Overview

The IBM DevOps team recently introduced their first release of an integrated DevOps platform called DevOps Loop.   It is a platform designed to support and streamline the application development lifecycle and to provide a seamless workflow for enhanced productivity within the DevOps ecosystem.  

The purpose of this blog is to provide a first look at the capabilities that come with the solution.   At IBM, we have provided industry best solutions in each pillar of DevOps from source code control, work item management, build and deployment automation, and testing capabilities for many years.   With the introduction of DevOps Loop, we now have incorporated these solutions into a single platform with new AI powered features.   Here is a quick look at what comes under the hood with DevOps Loop:

The platform provides a single datastore that allows you to get quick insights into your development projects from issue creation, distribution of workload, deployment counts, test results, and DevOps measures like lead time and cycle time as shown below:

Along with these great insights, DevOps Loop also has many AI-based integrations to help your team produce quality code with efficiency and confidence.   The platform runs in an OpenShift or Kubernetes environment.

In the next segments, I will briefly explain each capability and provide some screen shots, so you get a better view of the overall platform.   Let’s explore DevOps Loop together!

Plan, Control, and Code

Our DevOps Plan capability is a low-code/no-code change and workflow management solution that helps software delivery teams tackle critical challenges head on.  It helps to improve planning and coordination, boost productivity, start projects faster all with ehanced auditability.   It has custom workflow automation features to meet the requirements of the most complex enterprise customer.

As you use the comprehensive change tracking and issue management features, you will find that it supports project boards as shown below as well as sprint boards and custom boards you may require:

For a deeper dive into work item types and to learn more about how Plan can accelerate project delivery and increase productivity with Artificial Intelligence (AI), please read:  https://community.ibm.com/community/user/blogs/randy-langehennig1/2025/02/04/how-devops-plan-accelerates-project-delivery-and-i

Plan ships with Control (source code management) and Code (a visual basic IDE) to enhance the developer experience.   Here is a screen shot of the source code management solution which is git-based and provides git flow features that include pull requests to support branching strategies:

You can edit the source files for your git repository in Control directly, however, for a more feature rich solution, you can also launch Code from the platform that provides IDE based editing features as shown below:

As your code is committed to a git repository, you can configure a webhook in Control that will trigger an automatic build of your code.     You can see an example webhook below that can trigger the build on different event types like a “push into the repository” or on a “pull request” as an example:

A history of all the triggers can be seen at the bottom along with a “Test Delivery” button as shown below:

Build

DevOps Loop comes with an enterprise class build solution that can build your code and can perform complex build processes that include unit tests, code scans, dependency scans and much more.    Here is a screen shot of a project called “EchoLogic” which provides insights around build success, source code activity, as well as build activity.

The build process can be setup to push the deployable artifact from your build to a definitive asset repository or the built-in version repository that comes with Loop.   It can also automatically trigger a deployment in your DEV environment for your project as shown below:

When the artifact is pushed to the Deploy solution, you have excellent traceability back to the build pipeline as shown below:

Deploy

The Deploy capability is built from IBM’s industry leading application release automation solution that is field tested and field proven.   It is used by our clients across the globe to support their hybrid deployment needs.    Whether you are deploying a container, deploying a web application, a broker archive, or a mainframe-based Cobol program, this solution can support it.

When you switch to the Deploy features, you will immediately see a dashboard that provides insights on recent builds, agent health, server health, and any active deployments in flight.   Here is an example of the dashboard: 

The application that we built earlier was automatically deployed to our DEV environment as shown below with an excellent trail of audit of who initiated the deployment, which version was selected, which target environment, when it was requested and more.   Here is an example:

With our recent release, we included a Deployment Genie feature that can help you quickly diagnose issues and provide remediation steps.

When you click the AI button as highlighted above, the output log from the failed step is sent to your AI engine of choice and the analysis of the failure is provided to you as shown below:

To learn more about all the features in our most recent release of Deploy, please see this blog for more information:  https://community.ibm.com/community/user/blogs/randy-langehennig1/2025/06/17/introducing-ibm-devops-deploy-812

Of course, you can trigger automated tests along with your deployment which we did in this example as shown below:

Different tests can be executed based on the target environment and you can pass parameters to the tests that can include hostnames, ports, and other details your functional, performance, UI, or API tests require.

Test

IBM has been a leader in the testing space for a long time, and we have brought our excellent testing capabilities to the Loop platform.   With our web-based Test Hub solution, you can see your projects that are configured as shown in the example below:

Once in a specific project, you can see an overview of your test suites, individual tests, and the most recent test execution results as shown below:

With IBM Test, you can author functional tests, API tests, service virtualization stubs, performance tests and much more.   Of course, you can analyze test results and view the test logs for any individual test as shown below:

The most recent release offers test authoring features built-in to the web interface along with data management features to support your testing efforts.   Effective data management is at the core of robust application testing and Test Hub has a rich set of capabilities to support your testing needs.

Release and Measure

Finally, as your code progresses through your software delivery lifecycle, DevOps Loop provides release management features to help you release your software into your upper environments with robust governance features including gates and approvals.

This calendar view provides insights into recent release activities and allows you to create new releases as your team needs them to plan your deployments:

You can setup a release pipeline which provides visibility of the applications participating in the release as well as what is currently deployed in each target environment.

You can configure deployment plans (or templates) to ensure every step of that release are performed as you would expect.   This can include manual steps, automated steps, integrations with ServiceNow to check a work item to ensure it is in the correct state and approved, and much more.   The pipeline features allow you to integrate with many different solutions like Jenkins if that is something your team requires.

And finally, with our measure features, we can track key metrics or KPIs to ensure your team is delivering results on time with great quality.   The value stream feature of the solution allows you to see a work item flow from your backlog all the way to a deployment in a PROD environment as an example.

In this example, we are looking at the work item I was working with when I made a code change to the application in control which in turn kicked off the build and triggered the deployment:

The dot as you see in the value stream will collect every detail (build, deployment, test) which can be easily tracked in the value stream view as shown above.

Summary

As you can see from the examples above, DevOps Loop is a platform designed to support and streamline the software application development lifecycle.   DevOps Loop integrates key processes such as planning, coding, deployment, testing, and release management into a seamless workflow for enhanced productivity within the DevOps ecosystem.

I hope this first look at the integrated DevOps platform provides better insight into the capabilities it provides to help your organization accelerate their delivery of new features and capabilities to meet the demands of your customers.

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