How does DevOps help with digital transformation?
1 | DevOps is designed for quick changes
As companies led by technology innovation deliver AI and analytics applications more quickly, many have accelerated their launch programs by leading with DevOps and agile initiatives.
The global pandemic illustrated the importance of agility in responding to sudden and extreme changes. “Those who had already adopted DevOps were able to turn around much faster with their digital strategy”. DevOps allowed them to survive and, in some cases, flourish.
2 | DevOps fosters a digital mindset
DevOps is critical to establishing mature digital capabilities and product teams that are trained to react to changing customer demands, analysts say. DevOps is not just a technical enablement, but also a fundamental shift towards a more digital mindset, leveraging automation to force tough risk management questions while moving quickly.
3 | DevOps encourages experimentation
DevOps brings an agile mindset, tools, processes, and team culture that help companies increase the pace of software delivery.
Experimenting, failing and solving, thus getting market feedback faster and getting something right up front are key principles of DevOps and digital transformation.
4 | DevOps creates shared responsibility
One crucial element that people overlook when talking about DevOps from a digital transformation perspective is the common vision, operational framework, and performance measurement culture that it creates. Teams are no longer responsible only for their part, but for the impact they create as a whole. No more blame games or accusations equals faster time to market.
5 | DevOps builds trust
DevOps cares about culture in a way that we haven’t previously addressed from the point of view of technology.
With our focus on optimizing the flow of value, we distribute authority to drive empowerment and autonomy. Trust is here a fundamental cultural characteristic that we foster through transparency, visibility and the enablement of data driven conversations.
6 | DevOps values customer feedback
As a result, IT teams can quickly adjust strategy and make adjustments. “This helps answer and shape customer demand, a key question in digital transformation”. Note that “customer” does not always mean the final trade, but any interested party, such as employees and partners.
7 | DevOps makes digital transformation more profitable
Organizations are under pressure to reduce their IT costs, especially the cost of transformation. Companies are embracing serverless technologies within their application portfolios, and DevOps has evolved to develop, build, test, and implement these applications.
8 | DevOps helps teams move faster
Successful products come to market quickly to capture the advantage of being the first to move. Imperfect products that get to market faster often outperform the products that are polished – but delayed – because the company can collect customer feedback and make adjustments more quickly.
Automating code deployment and testing, and real-time monitoring of systems can reduce feedback cycle time from customers to product engineers.
9 | DevOps balances speed and risk
Sure, one of the goals of DevOps is to limit bureaucracy. But it can also reduce risk. “DevOps balances performance and stability and we shift to the left; we test and verify before.”
The bottom line is the ongoing compliance: we check quality, safety and performance, and make sure we are doing the things required by the regulations that govern our business. We automate all of this where we can.
10 | DevOps can boost existing digital transformation
Agile, cloud and cybersecurity maturity gets a boost as organizations begin to adopt DevOps tools and practices.
DevOps accelerates agile development through increased automation, helps teams get work done in the hybrid cloud, and enables the integration of automated security testing every time code is compromised.
“It is a multiplier for many other digital transformation initiatives. Or maybe for all of them.”
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By Rossana Suarez, DevOps Engineer Nubiral