IBM Garage

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Innovate, disrupt, and
transform at scale
Disrupters are reinventing business processes and leading their
industries to become cognitive enterprises. Adopting real-time
processes, agile methodologies, data-driven decision making, and
innovative technology evens the playing field.

SPEED OF A STARTUP AT THE SCALE OF AN ENTERPRISE

The IBM Garag™ embodies the DNA of a startup to create a new way
of working. In Garages around the world, companies both large and
small are empowered to create engaging solutions. Garage teams
help you start your transformation in workshops, where you design
and build real real working MVPs that meet your business needs,
and scale those solutions across the company.

What’s inside?
This field guide provides an overview of the IBM Garage.

LEARN IT GET STARTED

A summary of the Experience a typical journey
Garage’s concepts through an IBM Garage
engagement.
 LEARN IT

De-risk your innovation

effort
How do you manage the process of innovation in a way that removes
organizational barriers and delivers with agility? Start your digital
journey in a way that transforms the culture and mindset of teams
and leaders. Adopt disruptive technologies that will help you build
new business platforms that will bring lasting value.

IT STARTS WITH PEOPLE, PRACTICES, AND PLATFORMS

Shift the culture. The move to continuous delivery and continuous

integration is daunting, but possible. First, focus on shifting the
culture and mindset of your organization.

Adopt best practices. For an enterprise to evolve from waterfall

to continuous delivery and become agile along the way, it must
combine industry-proven best practices with its own experience and
knowledge, and then run at scale.

Build on the cloud. Work with IBM Garage experts to deliver

solutions, modernize your existing apps, and connect to legacy
applications using the public, private, and/or multicloud platform.

Learn more

Check out the IBM Garage website.

https://www.ibm.com/garage

2
Act more like a startup
In this evolution, one key to culture change is adopting the
startup mindset. Startups are redefining everything: business
experimentation, design, development practices, operations,
testing, production, tooling, and management. Work with the IBM
Garage to develop your startup mindset.

IT’S A JOURNEY

Embark on your evolution.  Get everyone on board and excite them

with the opportunity to delight customers and deliver code in new
ways.

Unify around your vision.  Make sure that everyone understands the
end goal and why the culture is changing. Educate your team on new
technologies, practices, and principles, and provide guidelines to
set up tools, delivery pipelines, and automation. In time, continuous
delivery will become the norm.

Architect your solution. Ensure the whole team understands the

technologies used to build function into a solution and to deliver,
run, and manage it in production.
 LEARN IT

IBM Garage
The IBM Garage can lead your business through organizational and
technology change. Start with one small project or embark on overall
organizational and digital transformations.

JUMP-START YOUR TRANSFORMATION

Leverage IBM’s best practices. Understand how to use IBM Garage

Methodology to transform an area of the business, an innovation
center, or development—with or without the business changing—
holistically.

Adopt the cloud. Develop cloud-native applications and modernize

applications and data through containerization, DevOps, and site
reliability engineering (SRE).

Design and build a solution. Quickly design and build creative

solutions with an end-user-centric design approach. Start by
creating and validating a minimum viable product (MVP). Deliver the
app into production and manage it on the cloud.

Transform your enterprise. Change how solutions are designed,

developed, and deployed. Transform all aspects of what you do to
meet your business objectives.

Learn more

Check out the IBM Garage.

https://www.ibm.com/garage

4
IBM Garage can meet your
needs
The IBM Garage experience can happen anywhere in the world, from
purpose-built dedicated spaces to virtual environments designed to
drive the right outcomes. With thousands of digital assets available
through the IBM Garage, you have an unprecedented global net-
work.
VIRTUAL, AT YOUR LOCATION, AT OUR LOCATION

IBM’s worldwide experts are ready to help!

 LEARN IT

IBM Garage Methodology

To become a disrupter, choosing how to develop software is as im-
portant as defining what to develop. The IBM Garage Methodology is
fundamental to enterprise transformation.

CREATE. DELIVER. SCALE.

Co-create the future. Define a business initiative or drive new insights

into an existing idea.

Co-execute with agility. Pilot your MVP or build a series of MVPs to

test in the market.

Co-operate to deliver at scale. Scale your MVP in market and

increase market value.

Learn more

Check out the IBM Garage Methodology.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method

6
Garage Methodology practices
The Methodology’s practices are divided into seven practice groups.

Culture. Transform your organization by combining

business, technology, and process innovations that
help you create teams that quickly learn from market
experiences.

Discover. Dig deep into your problem domain, align

everyone on common goals, and identify potential
problems and bottlenecks.

Envision. Incrementally deliver awesome apps by using

Enterprise Design Thinking and related design practices
to establish a repeatable approach to rapidly deliver
innovative user experiences.

Develop. Produce high-quality code that you can

confidently deliver to production. Accelerate time-to-
market by using continuous integration, continuous
delivery, and automation to deliver in a fully tested
production app.

Reason. Build a solid information architecture to enable

you to turn data into knowledge. Develop analytic models
using machine learning approaches. Integrate AI into
solutions and into the execution of the method practices.

Operate. Ensure operational excellence with continuous

application monitoring, high availability, and fast
recovery practices that expedite problem identification
and resolution.

Learn. Continuously experiment by testing hypotheses,

using clear measurements to inform decisions, and
driving findings into the backlog so that you can pivot.
 GET STARTED

The Garage experience

You’ve decided to engage with the IBM Garage. What happens when
you get there? Work with a team of technical experts. Learn and
experience the IBM Garage Methodology as you define, design, and
build out solutions on the cloud.

CO-CREATE, CO-EXECUTE, CO-OPERATE

Experience the Garage. Identify a business opportunity in a

Business Framing session. In a Technical Discovery session, explore
the technology you need to get results.

Conduct an Enterprise Design Thinking Workshop. Use Enterprise

Design Thinking to identify a use case and target users, define
business hypotheses, and create a MVP.

Create an MVP. Design, build, and deploy an MVP quickly. Scale the
impact. Operate MVPs at production scale with continuous delivery.

Transform your enterprise. Innovate and transform by adopting and

adapting the Methodology to meet your objectives for speed and
quality.

Learn more

Check out the IBM Garage experience.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method

8
 Build best practices into
your process.

Here’s an example journey - creating a

new application on the cloud.
 GET STARTED

Transform your culture

Culture change? Impossible! But if you want to transform your
organization and achieve your business outcomes through rapid
innovation, culture change is exactly what you need. At its roots, the
Garage Methodology is a cultural movement; it’s all about people.
The Garage can help.

EVERYONE IN THE BOAT!

Build a diverse team. An organization might adopt efficient

processes or automated tools, but to successfully innovate at scale,
teams must be diverse, be given the freedom to pivot, and decide
how they do their work.

Fail fast and learn fast. Develop enough of your idea to determine
whether it’s useful to your customers. If a customer doesn’t like
the new function, you can pivot before you invest more time or
resources into developing the function.

Adopt agile principles. Agile development produces software in

short iterations on a continuous delivery schedule. Other agile
principles include self-organizing teams, simplicity, sustainable pace
of development, and change that is based on customer feedback.

Learn more

Check out the Methodology’s Culture practices.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/culture

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 Align your team to meet
your goal.

The business and product owner,

designer, developer, and squad leader all
work together.
 GET STARTED

Enterprise Design Thinking

Enterprise Design Thinking helps you focus on your users and their
needs to deliver more useful, usable, and desirable solutions.
When you start up a new product or a new iteration, you must
conceptualize, design, refine and prioritize features that will delight
your customers. To do this effectively, you’ll bring together business
leaders, sales, designers, development, product management, and
customers.

WOW YOUR CUSTOMERS!

Understand your users. Define personas that represent your target

users. Gain an understanding of your user’s motivations, needs, and
frustrations to ensure you deliver an MVP that will delight them.

Define an MVP. An MVP is the absolute minimum function needed

for your target persona to have a delightful experience while
accomplishing a goal.

Align the team with playbacks. Throughout the development cycle,

hold regular playbacks to gather feedback from stakeholders and
target users. Take the feedback into account as you iterate on the
MVP.

Learn more

Check out the Methodology’s Envision practices.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/envision

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 Know your audience and meet
their needs faster than your
competition.

Bring together diverse stakeholders to define personas,

generate ideas, and define an MVP.
 GET STARTED

Plan and manage your MVP

After you’ve defined your MVP, you must manage the work to build
it and ensure that everyone on the team understands what needs
to be done. Begin with an MVP; the smallest, most tightly focused
description of what a team can deliver that still provides measurable
customer value.

STAY ON THE SAME PAGE

Create user stories. During an inception the team breaks up an MVP

definition into small user stories, written from the perspective of the
personas, that can be implemented within about a day each by a
pair of developers.

Manage a rank ordered backlog. Rank user stories that are waiting
to be started in priority order. Developers will pull user stories from
the top of the backlog. Adjust story priorities in the backlog based on
feedback and new requirements.

Visualize your work with a Kanban board. Use a Kanban board

to make the state of all user stories visible to the team. Track the
backlog, along with stories that are in progress, under review, and
complete.

Learn more

Check out the Methodology’s Culture practices.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/culture

14
 Visualize your progress in the
Kanban board.

Ensure transparency and keep everyone on the same page.

 GET STARTED

Just enough architecture

How do you know that you’ve defined enough architecture to
understand how to build your product and reduce technical risk?
Architect only what you need to produce your MVP. If you’ve gone
beyond that, you’ve gone too far.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Reduce risks. Design decisions made too early introduce risks.

Delay decisions until just before they are needed.

Scope your MVP. Keep your MVP in the forefront of your mind at all
times. Only architect what is needed to produce the MVP.

Avoid rework. Architecting several iterations ahead slows you down

and causes rework. Think ahead but do not design ahead.

Learn more

Check out the Methodology’s Develop practices.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/develop

16
 Architect only what you need to
deliver the next story.

End
user

Mobile Authentication

Cognitive
conversation

App
logic
Public
cloud
Blockchain

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Load Back-iec
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balancer
Security

Enterprise
data

Hybrid
cloud
Private clou
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Architects set up the “Fences” for teams to work
within.
 GET STARTED

TDD and automation

Set up the groundwork for delivering a high quality MVP by
implementing test driven development (TDD) and automated
testing. Never write a single line of code that is not covered by an
automated test case.

TESTS BEFORE CODE: AUTOMATE EVERYTHING

Practice test driven development. Innovate high quality code faster

by writing a failing test case and implementing just enough code for
the test to pass.

Continuously integrate and test. Integrate test tools into your

automated delivery pipeline to continuously run in a regression
suite. Code cannot be integrated without passing its set of tests.

Test everything. Include unit tests, end-to-end tests, and scale and
performance tests in your automated regression suite.

Learn more

Check out the Test-driven development (TDD) practice.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/develop

18
 Test early test often.

Automated tests catch problems before they are re-

leased into production.
 GET STARTED

Program in pairs: virtually or

in person
Programming is done in pairs. Two developers work together as a
team to code, test, and continuously deliver user stories.

TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE

Two developers; one shared screen. Teams who are successful

with pair programming ensure that each pair has the equipment they
need to do their job. Appropriate hardware and software for screen
sharing can be the difference between pair programming success
and a very unsuccessful experience.

Who is in the driver’s seat? Each pair has a driver and an observer.
The driver focuses on how to implement a piece of code. The
observer continuously asks whether the implementation is the best
solution and if it breaks anything else.

Reap the benefits.  Research shows that two programmers, working

together on a single user story, solve problems faster and produce
higher quality code than single programmers.

Learn more

Check out the pair-programming practice.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/develop

20
 Catch defects early!

Code review is good – so do it all the time.

 GET STARTED

Simplify through refactoring

Have you ever stumbled across code that keeps breaking or is
virtually impossible to extend? If so, you must refactor that code to
make it simpler, while ensuring that it preserves the behavior and
passes your automated tests.

SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY!

Don’t refactor on speculation. Wait until the system tells you to

refactor by either breaking or becoming tough to extend.

Recognize the signs. Refactor duplicate code, flawed logic, and

code that can be rewritten in a simpler way.

Automate tests. Refactoring only works when used with automated

testing. If you refactor code, ensure that it passes your automated
tests. If tests don’t exist for the code you intend to refactor, write the
automated tests, then refactor the code.

Learn more

Check out the refactoring practice.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/develop

22
 Simplify your code by
refactoring while preserving
behavior.

Make your code shorter, easier to read, and easier to

maintain through refactoring.
 GET STARTED

Continuously improve your

MVP
The IBM Garage fosters a hands-on experience, where you learn
as you iteratively deliver solutions. You continuously measure
outcomes to generate insights and improve your MVPs. Throughout,
you test hypotheses with real user feedback, rapidly experiment to
prove product-market fit, and pivot as needed.

BUILD. TEST. REPEAT.

Develop hypotheses. Form assumptions and success criteria

(including metrics) for hypotheses. Then design experiments to test
assumptions with end users. Based on learnings, proceed or pivot.

Test MVPs. Build your MVPs based on proven hypotheses. Design a

delivery pipeline to achieve continuous code delivery in a consistent
and reliable way. Prove product-market fit with user testing and adjust
based on feedback.

Grow and scale your MVPs. Learn from each iteration “loop” to define
and deliver a production-ready MVP. Formulate your next MVP based
on feedback and develop a plan to scale across the business.

Learn more

Check out the delivery pipeline practice.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/develop

24
 Build, test, and deliver by using
DevOps practices.














 







  


 
















 

Iteratively define and refine your MVPs. Then scale across

your business.
 GET STARTED

Automate monitoring
Knowing that your application or service is available and functioning
within service level agreements (SLAs) is vital. Automated
monitoring is the best way to ensure your apps are always
functioning.

CATCH PROBLEMS BEFORE YOUR USERS DO

Build to manage. Build monitoring tools in from the beginning.

Learn how to how to monitor a new solution, business process or
application, what to monitor, and how often. Monitor your solution
and everything it depends on.

Know your tools. For example, use agent-based monitoring tools

to analyze the details of your code, server and user activity. Use
synthetic monitoring tools to simulate user traffic so you can
determine whether your application is performing correctly. Test
your monitoring by simulating outages and performance issues.

Integrate monitoring. Integrate automated monitoring into your

incident management toolchain with event management and
notification tooling to ensure that your operations team can respond
to incidents as soon as they occur.

Learn more

Check out the Methodology’s Operate practices.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/operate

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 Integrate your service
management and operations
tools.

Catch problems as soon as they occur.

 GET STARTED

Hypothesis-driven
development
Continuously gain new insights from your customers’ interaction
with your application and the metrics you collect to drive business
decisions using hypothesis-driven development.

LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY

Formulate hypotheses. For each function you develop, formulate a

hypothesis that indicates the expected outcome and the metric that
can be used to measure success.

Test your hypotheses. Once your feature has been delivered and
is in use, gather metrics and end user feedback that will prove or
disprove your hypothesis.

Drive development with hypotheses. Developing hypotheses and

testing them throughout the evolution of an application is key to
delighting your customers. Continuously experiment to deliver the
right solution. Experiments have clear metrics that either validate
your hypothesis or require you to pivot and try something new.

Learn more

Check out the Methodology’s Learn practices.

https://www.ibm.com/garage/method/practices/learn

28
 Learn from your users as they
interact with your application.

Use real time data to test your hypothesis and influence

your next MVP.
 GET STARTED

Transform your enterprise

with the cloud
Meet the challenges of cloud adoption and transformation for the
enterprise by using strategic services and proven methodologies
from the IBM Garage. Align your stakeholders with all the right
goals, model your outcome on the right architecture, collaborate
with the right architects and developers, and, of course, build the
right solution.

ADOPT THE CLOUD

Advise. Drive innovation through successful hybrid cloud adoption

including, technology modernization, rationalization, remediation
and migration to cloud.

Build. Create cloud native applications. Follow an Enterprise Design

Thinking based approach for development to build applications
using polyglot microservices as well as monolithic architectures.

Move. Migrate your legacy applications to the cloud. Consolidate or

decommission applications, interfaces and infrastructure that are no
longer needed due to mergers or technology modernization.

Manage. Build a highly available infrastructure that ensures your

solution is always available and meets your needs. Smoothly
transition and effectively manage your application portfolio to
improve efficiency and agility.

Learn more

Check out the IBM Garage for Cloud (Services).

https://www.ibm.com/cloud/garage/services

30
 Cloud adoption services

Disrupt and innovate in the cloud. Experience the Garage, a hands-

on experience that is grounded in the IBM Garage Methodology and
outcomes based on proven reference architectures and technologies.

Leverage data and analytics. Unlock insights from deep within your
data to energize your applications and protect your enterprise. Manage
your data so it’s available when you need it.

Adopt the cloud and transform. Reduce the risk and cost of migrating
to the cloud by following an agile, collaborative, proven approach that
matches your business objectives and cloud readiness, and becomes a
blueprint for your success in the cloud.

Modernize your applications. Leverage the benefits of cloud

technology to achieve rapid innovation, flexibility, speed to market,
and cost savings by modernizing your existing applications.

Build a hybrid cloud. Prepare your team and plan your environment
for cloud with guidance regarding your system requirements and
readiness, business technical objectives, operations and security, and
your private cloud architecture.

Reinvent your cloud operations. Establish the roles, processes, skills,

and tools required to build reliable and manageable cloud applications
and to maintain a strategic and collaborative operations framework.

Deploy integrated cloud solutions. Power your cloud transformation

with pattern-based applications, client-tested practices, and industry-
specific experts.
 LEARN IT

Foundations of innovation
IBM Cloud provides the platform, expert guidance, and methodology
you can rely on to jump-start your business transformation.

IBM Cloud® Solutions. IBM Cloud provides the

infrastructure and services that you need to build and
deploy your apps in the cloud. IBM Cloud is designed
for your data, is AI ready, and secure to the core.

IBM Garage Methodology. The methodology is a

collection of practices and workflows that are curated
to help organizations rapidly design, build, deploy, and
scale innovative solutions. The methodology reinforces
Enterprise Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and agile
DevOps concepts.

IBM Garage. The Garage is a co-creation experience

that drives purposeful innovation. Diverse teams
partner with you to apply technologies to quickly create
and scale new, innovative ideas. You can scale what
you learn in the Garage to your enterprise.

IBM Services. IBM Services enable you to engage IBM

experts who can help you transform your enterprise,
move applications to the cloud, and take advantage of
emerging technologies to ensure your success.

32
IBM hybrid cloud solution
The new generation of hybrid cloud enables you to build and
manage across any cloud with a common platform, allowing you to
skill once, build once, and manage from a single pane of glass.

CREATE AND DELIVER VALUE WITH HYBRID CLOUD

IBM Cloud. Leverage an open standards public cloud platform

that enables developers and operations staff to rapidly build,
run, and manage all types of applications. IBM Cloud provides
a fast way to get an application to production, scale it, secure it,
and manage it.

Cloud managed services. Take advantage of managed services

(IBM Blockchain, AI, IoT) to help you simplify and accelerate your
journey to cloud.

Red Hat® OpenShift®. Get the benefits of a leading multicloud

container platform. It is designed to help you build once,
deploy and manage anywhere.

IBM Cloud Pak® solutions. Modernize, predict, automate and

secure your business by unlocking the intelligence of AI and
the agility of hybrid cloud by using IBM’s hybrid cloud software.
Notes:
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