Wondering when you should adopt DevOps? Here are 5 signs it should be prioritized.
#1: You have a plethora of technologies and tools that are difficult to organize and manage.
Running a successful enterprise business which delivers products and/or services is impossible without technology. Most enterprises have a wide and varied technology landscape to deliver quality products/services, respond to customers’ needs, and run a successful business.
Managing tool sprawl can be difficult and can quickly consume time and money.
By taking a platform-oriented approach to DevOps automation you can manage your technology and toolchain in a more streamlined and efficient way. While there are non-platform approaches which, in many cases, use open source tools such as Jenkins, many customers are using more comprehensive products/platforms to anchor their solutions.
A platform provides the core pillars of DevOps and continuous delivery such as source control integration, build automation, artifact repository, continuous integration, deployment automation, and release orchestration together in one integrated product. Platforms typically provide ways to integrate with other tools in the toolchain where needed. Without a platform, you must create your own solution by piecing together tools across all of the features.
With a comprehensive platform you can establish an integrated and seamless toolchain which optimizes every role within the planning, development, and delivery lifecycle and improves communications across your team. The result is better orchestration of code moves and go-lives, productivity improvements, and enabling your team as a whole to accomplish more.
In addition to the pillars of DevOps and continuous delivery, a platform provides extra security, governance settings, and end-to-end visibility. Your whole team can view the same information in a central location which makes communication more accurate, efficient, and timely.
Every company is a technology company. If you have a wide variety of technologies that are difficult to organize and oversee, you should adopt a platform-oriented approach to DevOps automation for streamlined and efficient management.
#2: Manual and scripted processes stop you from keeping up with the speed required for successful business.
The modern business environment requires companies to respond quickly to the wants and needs of customers and to the moves of the competition.
It is impossible to move quickly when you are being slowed down by manual and scripted processes for deploying and releasing changes across test and production environments.
Manual tasks are time consuming and error prone. Once you eliminate them, the opportunity for human error decreases.
If manual and scripted processes are weighing you down and preventing you from keeping up with the competitive pace of business, you should eliminate these repetitive tasks by adopting DevOps.
#3: You are unable to answer questions from release managers and senior level executives about release statuses because of a lack of visibility.
Lack of visibility into the pipeline will leave you asking: Where is the error occurring? What caused it? What is deployed in each environment? Can we roll back?
This can be frustrating for you, confusing for your team, and problematic when reporting to executives. Additionally, it can be embarrassing to not be able to answer questions you should know.
With DevOps, the process of testing and deploying is transparent. You can access both real-time and historical data of the software delivery lifecycle.
This allows you to comply with release policies and procedures, and easily respond to audits. Additionally, it enables you to quickly find and resolve issues, resulting in fewer and shorter outages.
If you are unable to answer questions about the status of your organization’s software delivery lifecycle, you should adopt DevOps to gain visibility into your pipeline.
#4: You seem to lose your brightest employees because they aren’t challenged and stimulated at their job.
Without continuous integration, continuous delivery, or release orchestration, your software development and delivery processes are not optimized, requiring your team to complete monotonous, repetitive work.
Talented, bright employees can quickly become bored or frustrated when they cannot do the work they are skilled at and excited by.
Developers become frustrated with the mundane tasks of building and deploying because they don’t have time to be creative and innovative. To be satisfied in their role, they need to do what they love to do: develop!
Operations are quickly exhausted and aggravated when they receive error-ridden code. And understandably so! It can be time-consuming to resolve and makes it even more difficult to maintain environmental stability. After implementing DevOps, operations personnel reported spending 22% less time on unplanned work.
(Explore more benefits for each role in the organization.)
DevOps eliminates these tasks and frees up developers’ time to innovate with build, deploy and test automation. Manual tasks are nearly completely eliminated, except for any approvals you choose to require.
If your organization is losing its brightest and most talented employees, you should adopt DevOps to eliminate mundane manual tasks from their workload and allow them to do the work they love.
How does your organization stack-up in adopting DevOps best practices?Get Reportead our report, State of DevOps: Best Practice Adoption to find out.
#5: You experience frequent and/or prolonged outages.
With manual tasks and a lack of visibility, the possibility of errors is high. Additionally, rectifying errors is difficult if you lack visibility into your software delivery lifecycle.
With DevOps and CI/CD, small batches of code are run frequently and automatically. Because of this, the elimination of human input, and the increased visibility, errors can be quickly found and resolved.
Outages can quickly upset users (internal and external), drive away potential customers, and cost organizations significant time and financial resources. By eliminating outages, you can make the best impression in the marketplace and decrease time spent on damage control.
If your organization experiences frequent, prolonged outages, you should adopt DevOps to decrease errors and make resolutions swift and easy.
BONUS #6: Your competitors are faster to market, while your company has a difficult time responding to changes in the industry.
Although there are a variety of factors influencing the success and competitiveness of your organization, if your competitors are implementing CI/CD and DevOps and you are not, they’ll be winning.
You must prioritize innovation and constantly monitor the industry.
If you have an enormous, monolithic, bundled application to release with manual processes, by the time it is completed and deployed, it may be outdated.
Today’s business world is ever changing and requires companies to be agile. With frequent, incremental deployments your team and your organization can quickly respond to changes and be more competitive.
Achieving a faster time to market improves customer satisfaction and leads to revenue growth, greater market share, and a competitive advantage.
(Discover how you can gain a competitive advantage with DevOps.)
If your company struggles to respond quickly to industry changes and is outpaced by the competition, you should adopt DevOps to achieve a faster time to market.
When should you adopt DevOps?
If you related to one or more of the above signs, your company should adopt DevOps.
Furthermore, by now, you’ve probably come to realize that it isn’t a question of if, but when. After reading this article, you may realize that you should adopt DevOps as soon as possible!
There’s no time to waste. Every day, manual and error-prone tasks slow you down, decrease employee morale, and hurt your business. So, every day, you should strive for more agile processes.
Wherever you are in your journey to DevOps, whether you are practicing waterfall methodology, using some CI/CD, or transitioning to full Agile, we can help! Let us know what your needs are, and we can work together to a solution.
