DevOps Maturity Assessment
What is DevOps?
- Left-to-right flow of work: Work flows from Development to IT Operations to the customer.
- Maximize flow: Focus on maximizing the flow of work by adopting certain practices.
- Small batch sizes: Break work into smaller batches to enhance efficiency.
- Work intervals: Implement regular intervals of work to maintain a steady flow.
- No defects passed downstream: Ensure that defects are not transferred to downstream work centers.
- Optimize for global goals: Prioritize global goals over local goals, such as completion rates, find/fix ratios, and availability measures.
- Continuous build, integration, and deployment: Implement practices for continuous building, integrating, and deploying software.
- On-demand environment creation: Create environments as needed instead of relying on predefined setups.
- Limit work in process: Restrict the amount of work in progress to avoid bottlenecks and optimize efficiency.
- Building safe systems and organizations: Establish systems and organisations that are adaptable and resilient to change.
- Constant flow of fast feedback: Emphasise the continuous flow of feedback from right-to-left throughout the value stream.
- Prevent problems and enable faster detection and recovery: Utilise feedback to prevent problems from recurring and enable quick detection and recovery.
- Quality at the source: Foster a culture of quality by embedding knowledge and creating or enhancing it where necessary.
- "Stopping the production line": Pause production when builds and tests fail in the deployment pipeline to address issues promptly.
- Improvement of daily work over daily work: Prioritise and invest in improving the daily work processes rather than solely focusing on completing tasks.
- Fast automated test suites: Develop and implement automated test suites to ensure that code is always in a deployable state.
- Shared goals and shared pain: Foster collaboration and shared responsibility between Development and IT Operations by establishing shared goals and addressing challenges together.
- Pervasive production telemetry: Implement comprehensive monitoring systems to provide visibility into code and environment performance, ensuring alignment with customer goals.
- The Third Way is about creating a culture that nurtures two things: continual experimentation, which requires taking risks and learning from success and failure, and understanding that repetition and practice are the prerequisites to mastery.
- Experimentation and risk-taking allow us to relentlessly improve our system of work, often requiring us to do things differently from decades-old practices.
- When things go wrong, our consistent repetition and daily practice enable us to retreat to a place of safety and resume normal operations.
- The necessary practices include fostering a culture of innovation and risk-taking (as opposed to fear or mindless order-taking) and building high levels of trust (as opposed to low trust and command-and-control structures).
- Allocating at least twenty per cent of Development and IT Operations cycles towards nonfun
ctional requirements, and constantly reinforcing that improvements are encouraged and celebrated, are also crucial.
What is DevOps?
- Left-to-right flow of work: Work flows from Development to IT Operations to the customer.
- Maximize flow: Focus on maximizing the flow of work by adopting certain practices.
- Small batch sizes: Break work into smaller batches to enhance efficiency.
- Work intervals: Implement regular intervals of work to maintain a steady flow.
- No defects passed downstream: Ensure that defects are not transferred to downstream work centers.
- Optimize for global goals: Prioritize global goals over local goals, such as completion rates, find/fix ratios, and availability measures.
- Continuous build, integration, and deployment: Implement practices for continuous building, integrating, and deploying software.
- On-demand environment creation: Create environments as needed instead of relying on predefined setups.
- Limit work in process: Restrict the amount of work in progress to avoid bottlenecks and optimize efficiency.
- Building safe systems and organizations: Establish systems and organisations that are adaptable and resilient to change.
- Constant flow of fast feedback: Emphasise the continuous flow of feedback from right-to-left throughout the value stream.
- Prevent problems and enable faster detection and recovery: Utilise feedback to prevent problems from recurring and enable quick detection and recovery.
- Quality at the source: Foster a culture of quality by embedding knowledge and creating or enhancing it where necessary.
- "Stopping the production line": Pause production when builds and tests fail in the deployment pipeline to address issues promptly.
- Improvement of daily work over daily work: Prioritise and invest in improving the daily work processes rather than solely focusing on completing tasks.
- Fast automated test suites: Develop and implement automated test suites to ensure that code is always in a deployable state.
- Shared goals and shared pain: Foster collaboration and shared responsibility between Development and IT Operations by establishing shared goals and addressing challenges together.
- Pervasive production telemetry: Implement comprehensive monitoring systems to provide visibility into code and environment performance, ensuring alignment with customer goals.
- The Third Way is about creating a culture that nurtures two things: continual experimentation, which requires taking risks and learning from success and failure, and understanding that repetition and practice are the prerequisites to mastery.
- Experimentation and risk-taking allow us to relentlessly improve our system of work, often requiring us to do things differently from decades-old practices.
- When things go wrong, our consistent repetition and daily practice enable us to retreat to a place of safety and resume normal operations.
- The necessary practices include fostering a culture of innovation and risk-taking (as opposed to fear or mindless order-taking) and building high levels of trust (as opposed to low trust and command-and-control structures).
- Allocating at least twenty per cent of Development and IT Operations cycles towards nonfun
ctional requirements, and constantly reinforcing that improvements are encouraged and celebrated, are also crucial.
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Beginner
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Organisations at this level may require guidance and support to establish foundational DevOps practices and implement effective release management processes. They may focus on basic automation, collaboration, and gradual improvement. |
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Intermediate |
Organisations at this level have already implemented some DevOps practices and release management processes. They can further enhance their approach by adopting more advanced automation, improving collaboration and communication, and implementing more robust release orchestration. |
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Advanced |
Organisations at this level have a high level of maturity in DevOps practices and release management. They may leverage advanced automation, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, comprehensive monitoring, and strong collaboration between development and operations teams. |
The primary goals identified in the survey will shape the specific focus areas within the DevOps and release management approach. For example:
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Faster and more frequent deployments |
This goal may drive the adoption of agile development methodologies, automated testing, and deployment pipelines to enable rapid and frequent releases. |
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Improved collaboration |
Organisations with this goal may emphasize cross-fun |
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Enhanced stability and reliability |
This goal may involve implementing robust testing strategies, release validation processes, and rollback mechanisms to ensure stable and reliable releases. |
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Efficient change management |
Organisations with this goal may focus on version control, change tracking, and documentation to manage and govern changes effectively. |
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Improved visibility and traceability |
This goal may drive the implementation of release management tools and dashboards to provide visibility into the release pipeline and track changes throughout the process. |
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Minimised risks and impact |
Organisations pursuing this methodology may emphasise risk assessment, change impact analysis, and comprehensive testing to minimise the impact of deployments on business and technical operations. |
The desired release frequency will influence the adoption of automation, release orchestration, and testing strategies. Organisations aiming for frequent releases may require more advanced CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and configuration management practices to support rapid and reliable deployments.
The size of the development team can impact the level of coordination and collaboration required. Smaller teams may have more streamlined communication, while larger teams may need more formalised processes, release roles, and specialised responsibilities.
The separation or combination of development and operations teams can influence how responsibilities are divided and the level of collaboration required. Separate teams may necessitate more structured handoffs, communication channels, and dedicated resources for release management.
Size, budgetary constraints and complexity of the project will influence the level of automation, testing, and scalability required in the DevOps and release management approach. Larger and more complex projects may need more sophisticated release orchestration, extensive testing strategies, and advanced monitoring capabilities.
The chosen deployment method will determine the level of automation, tooling, and infrastructure required. Manual deployments may involve more manual effort and coordination, while fully automated deployments require robust CI/CD pipelines and configuration management practices.
The importance placed on having a reliable rollback mechanism will drive the adoption of practices such as version control, feature toggles, and automated rollback procedures. Critical importance may necessitate more rigorous testing and validation before deploying changes.
The usage of version control will impact the organisation's ability to manage changes effectively. Organisations already using version control can build upon that foundation, whereas those without version control may need to implement it as a fundamental practice for source code and configuration management.
The chosen success measurement metrics will guide the organization's focus on monitoring and reporting.