DevOps is gaining steam across many technical organizations, becoming the go-to choice for technology executives wanting more agility and innovation. Contrary to past approaches where much of the development and innovation happened piecemeal, organizations today are discovering that implementing DevOps involves not just a transition, but also additional work.
Over the past year, we’ve discovered in our conversations the importance of DevOps to executives. Simply, many understand the value and the importance but few know how to make the leap. With DevOps and it’s counterpart, cloud, becoming a greater part of corporate and technology strategy, we’ve learned that having a defined path is key to success and greater competition in the market.
Over the next few blogs, we’ll be covering how digital transformation and DevOps go hand-in-hand, and the steps in this process that lead to an innovative, lean, and adaptive enterprise. Today’s topic covers the strategic considerations leaders must make when taking those next steps.
Understanding the State of the Market
The state of the cloud and DevOps market is clear: cloud has arrived and is here to stay. Over the past month, research firms IDC, Forrester, and Gartner have all released research indicating that spending will increase even more than expected through 2020. Additionally, the cloud shift points to almost $1 trillion dollars of spending by the end of the decade, considering how the cloud and DevOps are still so new to many. Companies aren’t just using cloud either. According to technology certification firm CompTIA, organizations are also becoming more deliberate in how they deploy cloud, graduating the technology format from buzzword to serious contention.
Also bolstering the direction of the market are complementary technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT) and augmented/virtual reality. As organizations develop and reach customers with these platforms, DevOps and cloud play a role by offering continuous innovation and data storage opportunities. As you examine your place in the market, where do you fit? What sorts of technologies are you implementing? What is your competition implementing? All of these considerations are important as you engage in digital transformation.
Defining a DevOps Strategy
Adopting a DevOps strategy is very similar to the cloud, as we have written before. Success in this area includes:
- Getting leadership buy-in
- Training current and future employees
- Creating procedures around adopting technologies
- Know what is available based on needs
- Developing the right roles and responsibilities
Additionally, it’s also important for your organization to perform gap analysis, which is understanding your potential performance versus where you are at the moment. As DevOps is a merging of business, operations, and engineering, the typical questions all matter:
- Where do you lower costs?
- What does increased collaboration look like?
- How does acquisition of technology change?
Figuring out how to close the gap as much as tackling the gap itself is the key to not getting stuck in your own organization’s mud.
Making the Leap
The final step is all about making the leap. Obviously, this step is easier said than done but by making the move you’ll be helping transform your organization into a continuous innovation and deployment machine. In our work with customers, we do this several ways:
- Developing best practices through the creation of standard operating procedures.
- Developing Centers of Excellence to train and create internal trainers that continue our work even after we leave.
Your results may differ, but the bottom-line simply is to create a roadmap that will allow your organization to be succesful on its own terms. Embrace the leap and of course, if you need to make changes down the line, do that too.
Learn More
Are you looking to get started in DevOps? Stay tuned to this series and email us your challenges at sales@perficient.com. We’ll look forward to hearing from you.
Learn more about our DevOps partnerships here.
