Bharath Gowda Focuses on Business Success with DevOps—In CIOReview

“Companies report incredible benefits by adopting a DevOps approach: faster delivery of software, fewer defects, faster resolution of problems, and better allocation of limited IT resources. If your organization has already adopted a DevOps approach, you’re on the right track to developing and deploying software faster and better than ever.

“But that’s not the end of the story nor should it be the ultimate driver behind DevOps. To really succeed with a DevOps approach, you need to think about what faster and better software actually means for the business and the all-important bottom line. You must make the connection between your DevOps approach and goals and their impact on your business’ goals. To do this, you must link and balance the goals of faster (speed of delivery), better software (high performing, quality software that delivers a good customer experience) to goals for innovation and business success.”

Bharath Gowda in CIOReview’s DevOps Special Edition

So begins New Relic director of market leadership Bharath Gowda’s recent article inCIOReview’s new DevOps Special Edition, which features insights from a number of DevOps thought leaders.

In an article titled Keep the Focus on the Business to Succeed with DevOps, Bharath makes the point that faster and better software development is only the beginning for DevOps. To extract the most value from the DevOps approach, he says, “you need to think about what faster and better software actually means for the business and the all-important bottom line.”

The problem, Bharath warns, is that “working better, smarter, and faster isn’t quite enough to drive business success.” Application performance and customer experience are necessary but not sufficient factors to ensure business success, as measured by revenue, customer adoption, retention, customer satisfaction, and so on. DevOps packs its biggest punch when used to enable rapid innovation driven by business outcomes.

DevOps drivers and metrics

With that in mind, Bharath names four key drivers for DevOps implementations:

1. Speed
2. Innovation/business success
3. Customer experience
4. Application performance

In the CIOReview article, Bharath offers a helpful framework for measuring each driver, along with suggested resource allocations for each one. He notes that unlike traditional waterfall development processes, DevOps’ iterative, data-driven approach allows for the ongoing insights needed to be a better software business. That’s critical, because these days, every business is a software business.

Read Bharath’s whole article here!