Why Adopt DevOps?

The Benefits

DevOps has been proven to increase the speed, efficiency and quality of software delivery as well as improving staff morale and motivation.

One of the key benefits of introducing DevOps processes and culture is that it removes silos (the communication barriers between teams), from an organisation and therefore removes the reliance on the availability of an individual person or team in order for software delivery to progress.

By working in small Product Teams, responsibility is shared and a team ethos is established. The quality of work improves when staff collaborate closely with all those who are directly impacted by it. For example, a developer is more likely to ensure that their code is up to standard if they work closely with colleagues in operations who will be directly affected if there is a problem. Efficiency is also increased as decisions are made collectively by all involved and feedback to those decisions is rapid.

Work quality is further improved by the introduction of automation software which removes wearisome, monotonous tasks. This delivers applications in a consistent fashion and removes the mistakes and anomalies that human beings typically make. As the burden of manual work is removed from staff members, they can then focus on more creative work that increases their job satisfaction and adds real value to the organisation.

By establishing automated services, the ongoing operational costs are drastically lower than the human equivalent. There is also a significant speed advantage as automated processes are much faster than their manual counterparts. The quality of the entire release process improves because steps in the pipeline become standardised, thus creating predictable outcomes.

By taking a DevOps approach to the software delivery process, the resulting ease and reliability inspires the confidence to release frequently. This allows for continuous feedback to be rapidly incorporated into future releases and for software delivery to be truly Agile.

The Results

Once DevOps has been established within an organisation, the results can be startling. In compiling their annual State of DevOps Report automation software vendor and Sourced Group partner, Puppet, surveys more than 4,600 technical professionals on the effects that DevOps has had on their business.

So why adopt DevOps? Well, the report uncovered the following statistics;

• High-performing IT organisations deploy 200 times more frequently than low performers, with 2,555 times faster lead times.
• They have 24 times faster recovery times and three times lower change failure rates.
• Lean management and continuous delivery practices create the conditions for delivering value faster, sustainably.
• High-performing IT teams spend 50 percent less time remediating security issues.
• They spend 22 percent less time on unplanned work and rework.
• High performance is achievable irrespective of whether apps are greenfield, brownfield or legacy.
• Employees in high-performing teams were 2.2 times more likely to recommend their organisation as a great place to work.
• IT managers play a critical role in promoting diversity and limiting burnout.
• Taking a lean approach to product development (for example, splitting work into small batches and implementing customer feedback) predicts higher IT performance and less deployment pain.
• DevOps initiatives launched solely by C-level executives or from the grassroots are less likely to succeed.