Jeff Vail
Jeff Vail

For an IT organization to commit to DevOps is no small thing—it represents a shift in overall strategy and culture that impacts the way information is shared, managed, organized, and measured. When fully realized, DevOps increases the speed and efficiency of IT service delivery. However, if initial projects don’t achieve their objectives, commitment from the executive team wavers.

To progress on the DevOps journey, an organization must target the right projects: those with a small strike zone and accelerate time-to-market for applications that can increase a company’s competitive advantage.

Here are ten more ways to ensure a successful DevOps implementation.

Don’t let your DevOps program fail

Find out all you need to know to make a successful transition to DevOps, including 14 key principles, seven critical roles to fill, and a maturity framework.

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  • Reduce big shocks. Changes in work roles are necessary, but look hard at the team’s problems to ensure all the changes toward continuous delivery are not too great of a shock.
  • Don’t tie change to individuals. Never create process or confidence around an individual, since that person is not going to be around forever.
  • Build relationships. Trust between partners is required.
  • Balance savings and speed. Many enterprises account for IT as a cost center, but the focus needs to be on speed-to-value, particularly on the client- or customer-facing side.
  • Adjust priorities accordingly. Traditionally, business plays the role of product owner and drives the prioritization of work, which can have disastrous effects on continuous delivery. Development teams should own a part of each release cycle dedicated to the continuous-delivery pipeline.
  • Find your bottlenecks. Value-flow analysis is a great way to capture the code manufacturing process and highlight the delta between work as perceived and work as performed.
  • Control the rollout. An investment must be made to balance the increased agility in development, or else the deployment pipeline will be clogged.
  • Don’t outsource. Using consultants and advisors makes sense to provide expert guidance, but create an internal team for DevOps. The outsourcing model can be a challenge to continuous delivery of applications.
  • Expand the DevOps culture. Get high-level sponsorship and start using the culture to pull the demand to the technology.
  • Last, but not least, don’t stop growing. There is always more work to be done, and more teams to bring on board.

    • Wavestone US’ consultants understand the challenges of evolving to a DevOps operating model and can advise IT leaders on how to successfully implement change. contact us to learn more.

    Jeff Vail
    Chief Executive Officer

    As CEO, Jeff leads Wavestone US’ team of experienced consultants and plays a pivotal role in strategy development and execution for the firm. He is a top advisor and thought leader on Wavestone's range of services, spanning IT strategy, run optimization, and IT service management. With more than 20 years of experience in executive leadership functions, he has a deep understanding of what is takes to solve IT’s biggest problems: aligning with the business, lowering costs, and increasing speed and impact.

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