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DevOps - Getting over the hump in the middle

How to sustain the DevOps momentum

It's not uncommon for DevOps to get off to a flying start, with Rockstar Devs and Agile Evangelists swaggering around making grand promises of a better future - only for it to hit the buffers a short while later.

Because DevOps is a cultural switch which depends, to a large degree, on the right business conditions being in place, many organisations find progress impeded by a hump in the middle, and that they lack strategy and energy to get over it.

Base 220 UK IT leaders, developers and engineers.

The first thing to note is the DevOps is still a minority play, which might come as some surprise to those who are immersed in it. Only 15 per cent of respondents had successfully merged the devs and ops functions and were starting to see the benefits. These ratios are pretty much the same as we saw last year.

So what did the successful companies do that the rest can learn from? Let's look at three hypothetical organisations Companies A, B and C. These are built from an amalgamation of the responses to Computing Delta surveys, interviews and focus groups and while they are hypothetical they are based on real experience. None of them, you'll notice, is a cloud-native start-up; all carry some baggage from the past.

Company A has premises scattered across the country and abroad, meaning that coordination can be difficult. Over the years the company has outsourced many activities, shedding experienced IT staff in the process. As a result, remaining tech teams either lack skills or have tended to clump into fiefdoms.

"There's insufficient staff to make the strategy work."

"Some quality issues which are a trade-off against speed of delivery hence not fully meeting expectations."

Company A has rolled out DevOps in a few places as part of a digital transformation push but the experience hasn't been that positive. Under pressure to deliver on the shiny new buzzword, compromises have been made.

"Not fast or flexible enough - and unrealistic expectations as business users have been misled by IT sales reps looking to bypass central IT."

The new IT roles have yes to bed in.

"It's a painful process to fully integrate the DevOps teams and defining clear roles for each member of the team. As a result we are not quite reaping the intended benefits."

DevOps is unlikely to progress in company A without a serious rethink. So what does Company A need to do to get back on track? Here is a summary of the suggestions from our respondents.

If DevOps is to go anywhere the various teams need to come together and learn to speak a common language. There needs to sustained leadership and a determined push to spread DevOps ideas past the pockets of resistance.

DevOps team could look at helping parts of the business automate manual processes - maybe call it by another name such as self-service, and build from there.

They could also invest in a multi-site collaboration platform to make this easier, and security automation tools could help tackle some of the bottlenecks.

Above all, though, they should make it clear that this is a marathon and not, ironically, a sprint.

Company B is a large technology organisation in the public sector. Although they have been using DevOps successfully in some areas for a few years now, they still consider themselves to be starting out, simply because it's not yet the norm.

The main issue here is communications with the business. Initially, DevOps was rather oversold to the business. The sales pitch was a necessary evil to gain funding, but at the same time expectations were raised to unrealistic levels. There's no going back. Trouble is, there's not much going forward either.

There are also technical hurdles due to historical baggage and the need to support legacy code.

So what does Company B need to do move DevOps forward?

Get other team members involved early on and encourage feedback, advised our experts. Never stop explaining what you're doing and why you are doing it.

Look for ways to bring the legacy technology if not into the development pipeline then at least into the DevOps mindset of streamlining and automation.

With the team and the business all headed in the same direction, the core DevOps team can start learning cutting edge skills in learning about cloud native applications, microservices and the rest.

Company C is a 20-year old mid-sized business and IT services firm with offices: in the UK, in India and the US. Barring time-zone difficulties, which can be very real, DevOps is a natural fit for this tech-savvy company.

The company has adopted a cloud-first strategy, and is automating processes wherever it can.

"The more and more we integrate the more we see the possibilities," the CTO said.

Importantly, the rest of the business is adopting Agile methodologies too. However, DevOps has stopped at the IT boundaries and has not been taken on board by the product managers. The CTO described this as "very difficult"

So, next steps for Company C.

Pull in other parts of the business, so they are automating and streamlining their work using tech platforms. Try to make this a pull process rather than a push one. Show people what they can do and how you can help. Add elements of self-service.

Ask for feedback and take it seriously. Make adaptability a virtue.

Ensure your tools and platforms keep evolving as you mature so you don't box yourself in.

"The longer you practice DevOps the more it makes sense. At first, it seems alien, but when you move from separate teams to a more integrated Scrum team there's an energy that comes from that. Keep that vision of constructive cooperation in mind then take it step by step."

In the meantime, Company C hasn't completely thrown the baby out with the bathwater. There are still some legacy applications that have not been decomposed into microservices but where possible these have been moved to the cloud reducing the maintenance burden.

DevOps - Getting over the hump in the middle

How to sustain the DevOps momentum

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