CIO opinion
CIO OPINION
Barry de Waal, Chief Executive for Strategy and Sales
at 9th BIT Consulting
What’s the definition
of a successful DevOps
practice? Is it purely the
velocity and volume of
the software packages
delivered or the efficiency
and cost-effectiveness?
Barry de Waal, Chief
Executive for Strategy
and Sales at 9th BIT
Consulting, specialists
in implementing
solutions within the SOA,
middleware, Big Data and
DevSecOps landscape,
tries to find the answer.
T
o measure true success, we need to
include criteria like how well the team
has collaborated, how happy and
engaged its people are, and how well it’s been
able to attract high-calibre new talent into the
operation. Also, to be taken into consideration
are the DevOps team’s responsiveness to the
organisation, its creativity in decision-making,
its vision, and its ability to ‘sell’ concepts to
business stakeholders.
All of this only becomes possible when the
team develops a positive working culture,
guided by the right norms and behaviours
that set-up the DevOps practice for success.
As leadership guru Peter Drucker famously
said: ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’
It’s a doctrine that’s particularly applicable
when talking about Digital Transformation.
40
INTELLIGENTCIO
DevOps is the
culture that
eats strategy
for breakfast
Unleashing new potential
At its heart, DevOps is a philosophy, a
movement, a way for an organisation to
rally around a common goal of rapidly
transforming itself and testing out exciting
new concepts for the future.
In successful DevOps practices, a powerful
culture of teamwork and trust help to
bond together key players from across
the organisation. Early-stage software
is developed in live environments and
immediately tested by the team, generating
insights that are continually fed into the
development streams, allowing teams to
adjust and iterate software in rapid cycles.
In theory, DevOps can allow you to reach
incredible velocity – dramatically closing
the gaps between ideation, creation and
deployment – to deliver leaner software
aligned with ever-changing business and
user demands.
But to truly unleash that potential, it’s
important for everyone to be deploying their
energies in a unified way. This begins with
business execs and IT leaders that must
create an enabling environment and extends
downwards throughout team leaders – who
should generally motivate and reward team
effort rather than individual brilliance.
In many cases, it’s helpful to have DevOps
‘champions’ within the organisation, actively
promoting the discipline and highlighting
the benefits, always available for their
colleagues who will have many questions.
No man left behind
For some IT pros, feelings of fear and
uncertainty cloud the team’s migration from
traditional waterfall approaches to the likes of
agile and DevOps. In living up to the principle
of ‘leave no man behind’, it’s important
for leaders to create reskilling programmes
that help people to update their skills and
knowledge and ensure that they quickly add
value in the new DevOps frameworks.
Moving to DevOps requires new roles to be
defined among the team members and new
skills to be nurtured. But more broadly than
that, it requires new approaches to one’s
role – such as the willingness to embrace
continuous learning, and to develop a more
proactive and creative attitude to one’s role.
Building a winning DevOps culture often
involves individuals shedding the narrow
scope that they previously have held as
their ‘identities’ (such as “I’m a developer”,
“I’m a UX designer” or “I’m a tester”).
Now, they’ll need to adopt greater levels of
accountability for the overall delivery and
involve themselves at various points in the
DevOps value chain, even areas outside of
their traditional comfort zone.
To align the personal growth journeys of
the individual team members with the
overall team strategy, It is clear, regular
communication is vital. Teams need regular
feedback on the issues at hand, whether that
is encouraging them to celebrate successes, to
beef-up in areas where they may be lacking,
to understand their role in the broader
strategic vision, or indeed anything else.
The research doesn’t lie. For instance, earlier
this year almost 5,300 software developers
reinforced the essential point – high-
performing teams are more likely to report
having a strong DevOps culture, resulting in
better visibility and collaboration than their
lower-functioning counterparts. n
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