Why DevOps Requires Buy-In From Everyone

In DevOps, culture is as important as the process and tools. That's why buy-in, from everyone, including the CEO, is essential for success. Even organizations that clearly recognize the business value of adopting a DevOps approach may face a variety of potential stumbling blocks. One of the most prevalent challenges is inherent in the divergence of what developers and operations professionals prioritize and value most-and the traditional development practices that amplify those differences.

Development is concerned with speed and agility while operations is focused on quality and stability. As a result, there are often organizational barriers between the development team creating new software and the operations team responsible for pushing changes to production. Some of those barriers are by design, even though they often bog down processes and create tension between the teams. Most organizations tend to be risk-averse. They don't want to risk compromising quality or security for the sake of speed, so legacy software development processes and tools are designed to reduce risk and ensure quality, not for speed and agility.

Many DevOps challenges are rooted in corporate culture and cannot be overcome with technology. In DevOps, culture is as vital as process and tools. To this end, buy-in becomes the chief objective for new adherents. The buy-in challenge is magnified when software development crosses teams, departments, business units and even companies. That's why senior management buy-in isn't optional. DevOps isn't a process for an elite group of developers, it's for everyone.

To learn more about how CloudBees customers are driving DevOps in their companies, read our case studies here.