Enterprises may be successful adopting DevOps initiatives but adopting DevOps at scale could become a challenge for some organizations.
In this Q&A session, Akash Tayal, principal and U.S. cloud strategy and operating model leader at Deloitte Consulting, and Bob Vuong, principal at Deloitte Consulting, discuss the benefits and challenges of adopting DevOps at scale.
Akash and Bob are two of the keynote speakers presenting at this year’s DevOps Experience. During their keynote session “Scaling DevOps Across the Enterprise,” Akash and Bob will take a deep dive into the typical DevOps journey and the ingredients for success.
What is the first step toward implementing DevOps at scale?
In order to scale DevOps across an enterprise, we need to shift our mindset as the key driver. It begins with people creating value-driven capabilities. In our experience, this is based on four key areas: PACE (Process, Architecture, Culture and Engineering). An organization needs to shift to adopting flexible Process (ways of working) with tight guardrails, modular and loosely coupled application Architecture, Culture shift through cross-functional Product teams with aligned incentives and Engineering driving everything as code.
What are some of the key benefits of scaling DevOps?
In addition to frequent code deployments and lower time from concept to actual release, DevOps also puts more responsibility on developers, leading to lower failure rate. Scaled DevOps across the enterprise can shift IT from a cost center to a value driver for the organization
What is the main challenge organizations encounter when scaling DevOps?
The two primary challenges we see organizations encountering with scaling DevOps are: One, multiple tool choices available with each line of business preferring their own tools, causing fragmentation and proliferation which makes stitching the DevOps pipeline problem even harder. We see organizations adopting at scale focused on standardization of tools as one of the key drivers. Second challenge is a complicated software delivery lifecycle that further expands the problem due to security, compliance and multiple other processes required to release code to production. We see successful organizations managing CI/CD pipelines as a product in itself and engineering the pipelines to help developers focus the majority of their time on building business value code.
What are the main takeaways from your DevOps Experience keynote session?
Adopting DevOps is not just a technology transformation. It requires a process and culture shift as well. Whether you are starting your DevOps journey or have already been on the journey but facing challenges, this session should help you understand how organizations adopting DevOps have transformed their software delivery approach and delivered Better-Value-Sooner-Safer-Happier (BVSSH) to achieve their business goal.
Akash, what advice would you give to organizations looking to implement DevOps at scale?
Several organizations get bogged down in tools debate when focused on DevOps and building CI/CD pipelines. I suggest you focus on the business outcomes and create a single view across the pipeline to monitor the bottlenecks and address them. Driving aligned incentives across the delivery and release value chain is essential to ensure frequent releases of high-quality code versus stitching together fragmented tools across each line of business to make the pipeline work. A single view of the entire process and pipeline helps identify these bottlenecks and solve for them.
Bob, what’s your advice for organizations looking to implement DevOps at scale?
Tools are generally an easy place to start. The implementation of tools and developing a pipeline can be seen as a fundamental part of how teams will engage. Also they are measurable and show progress. You can see what tools are being implemented, and you can gauge how far along they are. However, too often the focus moves away from the people and process changes that need to occur. I would focus on the people dynamic and how to integrate and improve on the years of siloed IT divisions, expecting to work together toward common goals and objectives.
For more insights and tips on how to implement DevOps at scale, attend Akash and Bob’s keynote session at DevOps Experience 2020 on Oct. 22. To check out the full agenda or to register for free, visit the DevOps Experience website.