Deployment automation is the linchpin of DevOps transformation. I cannot put it more simply:
To accelerate your DevOps adoption and get the biggest bang for your buck, you should focus on deployments.

The previous State of the DevOps reports have shown a pretty straightforward equation:

Deployment frequency is THE indicator for success and deployment pain is a predictor of failure.

More Deploys

2015 State of the DevOps Report

We all remember the impressive hockey-stick graph from the 2015 report, comparing the number of deploys and days developers between high-performing IT organizations (in Orange) and low-performing ones.

That difference became even more staggering in the 2016 research.

2016 State of the DevOps Report

The 2016 State of the DevOps report showed that high-performing IT organizations deploy 200x more frequently than low performers with 2,555x faster lead times.

Less Pain

The 2015 report found that deployment automation (along with CI, testing, and version control practices) predicted lower levels of deployment pain, higher IT performance, and lower change failure rates.

The reports show that those high performing IT organizations also have higher employee loyalty and engagement.

On the other end of the spectrum, deployment pain is correlated with employee churn.

This makes deployment automation one of the clearest examples of the convergence of the two axes of DevOps: the technology and process axis, and the culture and people one.

If your talent is running for the hills and your developers are tired of banging their heads against the wall trying to get stuff to work, you should look at how you deploy.

ARA

Not only the State of the DevOps reports, but all analyst research confirms how critical deployments are. For example, in the recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Release Automation, Gartner mentions that ARA, which deployment automation and release coordination are key tenants of, is the most important technology to an organization’s adoption of DevOps.

Deployment Automation Tips From the #c9d9 Devops Community

Naturally, we’ve been discussing Deployment Automation a lot recently on our Continuous Discussions video podcast.

Check out these two recent episodes on Deployment Automation 2.0 and Advanced Deployment Patterns for some great tips shared by our expert panel on streamlining your deployments, Docker orchestration, Blue/Green and Rolling Deployments strategies, and more.

We hold our #c9d9 podcast every other Tuesday at 10 a.m. PT. Each episode focuses on a different topic and features expert panelists talking about DevOps, Continuous Delivery, Agile, and more. Check out all #c9d9 episodes and panelists here.