The concept of devops turns 10 in 2018. Despite that milestone of maturity, most organizations have yet to fully embrace this IT practice, which blends development, operations and testing personnel together into cross-functional teams aimed at improving the agility of IT service delivery.
According to Forrester Research, only 13 percent of organizations have implemented devops, with 50 percent piloting or conducting proof of concepts. Another 27 percent plan to implement devops within the year, while 9 percent are interested but have no plans to adopt devops within the next 12 months.
There are many reasons why devops uptake has been slow. Rob C. Guckenberger, executive director for application development in Kentucky’s Commonwealth Office of Technology, is one IT leader coming up against those challenges as the state grapples with how it wants to move forward with devops adoption.
Guckenberger explains that ownership of application development is dispersed through numerous agencies, while the Commonwealth Office of Technology owns the infrastructure. That has created silos that must to be broken down for devops to work. The state also relies on a broad array of systems, creating barriers to making automation and continuous processes work across the enterprise — two key tenets of devops. Moreover, the state does not have the right skills yet to support full-blown devops.
“We’re definitely going to get there,” Guckenberger says. “It’s just a matter of how.”
The obstacles to adopting and expanding devops in enterprise IT departments, like the solutions themselves, touch on people, process and technology. Here’s a closer look at specific roadblocks CIOs are facing in those areas when implementing devops — and how to circumvent them.
Jonathan Feldman, CIO for the city of Asheville, N.C., says his team uses devops principles — such as tighter feedback loops, shorter sprints and usability testing — although he doesn’t identify his department as a devops shop.
Even so, Feldman says getting to even that space has required a change in how people think and operate. It has required a cultural shift — something that can’t be forced overnight.
“Deciding to go to devops tomorrow is Big Bang IT, and it just can’t work. You’re introducing way too much way too fast,” he says. “And if you’re trying to do devops for everything, you’ll have people revolt. It’s the right approach for many things, but not everything.”
Findings from a fall 2017 survey by software company Pensa identified people-related issues as top barriers to devops adoption. Pensa surveyed more than 200 IT decision-makers in September, asking about the biggest challenges they face in adopting devops practices. Some 19.7 percent listed limited budgets as the top barrier, 9.4 percent cited company culture, 7.9 percent said limited IT skills, and 7.4 percent listed lack of executive buy-in.
Forrester analyst Robert Stroud says CIOs must address culture from the outset of their devops efforts. They must get other executives to understand and support the move by selling the idea of devops not as a set of principles but as a critical tool for digital transformation. And they must get staffers to work collaboratively in a somewhat flattened organization where there’s more flexibility for each individual worker to problem-solve.
“It requires some fundamental rethinking. People feel comfortable in the way they’ve been working and not everyone is a change agent. So you’ll need to find them, bring them forward, and have them drive devops forward and articulate the value,” he says, adding that many IT leaders underestimate “the level of cultural and organizational change [that] is needed.
