Some call it BizDevOps (an acronym that combines business, development and operation teams), although others also call it DevOps 2.0, to make it clear that it is an evolution of this paradigm. Beyond the name, the purpose is clear: to increase the levels of collaboration and knowledge between these areas, not only to accelerate the development of software products, but also to increase the precision in meeting user requirements and creating tools that positively impact on business results.

The BizDevOps approach aims to break down any silos that may exist in the organization when creating software: it is no longer about business users «downloading» requirements and «finding» a software that more or less fulfills what they originally requested, but about direct, collaborative and team work to solve problems, reduce development times, lower costs and generate solutions perfectly aligned with the needs and objectives of the organization.

Let’s go step by step

Regarding the responsibilities of each part of the team, the «Biz» sector is in charge of defining the requirements, approving the different releases and ensuring that what is produced is completely aligned with business purposes. It also works to promote the adoption of the software product.

In a more advanced state of maturity, the business area incorporates functions of digital asset creation, through low code and no code tools (which allows programming with little or no coding knowledge) and the extended concept of citizen developer (developers who are not from technological areas).

On the «Dev» side, the main activities consist of planning the development, generating the code, completing the testing process and packaging the solution in a format that the «Biz» sector can test to request corrections if necessary. Finally, the «Ops» division is in charge of making the application available to users, configuring it and monitoring its performance, as well as generating any necessary updates.

Spot the difference

Most importantly, structuring these three segments as a single team eliminates some of the main causes of application development failure: poor communication to developers by business users and a misalignment between the objectives of the organization’s core and IT teams.

Unlike DevOps, agile methodologies that seeks to minimize software creation time without losing quality while continuously improving it thanks to an integration between operations and development teams, BizDevOps goes a step further: it proposes that the entire organization works to ensure that the resulting product is attractive and functional for users, useful for the business and a key piece for the organization’s growth.

A new level of agility

Agility, when it comes to BizDevOps, reaches unprecedented levels: the combination of real-time analytical tools with performance monitoring and observability solutions makes it possible to evaluate KPIs and understand application performance, adoption levels and user behavior without delay, in order to apply corrections as needed. In addition, analysis can be performed at a detailed level to cover even the smallest functionality of the solution.

This ability to detect errors and correct them immediately is not only fundamental to ensure the highest quality of the developed software: it is also key to adopt the «fail fast» paradigm, which is essential to promote innovation within the organization. To favor this situation even more, QA (Quality Assurance) experts are usually incorporated to the team.

To sum up, BizDevOps highlights one of the main principles of sports and translates it to the business world: team play is the key to victory.