied by 20 to give a maximum out of 100 (negative
results are allowed) and then weighted at 15% of the overall assessment mark for the group
work. So, if you score an over all of -70 this will remove 15 marks from your group work
mark likewise a mark of + 70 will result in an additional 15 marks over all

Use the table below as a guide to providing the assessment mark for each of your colleagues
in the group based upon what you believe to be their performance contribution. You must
assess 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 awarded Perceived effort and contribution to the team

+5 Considerable effort put into the teamwork, contributed

significantly more than the other team members.
+3 Above average effort put into the teamwork, contributed
more than the other team members.
+1 Average effort put into the teamwork, contributed on an
equal level to the other team members.
-1 Just below average effort put into the teamwork, did not
contribute as much as other team members.
-3 Well below average effort put into the teamwork, little
contribution to teamwork.
-5 No effort put into the teamwork, no contribution to team
work.

Student Name _______________________________ Mark Given ______________

Student Name _______________________________ Mark Given ______________
Student Name _______________________________ Mark Given ______________
Student Name _______________________________ Mark Given ______________