DevOps

Digital requires IT to be able to manage technology for profit centers. Most IT organizations are built to manage technology for cost centers through ITIL/ITSM. DevOps is the technology management approach IT operationalizes for digital profit centers. DevOps enables effective technology management that prioritizes velocity and agility.

Score: 100-80

Section Scoring

100 - 80 PTS

A profit and velocity-focused DevOps framework is in place independent of ITIL/ITSM. The DevOps approach facilitates rapid new features’ deployment and reliability. The approach is measured based on shorter, more accurate feedback cycles aligned to speed-to-profit outcomes. The approach flexes to support different types of digital initiatives. Leadership does not view DevOps as a tool implementation alone but instead as a holistic change of people, processes and tooling across key technology management domains.

Digital Execution Ready

100 - 80 PTS

You may have implemented a DevOps tool to achieve automation and velocity in getting to shorter, more accurate feedback cycles. You need to have outside thinking — new talent or partners — to help define or refine the organization’s DevOps framework. The framework can then become how you manage digital capabilities. You started with a one size fits all approach and recognize you need the flexibility to support different digital products.

Digital in Process

80-60 PTS

The owners of DevOps are CI/CD teams relabeled. DevOps is a centralized organization. This is equivalent to saying the ServiceNow team owns ITIL. The DevOps team is pushing for tool implementation rather than defining and driving a framework across IT that delivers speed and reliability.

Digital Gaps

60-0 PTS

Questions & Answers

The question-and-answer section outlines why the questions are important, how they are weighted, and what best practice looks like.

Are ITIL/ITSM approaches to technology management in use in digital?

Why we ask this:

Digital product is best served by a DevOps time to revenue/profit rather than a cost and asset management focus. ITIL/ITSM are effective in managing less variable or services-based initiatives.

How we weighed this question:

Organizations that rely on ITIL/ITSM to manage digital initiatives achieve cost targets and sub-optimize revenue results.

What best looks like:

There is full leadership buy-in and recognition that digital DevOps is a separate capability from ITIL/ITSM management. Significant investment has been made to evolve a digital DevOps framework and then apply the management-relevant approach to an initiative. DevOps is a discipline, not an organization. The goal is an ability to accelerate time to value.

Next Steps:

Check for executive buy-in. Ask what is needed to ensure IT leadership embraces change from traditional and safe cost and asset management practices.
Work with IT leadership to develop quick-hit opportunities to apply DevOps to digital technology and product management.
Fund and support evolution from ITIL/ITSM where necessary.

How does DevOps impact your digital initiatives?

Why we ask this:

If you can't point to digital outcomes that the business, or IT, believes will generate new profits and digital channels, then you are not doing digital transformation. A digital transformation is an investment, not a cost-cutting tool. Digital capable organizations plan for and measure new business-based value-to-investment and build DevOps frameworks to inform how digital technology is managed. They then align culture, practices and tools that can support high velocity and quality delivery and evolve/improve products at a faster pace than traditional development and infrastructure management does.

How we weighed this question:

DevOps is the third part of a triad that includes Agile and Cloud. The framework informs culture, practices and tools designed to increase an organization’s ability to deliver quality product at high velocity so that the business can better serve customers and compete in the market.

What best looks like:

Your DevOps framework seamlessly brings together the workflows and responsibilities of development and operations — aka how you manage technology for digital. There are strong cultural norms around information sharing and communication so that there is alignment on goals and transparency on execution so that you can deliver, release and manage products to scale. Tool implementation is not an outcome.

Next steps:

Embrace the idea of DevOps enablement. If you are in the early stages of creating a digital DevOps framework, we recommend funding enablement teams that support product developers driving digital outcomes. Once you understand the baseline, you can build.
Define and track measures that look at how effectively DevOps is used to achieve digital outcomes. Fund and prioritize improvements.
As more teams adopt DevOps, move to a platform approach that supports consistency and scale.

How quickly can your product/application teams deploy features?

Why we ask this:

There is a compounding impact for a DevOps approach that reduces time to value. For example, one of our customers built a digital DevOps product release process that enabled product deployment cycle time reduction of five months. The business signed up 50,000 subscribers at $100 each during those five months. The product drove $5M more of the top line. Extrapolated across multiple product lines, you can calculate exponential value delivered to reduce product and feature deployment cycle time.

How we weighed this question:

The question evaluates the impact of an ability to build, deploy and launch product increments via a more continuous release process.

What best looks like:

Digitally optimized DevOps can deploy features the same day as development is done. Adoption of the digital DevOps frameworks enables release to happen in a sprint just like a feature increment and as cloud infrastructure and security can as previously defined.

Next steps:

Create a manager math ROI view of the compounding impact on business competitiveness of same-day-as development deployments vs. the as-is cycle.
Use business impact to target highest cycle time/lowest value processes — like weekly Change Advisory Board reviews, and to invest to mature design, architecture, development and automation practices that support a shift left.

Does IT follow a release model that enables developers to focus on feature velocity and innovation while system operators focus on consistency and reliability?

Why we ask this:

Financial institutions that have digital DevOps in place may still need dedicated expertise (Ex. Site Reliability Engineering) focused on operational issues like reliability, failover, and recovery.

These types of engineers are like traditional Quality Assurance but focus on creating software that improves product reliability. Digital effective SREs take a software-based approach to operations.

How we weighed this question:

IT operational effectiveness starts with strong digitally effective DevOps foundations. We see companies adopting dedicated SRE, for example, after DevOps foundations mature.

What best looks like:

IT has operationalized transparency, accountability, and predictability necessary to support self-regulating teams. Governance ensures ability to stand up development environments, enable and build new digital product, adopt new technologies, and support incubation and scaling.

It is now investing in dedicated teams that own developing testing strategies, continuous integration, deployment workflows, cloud automation, etc. This enables the ability to continuously build a healthy software system. Operations as a code and reliability are features of digital product rather than merely enablers. proactively builds and implements services to make digital product delivery better at their jobs and product more reliable.

Next steps:

Evaluate whether there is a consistent and scalable technology management approach all digital teams can use. This concept is much more than traditional DevOps technology asset management and includes ways of working that support digital product development.
Enable teams to deliver at velocity and scale by supporting a self-service and potentially multi-tenant developer platform. This can be an integrated suite or suites of cloud-based and/or custom services that developers can use as foundations for building cool digital stuff.
Build out the people, processes, and systems to enable continuous improvement in IT operational outcomes like reliability, downtime, failover, and problem resolution.

Do you have a different approach to DevOps technology management based on the ultimate focus of the digital initiative? (Data vs. mobile vs. AI, etc.)

Why we ask this:

Mature, digitally optimized DevOps supports tailored approaches. Typically, IT tries to save money with blanket approaches. Digital DevOps tries to maximize new revenue with approaches and platforms that are fit for product.

How we weighed this question:

The ability to manage tailored approaches is weighted high, given that it is an indication that strong fundamentals are in place.

What best looks like:

IT manages technology operations and releases as a product that delivers a self-service platform. They are measured based on digital execution teams’ ability to deploy increasingly reliable products at speed. There is a dedicated SRE team whose mission is optimizing digital product teams’ ability to deliver — that means tailored approaches based on product need (i.e., Data, AI, mobile, application, etc.)

Next steps:

Understand your IT operations as a software roadmap and how tailored capabilities might be approached.
If IT has assumed a one size fits all approach, you will need to encourage a better understanding of specific product strategies so that IT can build to balance cost and an optimized for revenue approach.

Resources

For a deeper understanding of DevOps mastery, read these articles.

Relevant Blog Posts:

To Adopt DevOps You Need a Game Plan

DevOps Roadmap

DevOps Anti-Patterns

DevOps Dos and Don’ts

Busting the DevOps vs. ITIL Myth

Making Sense of the Different Types of DevOps

Workbook Sections