What is DevOps, and how do we know if it’s right for us?

DevOps is an acronym used to label an organization’s combined IT teams of Software Development and Operations. The traditional software development lifecycle incorporates these and other IT teams involved in the practice of coding, testing, deploying, and operational support. While this model has a history of success, it exposes an information gap between the development and operations teams. Effectively slowing down the entire software development/delivery process when deployed “bugs” surface late in the cycle becomes a significant issue for the teams, ultimately affecting delivery. To help mitigate problems, DevOps was formed with the shared philosophy to collaborate and continually improve delivery and processes. 

The concept of DevOps has been around for 10+ years and today continues to experience an exponential adoption rate among organizations with mission-critical products. At its core, DevOps is a set of best practices that encourages collaboration, transparency, automation, standardization, “x” as a code, security, and version control.

The general reliability and continued feature enhancements to our software platforms and services have dramatically improved during the past few years. To understand how effective DevOps has been, think back a few years to the struggles tech giants endured delivering reliable, or more explicitly, “bug-free” products. There was a time when we feared presenting a new product or service to a live audience. The most famous of which was in 1998, when Bill Gates introduced the latest Windows 98 OS at the massive Comdex convention in Las Vegas; Windows unceremoniously crashed in front of millions of people. More recently, in 2017, during “Apple's Special Event,” the iPhone X Face ID feature failed to recognize the company’s CIO, Tim Cook. The pundits were not kind to Apple and Tim. 

These “crash” events are getting rarer as more organizations successfully implement DevOps. While things go wrong, like Twitter's self-inflicted damage or the FAA and Southwest Airlines’ legacy mainframe issues, the silicon valleys of the world have firmly embraced the best practices within DevOps. When was the last time your Windows OS crashed, your smartphone froze, or your Internet service was down?

Unfortunately, only about half of the organizations that provide software products and services have successfully implemented DevOps. While the typical reasons are time, money, and resources, the larger issue is DevOps needs to be better understood; as a result, it is often implemented incorrectly and suffers from the lack of leadership and/or executive sponsorship.

But how do you know if DevOps is right for your organization? You can start with your Tech Support/Customer Service departments. Tech support generally costs between 15-30% per year of the overall cost of the product. The higher the cost, the greater the likelihood of a poor or non-existent DevOps practice. Do the math on your average industry costs for these services. Take the time to personally review the support tickets. Interview your front-line support people; they will likely have an unvarnished opinion on the product’s quality, reliability, and customer feedback.

Implementing DevOps is challenging; it requires an organizational change and the willingness to collaborate and to experiment with new technologies and processes. DevOps requires new skills and knowledge that may not be accessible to all team members, which can lead to a skills gap within the organization.

The results of a successful DevOps practice are clear. Overall costs are ultimately reduced due to improved operational efficiencies. Clearer visibility into the performance of the product provides an opportunity to supply drastically improved services. Products, features, and fixes are released significantly faster and more efficiently. These factors lead to greater customer satisfaction due to improvements in service, quality, and speed across the board. The future of IT operational success relies heavily upon implementing newer technologies and the willingness to adopt a shifting mindset to best serve customers.