5 Things to Know Before You Start DevOps

As your organization considers or implement DevOps, here are five tips by Rajesh Sethu which will drive success and help you achieve your goals.

1. Create a business culture of teamwork and consideration. Your team will be the main factor which will determine your success in implementing DevOps methodologies. Consider hiring a DevOps leader who will be the “spearhead cultural acceptance in your business.”
2. Don’t do buffet style DevOps. While change doesn’t happen overnight, organizations must fully embrace the potential of DevOps and not mix methodologies —for example, you cannot apply agile methodologies by keeping IT operations and engineering teams in traditional silos. Automated testing, integrated configuration management, continuous delivery and Continuous Integration are just some of the core best practices that organizations should apply.
3. Be realistic and specific with your goals. There are multiple types of metrics that can be set. Whether they are operational metrics or service quality metrics, they need to align with customer satisfaction and business growth measures. Identify what goals can be set based on your most basic operational and service-quality metrics, and how they connect to overall business goals.
4. Start DevOps with a new initiative to easily demonstrate success. It is easier to introduce DevOps when there is a fresh project (for example, building a new product) so that there is less resistance to the processes and tools involved. Small wins can support wider advocacy within the business.
5. Find C-level advocates. DevOps is a paradigm shift from the old software delivery organization to a new one that fuses software engineering and IT operations. Changes can be hard to any business, and finding advocates at the senior level can help to drive a smoother and easier transformation.

To fully realize the benefits DevOps offers, larger businesses with more complex internal structures must look beyond the immediate relationship between developers and operations. In addition, applying the principles of DevOps so that teams feel that they have the latitude to focus on delivering constant value and incremental improvements will help foster its success and drive its strategic focus across any organization.