Mature DevOps Organizations Embrace the Process

I get lots of questions from clients about how they can improve their DevOps "maturity." It's a fair question, but there's a bit of a flaw in the premise behind it, and that flaw is the notion that there's an end state for an evolving DevOps practice. Yes, you can certainly improve a DevOps practice in all three phases: people, processes, and platforms. Yes, there is a certain level of maturity required to embrace all three phases, but please don't fool yourselves into thinking there's an end state.

Forrester's Perspective On DevOps

We've published a lot of DevOps research over the last year or so. From the current state of DevOps to where it is going, we've covered it:

Related:IT Operations vs. DevOps: What's the Difference?

From Adoption To Excellence

Our most recent report, How To Go From DevOps Adoption To DevOps Excellence, is for organizations that are already engaged in DevOps: They are already seeing value, they have aspirational goals to further improve and scale their DevOps practice, and, most importantly, they don't place artificial limits on where they can take their practice. This report describes the habits of highly successful DevOps teams and offers some practical advice as to how organizations might cultivate similar practices.

Top-Tier DevOps Organizations Reject Artificial Limits

So how does one go from adoption to excellence? Big picture: Reject false constraints. Artificial limits such as "We are a bank — we can't use Netflix as an example" or "We are in a regulated industry — we can't do product experimentation" or "We need to build a DevOps practice before we can employ VSM metrics" … all of these things are artificial limitations. The reality is that not every company needs to be like Facebook or Netflix, but learning and adopting high-end practices and technology can be done within any industry engaged in software development.

Related:The Downside of DevOps: Stress and Burnout of Engineers

Want More?

Conversations with clients are at the core of our research. If you want to learn more about DevOps, we'd love to hear from you. If you are a Forrester client, reach out to schedule a guidance session or inquiry.

This article originally appeared on Forrester's Featured Blogs.