DevOps: Embrace the Cultural Change
To effectively leverage cloud capabilities, successful organi-
zations undertake initiatives to make their cultures more
agile. This involves extensive work in the three classic
dimensions of IT – technology, process and people. A lot of
this work should begin as a cloud project gets off the
ground. During these early stages, how the three dimen-
sions of IT will need to change is driven by the alignment of
the overall business strategy with the current level of adop-
tion of the tenets of DevOps: automation, continuous
improvement, iteration and fast feedback loops. More
mature cloud projects should be pushing these factors
ahead, and already witnessing cultural changes aligned
with accelerated delivery throughput.
On the technology front, organizations typically start by
picking an initial set of tools to support automation and/or
DevOps itself. This list
of tools grows to sup-
port security, testing,
monitoring and aspects
of the continuous inte-
gration/continuous
delivery (CI/CD) pipe-
line. In addition, teams
must choose between
cloud-native and best-
of-breed tooling. Once
your enterprise begins to gain leverage with the cloud, inte-
grating and optimizing these tools across the organization
is essential. It is also critical to consider if the tools are func-
tioning at a high level. Have you filled out your whole tech-
nology stack? Is your organization appropriately skilled to
leverage these tools?
value out of the cloud, they need to drive further alignment
with their DevOps procedures across the organization.
Value stream mapping, or lean analysis, should be expanded
to include governance and operational functions, with a
focus on continually optimizing throughput. For example,
ensuring that a standard DevOps deployment flow (and
toolchain) is available for use across the organization, for all
SDLC environment types, helps support this key cultural
transformation.
Furthermore, enterprises that typically operated in an ITIL-
based data center environment now have to be updated to
operate with more agility. You must determine the optimal
mix of ITIL and Agile processes, in order to balance the
operational guardrails with the deployment throughput
expected. Deeper analysis of governance processes com-
monly reaps the most added throughput. For example, the
adoption or expansion of “standard” change requests can
address a common
hurdle for production
deployments. It will
take years to reach the
optimal mix, requiring
continual re-evaluation
throughout the cloud
adoption lifecycle.
Organizations looking to drive
value in the cloud often fall
behind in terms of equipping
their people to operate in the
new environments.
In terms of process, many companies will start creating
DevOps capabilities in certain units or departments but not
consider how these capabilities need to be developed and
integrated throughout the entire organization. Companies
often begin their value stream mapping in the development
organization, followed by the infrastructure organization,
but often get stuck there. As they look to generate greater
26 | THE DOPPLER |
SUMMER 2019
Organizations looking
to drive value in the
cloud often fall behind in terms of equipping their people to
operate in the new environments. The cloud requires differ-
ent skill sets and a new array of tools. Most importantly, the
cloud also requires a different attitude: a drive for continu-
ous improvement. Have you assembled the right kind of
team that embraces this culture of continuous improve-
ment instead of a “hero culture” that requires individual
members to make acrobatic saves to keep your project on
track? Have you identified which skills exist inside the orga-
nization, and which ones will have to be brought in as new
hires or from third parties? Have you found cloud evange-
lists in your organization, willing to embrace cloud and learn
the new skills required? Have you rewarded, acknowledged
or otherwise developed incentives to drive the new behav-