A Practical Guide for Eliminating Waste and Scaling the DevOps Environment

DevOps is regarded as one of the most challenging and intriguing initiatives. DevOps has received a fair amount of success as well as failures. This is not unnatural considering the fact that DevOps aims to integrate two various lines of work in an organizations, which traditionally has functioned differently. What many enterprises tend to forget is that DevOps needs continuous reviewing at a regular interval since it works in a dynamic environment, where the demands and requirements of the clients and customers keep changing frequently.

Roadblocks

Like any application, DevOps too has a number of road blocks in their path. On one hand, there are customers and clients who seek very quick results and on the other hand, there are people who are inherently quite opposed to change. Establishing a medium of communication and collaboration is very essential for the success of DevOps which very few companies realize.

The second road block which slows down the process is failure to get adequate approval from concerned authorities. Thirdly if you are dealing with a system, which handles millions of transactions in a day, deploying the changes and rapid automation may not be a very feasible option. Moreover very large organizations have multiple releases across multiple departments which might be quite difficult to achieve.

Scaling DevOps to the Enterprise:

• Mold Your Task as Per the Need:

Scaling DevOps across the entire organization is not a very easy job, especially when the load on the IT section of the company increases. An easy way to counter this problem is to distribute the workload. If you can manage to facilitate your team with enterprise test management solutions, you can experience an improved level of productivity. DevOps can teach teams and companies to achieve their targets safely and quickly, but that solely depends upon how the company deals with the situation. Some companies believe in team collaboration, while others lay a lot of stress in streamlining the process and mitigating inefficiencies.

• Break the Inertia:

In order to scale DevOps applications beyond the pilot stage, it is important that you break the resistance among your employees and get them to participate in the larger scheme of things. Try bringing different departmentalized people to work together and give them hands off which would make them feel counted and valued. A sense of ownership is a magic wand that can break the inertia to a great degree. Interestingly it has been found that developers and people from the operations side have been more resistant to change, than people who deal with compliance mainly due to fear of losing the job. However, once you are able to manage the vulnerabilities and establish a sense of self-worth among them, the entire process becomes a lot more easily.

• Re-establish not Re-structure:

When a new system or order is implemented in the organization, a general idea, which prevails, is that the entire structure of the company should be overhauled. As a result many companies have suffered major financial setbacks in their futile efforts to reorganize the entire system. Sometimes you always do need to overhaul the entire system; instead implementing a little bit of concrete steps that can improve the workflow becomes a lot a convenient. Try to integrate strategically steps that can leverage the real time collaboration between everyone. It has been observed that loosely bound independent teams with a clear production path are capable of delivering faster and better results than teams who undergo a complete system overhaul.

At the end of the day, what matters the most in an open environment culture like DevOps is the ability of the DevOps manager to bring everyone on the same page. Developing the integral model to reflect the progress of the journey is also very important. Try to have a layered approach to solve problems instead of looking at things from a binary perspective.