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Introduction to tool chain management
Published On Nov 04, 2025 - 1:25 PM

Introduction to tool chain management

Understand the importance of optimizing your DevOps tool chain and how Kyndryl Tool Chain Management can assist the effectiveness of your DevOps team.
A DevOps toolchain is a collection of tools that work together to automate and streamline software development and operations. Common benefits include the following:
  • Integrate tools:
     Integrate tools for each phase of the DevOps lifecycle:
    • Plan
    • Develop
    • Secure
    • Test
    • Deploy
    • Monitor
    • Operate
  • Automate workflows:
     Automate workflows to speed up processes and make them more efficient.
  • Help identify issues early:
     Help teams identify issues early so they can prioritize and address them expediently.
Improve user experience:
 A DevOps toolchain can help ensure an optimal user experience by identifying issues in real time.

Description

For many organizations, the tool chain comprises a significant number of disparate tools in the context of individual applications. Depending on the DevOps phase of a given application instance, different tools might be necessary to address the requirements for a specific application in a specific phase. For example, Azure DevOps is often used in the planning phase, but it might not be the only planning tool required by the development team. Likewise, Jenkins and GitHub might be used in the Build phase, Jenkins for some applications, GitHub for others.
The decision of which tools to use for which applications at which DevOps phase can vary greatly, which means that for some organizations the permutations can be significant. Kyndryl Tool Chain management addresses three problem areas:
  • Understanding the stable of current support tools:
     Many of tools sanctioned by DevOps teams are open source, which means it's possible that individual teams might take it upon themselves to use GitHub while others build a Jira Infrastructure. Workflows and standard practices and operating procedures can devolve and become chaotic. In such situations visibility is highly desirable.
  • The engineering team is dependent on these tools:
     Engineers rely on these tools to set processes and ensure the integrity of those processes so that they understand and can report what is being delivered when and by what means. Understanding the health and status of these tools is critical to the performance of teams at every phase.
  • Compliance and Security concerns:
     The Security and Compliance Organization (CSO) has a vested interest in whether the tools used by the DevOps teams meet the compliance and security policy and regulations that govern the business. CSO visibility into tools currently in use is also a significant concern.
Kyndryl Tool Chain Management addresses these issues, enabling centralized visibility. Existing tools are visible for each application at each phase, the status of each tool is available, and compliance and security concerns can be understood and quickly allayed or addressed.

Tool Chain management roles

User actions in Tool Chain Management are role-driven. Actions are granted as privileges associated with roles assigned to individual users. The following roles currently exist in the system:
  • Administrator role:
     Create, delete, update, or view DevOps ToolChains defined in the ToolChain Management application.
  • Editor role:
    Update and view the DevOps ToolChain and delete the list of tools defined in each phase.
  • Viewer role:
    View the ToolChain listed in the service and refresh the tool status for all tools in ToolChain Management.
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