DevOps methodologies have been around for more than a decade, but they’ve only recently become popular in software development practice. The growing interest in DevOps is primarily driven by its speed to market, deployment frequency, development processes, and overall application quality. HFS has been guiding the industry with its OneOffice’s vision for a while now. As we had adequate tech discussion, HFS OneOffice vision is focused on the mindset shift towards collaboration between the teams and breaking silos in the process. The rise of DevOps is a living and breathing example of the OneOffice mindset. The collaborative nature of DevOps is in alignment with the HFS innovation framework’s Horizon 2 (Exhibit 2).
Additionally, HFS innovation focus data (Exhibit 1) revealed that 63% of organizations are still in Horizon 1 with digitally optimized processes and follow traditional methods (including the software development process). As per the data, the organizations’ leaders are expected to focus on innovation in the next two years. HFS Innovation focus data clearly, implies the current state of the organizations, and where they wanted to be in the future. Enterprises must act faster to implement DevOps to catch up with leaders to save long-term costs, deliver applications faster and more often, and move toward the next horizons for better experience and synergy. Enterprises that have adopted only functional- or domain-level DevOps must adopt it enterprise-wide to yield full benefits.
Sample: 602 executives across Global 2000 enterprises
Source: HFS Research, 2022
In a nutshell – the term “DevOps” combines development (Dev) and operations (Ops). It’s a set of cultural philosophy, processes, and tools that improves the organization’s efficiency to deliver the applications at speed across the entire software development lifecycle, from development and test to deployment to operations. Under DevOps, development, and operations teams are no longer ‘siloed.’
Many organizations leverage DevOps practices to speed the deployment of new applications to production, add new features frequently, and fix bugs when they occur; it brings solid business processes and control. HFS recently published its Cloud Native Transformation Horizon study. The scoring criteria measure how service providers help enterprises change the business operating models as a part of their cloud-native transformation. We noticed that more than half of service providers leverage DevOps practices of test automation, continuous integration, and continuous deployment to enable a faster flow of code and achieve a successful transformation journey.
DevOps was quite popular in wide use before the pandemic. However, the pandemic increased the need for rapid software development and integration to meet customer demand across industries. Online retail, healthcare, government, banking, and insurance sectors have changed their operations. To meet customer demand resulting from changing consumption patterns, enterprises must quickly develop integrated systems and data processing capabilities. Businesses must be able to frequently improve and deploy code without downtime; slow release cycles create a competitive disadvantage. DevOps shortens the development cycle, a primary reason this methodology is fundamental for modern businesses. DevOps emphasizes the internal collaboration HFS identified in its H2 innovation framework (Exhibit 2), where it encourages smashing silos between teams and working towards the common business objective.
The emergence of cloud services is another driver for DevOps acceleration. The cloud enables rapid, effortless, cost-efficient processes and techniques that can be rolled out in infrastructures, environments, platforms, or complete services and connected effortlessly. Architects can build componentized architectures capable of independent (microservices) release, alteration, and scaling. It enables continuous integration and deployment and complete support of an application lifecycle.
Furthermore, DevOps is essential to digital transformation; it embraces digital and reinvents your business processes. Businesses can step into modern architectures with various components and speeds for different deliveries. DevOps methodologies combine software development and operational processes, helping enterprises on their digital transformation journeys change rapidly, leverage new architecture, and redesign business processes.
As per the HFS organization innovation data, 63% of the firms stand at H1. To bring experience and improve the speed of production, organizations must move to H2 and H3. Organizations must assess the current state and take rapid action to adopt DevOps.
Enterprises leaders are facing various challenges in DevOps practice adoption, including a lack of vision, resistance to change, lack of collaboration, cultural barriers, emphasis on tools, and non-standard environment. Adopting DevOps practice only on a function or domain level would not help much to yield the benefit. We need to embrace the concept enterprise-wide. We need a top-down approach with a stronger push and commitment, clear objectives, vision, and ownership responsibility to make it a success.
To achieve enterprise-wide DevOps adoption, a robust cultural drive must come from the top level. The employees’ beliefs and behaviors in an organization need to be tackled at a human level. It’s about mindset change, which must be addressed and driven wisely.
Enterprises that have not yet implemented DevOps practices in their organization are at a competitive disadvantage. Enterprise leaders must look at how successful businesses changed their practice, learn about them, and consider industrializing them. Various organizations across industries leveraged DevOps, some examples are Amazon, Target, Fidelity Investment, Walmart, and Adobe have benefited from successful implementation of DevOps practices.
In the banking sector, for example, Atom Bank, one of the UK’s first neo-bank, leveraged DevOps practice. The bank releases its new version of the application with added features almost every week; the CTO called out the importance of DevOps practice as its vital for speed to market and success. Similarly, in the initial stage, Netflix had no tools to handle the enormous cloud infrastructure that was necessary for smooth streaming. Netflix developers leveraged open-source solutions to build automated tools to test the infrastructure that helps the company identify vulnerabilities and resolve issues without outages. Ever since, Netflix has continued to leverage DevOps to upgrade its systems. These are some good examples of DevOps.
HFS observed the IT ecosystem continues to bolster its DevOps capabilities based on the rising adoption. Enterprise leaders must consider driving the DevOps practice within the organization for rapid, high-quality software development to support digital transformations. If your enterprise lacks capabilities, skills, or resources or resists changes, leverage service providers and professionals to help so it can focus on its core functions.
DevOps methodology is emerging as a critical component in the software development space. It’s a cultural transformation driven by a collaborative mindset and continuous learning. Enterprises leaders who have not implemented DevOps methodologies organization-wide must prioritize and hasten the adoption process. In any organization, applications are the backbone of operations and end users. Implementing DevOps methodologies into your software development practice boosts production efficiency, optimizes the business, and aligns people, processes, and cultural aspects. Enterprises can start with a top-down approach, a clear objective, and ambition and adopt it across the organization to achieve the targeted goal and yield benefits.
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