But the work doesn’t stop there. There are still plenty of things that surround DevOps that continue to mystify and confuse those who would like to explore this option to bring change to their teams or within their organisations. Mainly, people initially thought it’s all about improving technology and tools and the rest simply follows. However, it is more than that; Building a team of experts and specialists who carry out these tasks using the DevOps principles and methods is the first step in introducing DevOps to individual teams and in expanding DevOps across the organisation. This team of specialists works to eliminate inefficiency brought about by the lack of automation and work methods with foundations bereft of any sort of capacity to enable its people to keep up with the pace and demands of today’s digital market. They are the ones responsible in starting DevOps and are the same team to spread the practice throughout the entire organisation. Here are the ways DevOps can be expanded across the organisation:
- Start with Automation
Automating procedures and steps that can be automated is the first step in embracing the DevOps change. The goal of DevOps automation is to remove constraints that preclude individuals and their teams from completing their work and accomplishing their individual, as well as their shared goals and improve the flow of work from across the different teams within an organisation using better communication methods and tools.
- Align Business Goals and Work Strategies
For any organisation to succeed internally and externally, they must create better products and services with better quality and have more value to the customers. This fosters a collaborative environment between teams who share common goals and dependencies, so that feedback and improvement happens continuously and more frequently, and make the people who work to develop these products and services feel a worth of contentment and a sense of value in the work that they do. When people see positive outcomes from the work that they performed, they feel empowered to do more. When they reap the rewards of their project’s success, they become more dedicated to doing even better next time. When people understand the organisation’s business goals and that they are a crucial part in achieving these goals, the work that they need to accomplish becomes clear to them.
Providing them with the tools and technology that they can use to make their jobs much easier and allow them to work more efficiently is the other part of this step, to fully ensure that no resources are wasted, whether it’s time, energy, or money.
- Analyse, Evaluate, and Improve Value Streams
This exercise gives leaders the opportunity to examine the current state of how the work flows as it is done bit by bit. By looking at the entire stream, leaders can identify the areas for improvement like chokepoints and bottlenecks, and create solutions to remove these problems and improve the flow of work from one step to the next, from one team to another.
Part of the solution includes developing a future state value stream mapping, creating a toolchain, and implementing automation, digitisation, as well as making improvements with the methods of communication.
- Sustain the Effort Through Consistent and Continuous Improvement
Taking shortcuts and cutting corners aren’t exactly the ways to bring this type of change. Instead, change starts with focusing on one team at a time and helping the individuals in the team to develop better and more efficient work methods to lighten the load that is shared through team dependencies.
The core of DevOps is changing the work environment through the improvement of tools, creating more efficient work flows, and fostering a place where teams collaborate instead of point fingers at each other, and where teams can learn from each other through best practices and recognising the right things. It aims to promote preparedness and following a pre-determined workflow to reduce waste and increase efficiency, so that nobody has to take the leap and perform a heroic last minute effort to salvage a project and save the day.
DevOps is a way of work life that requires people to look into the current state of their processes and systems, and carefully analyse the how the work flows from one point to another, in its current state. The ultimate goal of DevOps is to change an entire organisation’s work environment and culture, where teams become more comfortable working together and work together more effectively towards achieving shared and common goals, which ultimately create a positive impact to the overall success of the company, for its people and its customers.