To maintain the balance and bring IT back to normal, cross-functional departments must adopt a DevOps approach that puts differences aside. This means that operations teams need to go from behind the scenes to the front to help improve the quality of applications, especially those that are being developed, tested and deployed.
Today’s IT department has a paradox: Agile developers want regular software to be deployed quickly, while operations teams prioritize stability.
Different success metrics for Dev and Ops allow each team to have its own separate goals. The lack of communication between the two teams compounded the problem: the development team had difficulty sensing changes to the target environment, while the operations team had no idea what the development team was doing.
Whatever the specific scenario, it illustrates the technological “standoff” that many organizations face today. From an IT perspective, operations are responsible for maintaining their stability in complex system infrastructure, so it’s no surprise that risk aversion is their preferred approach.
However, looking at it another way, development teams are now equipped with cloud-based automation tools that have a way of bypassing the operational hurdle altogether.
Facing the problem
Generally speaking, restricting the implementation of processes and disciplines helps operational performance—that is, better business outcomes, and “stability over volume” is a rational trade-off.
But don’t be misled by this rigid process, in a global survey commissioned by CA Technologies, “Piecing the DevOps Puzzle” (this global online survey was sponsored by CA Technologies in July 2015 and conducted by industry analyst firm Freeform Dynamics). , for 1,442 senior IT managers and business executives, and conducted in-depth phone interviews with executives in major industries.), speed and quality are not mutually exclusive.
According to the survey, the majority of organizations (69%) in the Asia Pacific and Japan today have implemented DevOps, up from 20% previously. And 15% of DevOps implementers have reached the “Master” level.
“DevOps masters” are more likely to say that their digital initiatives contribute to competitiveness, customer retention, turnover and profits. Globally, organizations that are mature to adopt DevOps are twice as likely to increase their revenue and 2.4 times more likely to increase their profits.
In Asia Pacific and Japan, DevOps gurus compared to those not adopting DevOps:
●2.2 times more likely to improve customer retention than those who did not adopt DevOps;
●2 times more likely to win more customers than those who did not adopt DevOps;
●3 times as likely to increase market share as those who did not adopt DevOps;
2.3 times more likely to increase customer profit margins than those who did not adopt DevOps;
● 2.2 times more likely to gain new revenue streams than those who did not adopt DevOps.
Understanding DevOps Striking a Balance
The ideal state of IT operations is to be able to continuously drive business innovation through the rapid introduction of high-quality software. Maintaining balance means removing any obstacles that might disrupt that state.
Rigorous and standardized operations can achieve these goals, but it doesn’t stop there. In the project development phase, the need for faster speed and more support (together with most of the capital investment) usually optimizes the application for faster delivery, but this is premised on sacrificing other factors. This will lead to more systems that are difficult to maintain and support, increasing the pressure on operation and maintenance costs. Of course, it only gets worse when developers are driven to be more productive without taking responsibility for the overall imbalance.
To maintain the balance and get the IT department back on track, cross-functional departments must adopt a DevOps approach that puts differences aside. This means that operations teams need to go from behind the scenes to the front to help improve the quality of applications, especially those that are being developed, tested and deployed.
For development teams, they need to put their self-awareness aside and learn to accept it. Because resiliency, maintainability, scalability, and security are not always the most important, they need help integrating these elements. At the same time, it also shows that everyone needs to think about the problem from the perspective of the customer, in order to create an application that is easier to support the customer.
While DevOps is seen as a key factor in driving enterprise agility and keeping up with customer needs, in the Asia Pacific and Japan, just over half (52%) of respondents have implemented DevOps and have a well-developed DevOps strategy and goals.
In addition, 44% of DevOps adopters in the region are still busy working on security and compliance measures, and most DevOps activities are still not well supported from a platform enablement and risk management perspective.
In addition to this, while 87% of respondents believe that training business stakeholders are important, 85% are aware of ensuring adequate business-first knowledge within IT, and only 31% of DevOps adopters complete these steps.
Failure to successfully promote teamwork is a significant obstacle
Respondents in the Asia Pacific and Japan believe that breaking down the cultural barriers between development and operations teams is a challenging task, with only 26% of respondents achieving IT cultural harmony.
Of course, the success of DevOps is not only achieved by high-five cooperation. We still need leadership at the top because they can profoundly change culturally.
Businesses are in great need of high-level executives who can unite everyone around a common goal, whether it’s for operations engineers or analysts who are passionate about business problems so that they can work together to solve problems. This move will ensure that a “production-first” culture is closely linked to “continuous improvement”, thereby keeping DevOps stable.
