The recently released fifth annual “State of DevOps Report” by Puppet has once again brought with it fresh insights into what drives high-performance teams. The report, which comes at a time when DevOps has ceased to be a buzzword, provides proof of why more and more businesses across the world are adopting DevOps to improve their organization’s performance, revenues and profitability. DevOps has truly come of age and this year’s “State of DevOps Report” clears any doubts fence-sitters may have about the effectiveness of the DevOps approach.
The 2016 report reasserts that unparalleled IT and organizational performance is a result of a team effort spanning development and operations. The report also highlights the importance of improving the entire product life cycle—from initial product planning, to quality and security assurance, to customer feedback—to speed up delivery while improving quality, security and business outcomes. You can read the full report here.
In today’s competitive business environment, DevOps has emerged as a vital solution that helps organizations meet ever-growing industry demands. The “2016 State of DevOps Report” helps us understand how the practices associated with DevOps affect IT performance and organizational performance. Let us examine the findings of the report to ascertain how DevOps can benefit your organization.
Why Does Your Organization Need DevOps?
The “2016 State of DevOps Report” makes it plain and simple that companies that incorporate DevOps practices get more done. According to the report, high-performing IT organizations deploy 200 times more frequently than low performers, with 2,555 times faster lead times. They have 24 times faster recovery times and three times lower change failure rates. High-performing IT teams spend 50 percent less time remediating security issues and they spend 22 percent less time on unplanned work and rework, the report states.
Performance
If we boil down the report findings into actual benefits of adopting DevOps, we could say that DevOps enables continuous software delivery with less complex problems to fix and faster resolution of problems. This essentially means that you can deploy faster and more effectively in more stable operating environments and add value rather than just fixing or maintaining.
DevOps can revolutionize the performance levels of organizations and allow them to deploy at a rate never seen before. It has certainly enabled organizations such as Etsy, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and Google deploy hundreds and thousands of code per day while delivering world-class stability, reliability and security. You can find out how different organizations have implemented DevOps to their benefit in this YouTube video.
Security
Higher performance is not the only payoff in the DevOps culture. Organizations that adopt DevOps practices are known to have better information security. The “2016 State of DevOps Report” clearly states that organizations that integrate information security objectives into daily work spend 50 percent less time remediating security issues than low performers. This has a positive impact on IT performance and security outcomes.
Any organization, irrespective of size, can employ DevOps to achieve high performance levels and meet business goals while cutting down on costs related to fixes and remediation security issues.
How DevOps Transforms Teams
Consider this scenario: In an organization that does not apply the DevOps methodology, the development team writes code and develops a product, which is then sent to the testing team that verifies if the code meets the requirements. The operations team steps in to run the product only after this process is complete. The DevOps philosophy was created to break the silos that teams operate in and effect better collaboration and performance.
The culture shift DevOps brings about in organizations is substantial, and since culture is a key factor responsible for a company’s performance, application of the DevOps philosophy provides measurable and non-measurable results. A few of them are:
Employee Engagement
DevOps is neither a method nor a tool, it’s a culture! In organizations that observe the DevOps culture, the development and operations teams work outside silos, releasing products faster, thereby increasing operational efficiency. This is made possible by the operations team giving the developers constant feedback about the code and troubleshooting problems with the user experience in mind. This continuous learning and delivery practice allows cross-functional teams collaborate as one team with one goal, thus facilitating higher performance levels. The improved organizational culture and enhanced employee engagement can help organizations not only in retaining great talent but also in recruitment.
Organizational Success
The “2016 State of DevOps Report” effectively explores the relationship between employee engagement and organizational success and goes on to show that there is a strong correlation between these two factors. The report states that employees in high-performing organizations are more than twice as likely to recommend their organization to a friend as a great place to work.
Organizations can greatly benefit from adopting the DevOps culture. The “2016 State of DevOps Report” shows that high-performing organizations are widening their lead against lower-performing organizations. This can be attributed to the increased productivity and creativity of highly engaged employees that helps them provide better experiences to customers.
Organizations can achieve great business results by reinvesting the human time, creativity and energy saved by reducing rework and downtime through DevOps. Herein lies the ROI of DevOps—the competitive advantage that organizations get by investing in a philosophy that positively affects bottom-line results!
About the Author/ Pallavi Poojary
Pallavi Poojaryis a writer with Edureka, an online learning company with more than 250,000 learners spread across the globe. She writes on hot technologies and skills that are in demand today, including DevOps, Big Data and Project Management, to name a few. She is a believer in transformation of careers through learning
