Most DevOps adoption discussion today are still starting with tools and talks of automation. What do I use to automate to start my DevOps journey rather than actually understanding and digging, why there is a need for DevOps, even DevOps is being sold as productivity and efficiency gainer. An hour on the bottleneck has won an hour for the overall process. An hour won at a non- bottleneck is a wasted effort.
DevOps is being sold by companies having product or may be service portfolios showcasing quantified facts involving improvements at organizations adopting their products/services, however this quantification fails to capture ‘what’ (extent) and ‘how’ (usage) aspect of adoption. Simple example would be, it is good to run build for every commit to code or to have maximum test coverage as part of continuous integration, however that in no way directly showcase the efficiency improvement or rise in productivity without taking actual development processes into consideration simply because, we need everything required for a solution to work, for solution to work.
DevOps as a business function
Improving efficiency and productivity is directly proportional to holistic view of all business functions and their relation to achieve objectives. Thinking of DevOps not just as IT initiative but business initiative in real sense and treating it like a business function like finance/marketing is a way to go. The suggestion of DevOps practices which includes team structures requires integration from all business functions, no matter what their roles are called, as they work as a single team considering all aspects of objectives to be achieved, rather than individual activities of business functions (we need everything required for a solution to work, for solution to work).
Every organization today is a software organization
Every organization today is a software organization in one way or another, no matter they outsource their operations or have in house operations for software. There is a dependency on software more than ever and has become the critical aspect for every type of organization. Simple example is white good industry, today’s washing machines usage of computer in its entirety is more than 50% to do its job i.e. washing clothes. This is applicable to majority of industries, and applicability of DevOps as business function, rather than just thinking its applicability in terms of only software (just Dev + Ops), its aspects of automation, focusing on just tools and the quantification we get impressed with for adoption.
Not doing so might add to frustration of ‘DevOps not working’.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SANJEEV MALHOTRA
Director – DevOps and Cloud