DevOps is not just about dev teams and ops teams: it’s about all stakeholders, including QA, middle managers, executives… Not only are they all impacted by the shortcomings of their software delivery lifecycle, but they all have to play a part in improving the efficiency of their IT organization.

In the last few years, most IT strategies in Luxembourg have focused on standardization and responsibility segregation in order to improve the quality of IT services while controlling costs. A direct side effect of this approach was the creation of silos between functions.

Even though there is a more or less obvious contrast between startups and established companies in the more traditional financial industry, in general, and for a few years now, IT in Luxembourg is running a little behind.

That being said, DevOps is gaining ground and its principles are fairly well understood, specially the cultural shift that is needed for it to bloom within a company and the automation solutions which are the pillars of reliability and consistency.

Participants in the survey

What’s wrong with the current software delivery process and how people would fix it

More than 25% of the respondents need several weeks or months to deploy a code change in production! Only 43% of them are able to do it within a single day. While the inconsistencies between the various environments is a major source of issues, the delays in deployment also seem to be largely due to inadequate processes, organisations and responsibility segregation. Until recently it has been quite common that the efforts to improve the quality of deployments and the stability of the production environments also resulted in less flexibility and longer delays in software delivery.

Today, companies must learn how to iterate and deploy more frequently while still ensuring a high quality and stability of their systems. For that, people understand the critical importance of automating repetitive and error-prone tasks like tests, deployments and infrastructure provisioning. They are also looking for more visibility and control over the end-to-end value stream with Release Management and ALM solutions.

How DevOps is understood

Most respondents (95%) have a fair idea of what DevOps is about. Interestingly 55% understand that DevOps is also a cultural change about collaboration and not only about tools and technology.

The actual progress of DevOps

While the topic is hot, 38% of the respondents don’t do any DevOps and 34% contemplate the possibility. Only 28% have actually started their DevOps journey.

Many organizations are still in the early stage of raising awareness and improving knowledge of DevOps principles. A major obstacle to address at the beginning is the lack of communication between Dev & Ops. One risk of being passive and cautious for too long is to be outpaced by the competition.

Moving the DevOps initiative forward

For any DevOps initiative, the critical success factor is to evolve the Culture from one of silos to one of cross-functional teamwork and sharing (information, responsibilities, tools…). Our respondents are certainly right to recognise that “Collaboration and communication” are essential for a first step in their DevOps journey. Processes and tools can only help reinforce the new practices and behaviours required for a successful DevOps initiative.

A large majority of our respondents believe that both Dev & Ops, even including the management, should drive such an initiative.

This list of tools includes both recent and mature solutions, which are all trending in the DevOps ecosystem. Whatever your platform and technology stack you can find open source tools and commercial products to support your DevOps initiatives on the market today.

The specific goals of a DevOps initiative can be different from one company to another but they usually relate to customer satisfaction, quality and innovation, more than just technology adoption or cost reduction. It is essential to clearly identify your business goals before designing and launching your DevOps initiative.

Conclusion

To start your DevOps initiative, focusing your efforts on collaboration and communication to initiate a different way to interact and change your IT culture is a very good and, we dare say, a mandatory first step.

Customer satisfaction being your company’s life line, keep tabs with new technology stacks that can help you maintain and improve it. There is a new breed of DevOps labeled tools that you should consider. Tools come and go, but some can be real enablers and the perfect fit for your business.

Where to start? Obviously your DevOps initiative should be guided by clearly defined business needs. Indeed, an e-commerce merchant certainly does not have the same requirements and conformance restrictions as an investment bank. Even within a company, different business lines may have different challenges. We recommend to focus your DevOps efforts so as to provide your customers with the greatest benefits.

It’s time to reconcile Change with Stability. Go DevOps!

Do you want to dig deeper?

You are convinced that DevOps is for your organisation? But you wonder how to improve the collaboration within your teams, how to improve software agility, how to automate your software deployment, how to release as often as required by your business needs? In other words, how to be more agile? Contact us to start your DevOps journey at devops@agilepartner.net or visit our website devops.agilepartner.net.

Download the full version of the State of DevOps: http://devops.agilepartner.net/

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