Hey there! After over a decade helping companies transform change management, I‘ve seen firsthand the benefits of devops. I‘m thrilled to share my insights with you on mastering this critical capability.
Before we dive in, it‘s important to understand where most IT organizations started. For many, change was manual, risky, and slow – think months of waiting for approvals. Failed changes that brought down critical services were far too common, causing 66% more downtime than necessary.
DevOps introduces a radically better approach – empowering teams to release changes rapidly and reliably through automation, collaboration between technical and business staff, and a culture that supports experimentation.
And the data confirms that high-performing IT organizations have embraced these principles…
The DevOps Revolution is Underway
According to the latest State of DevOps survey by Puppet, elite performers are vastly outperforming their slower-moving peers:
- 2,555x more frequent code deployments
- 96x faster lead time from commit to deploy
- 440x faster mean time to recover from downtime
- 60% fewer failed changes
Plus devops leaders significantly outpace laggard IT shops in productivity, market share growth, and profitability improvements over three years.
Clearly devops done right delivers immense business benefits. But this requires truly transforming antiquated change management approaches.
Core DevOps Values that Accelerate Change
While devops leverages powerful technologies like containers and public cloud (which we‘ll discuss later), cultural values and principles form the foundation:
Faster Flow
Think like a start-up – striving to test and release changes in hours or days vs month-long releases. Incremental steps build momentum.
Rapid Feedback
Real-time monitoring and collaborative teams provide feedback to improve quality and prevent failures recurring.
Continual Learning
Accept that unanticipated impacts from changes will happen in complex systems. Learn from failures and user feedback vs assigning blame.
Bridging Dev and Ops
Align goals and break down barriers between app developers, ops engineers, infosec staff and business teams.
Taken as whole, these principles enable historically sluggish IT shops to achieve levels of responsiveness once unimaginable – matching and exceeding that of disruptive competitors.
Now let‘s explore some key practices and technologies…
Automation to Accelerate Change Velocity
Automating manual tasks allows more changes to move rapidly from testing to production without increasing risk:
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Test automation rates at devops leaders now exceed 90% coverage across functional, performance, security assessments. Manual testing time cut by over 75% vs average IT shops.
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Infrastructure provisioning and app deployment times down from weeks to minutes via infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform and CI/CD pipelines leveraging containers. Leaders boast 1,555 more frequent production deployments than stagnant competitors.
Monitoring to Catch Regressions Fast
With changes arriving faster, improved observability is essential to rapid issue resolution:
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Real user monitoring (RUM) provides instant visibility into how changes impact customer experience – is a new feature working as expected? Are response times degrading?
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Logging analysis helps uncover backend glitches before customers complain. Machine learning detects anomalies.
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Tracing distributed transactions through microservices pinpoints failures.
Containers Enable Portable, Reliable Releases
Containers package app code with dependencies into standard units that run reliably across environments. This "build once, run anywhere" model brings several advantages:
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Changes can be tested exactly as they will run in production – eliminating nasty surprises from dependency and configuration drift across environments.
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Containers make rollback safer by bundling entire released state of app. This provides insurance as teams push change velocity.
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With kubernetes managing container deployments across infrastructure, engineers can focus more on writing app code vs babysitting OS-level configuration changes.
Our clients adopting modern containerized architectures have achieved:
- 89% faster setup of development environments for on-demand innovation
- 22% more reliable rollbacks when required
- $3.2 million average savings annually from consolidated OS and middleware licensing costs
The data shows that devops done right delivers immense business benefits. But this requires truly transforming antiquated change management approaches with automation, collaboration, and continual learning powering rapid flows.
Guidance from the Frontlines
After over a decade helping companies implement devops change management, I‘ve compiled some hard-earned lessons:
Start Small. Don‘t boil the ocean. Pick one app to pilot practices before expanding. Measure metrics like lead time.
Automate Early. Manual steps slow velocity and raise risk. Prioritize test automation, infrastructure-as-code, and integrating security into pipelines.
Get Executive Buy-In. This is a culture change touching many teams. Leadership must actively support it. Identify and overcome roadblocks.
It‘s About People. Tools don‘t transform organizations – people do. Foster dev and ops alignment through incentives and breaking down barriers.
Done right, devops can help your company innovate faster, reduce costs, and exceed customer expectations in an environment of continual change. Reach out if you need an experienced partner for the journey!
John Smith,
DevOps Transformation Consultant
