For many organizations, DevOps is the ideal way out of silo-thinking and sluggish work methods. But getting DevOps to function in practice is far from simple, especially in heavily regulated sectors. Success means working with technology, processes and culture together.
DevOps has long been an unavoidable buzzword that the majority of businesses strive to make a key element in their digital culture: An agile culture of cooperation, with tempting offers of lightning-fast and up-to-the-minute development using tools such as Cloud, containers and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD).
In practice, however, many find that their ambitious DevOps plans rarely survive the meeting with reality. The technology is complex, old habits die hard, and decisions run aground because no-one has the full overview.
– DevOps is not “just” a question about investing in Cloud technologies and containers, because only having the right tools will rarely take you very far. When companies embrace DevOps as part of their digital transformation, they also need a cultural change if they are to achieve the full benefits. Unfortunately, many organizations overlook or underestimate this aspect, says Mathias Blichert Christensen, Associate Vice President Container and DevOps services at NNIT.
Among other things, the challenge is that the traditional, linear project methods that dominate in many organizations are not always so easy to let go of:
Establish the right framework for DevOps
What is the solution if your organization is facing precisely this challenge? Basically, it’s a question of combining culture, processes and technology.
On the technology front, it’s primarily about choosing tools like Kubernetes that enable developers to work quickly and efficiently. Next, complex systems have to be configured so that there is the least possible friction for the actual coding work.
- The DevOps engineer has to design efficient processes, and then put them into effect so that developers can concentrate 100% on coding. Often using automation. In heavily regulated sectors, it may also be important to incorporate automated tests and checks in processes so that you get the full benefits of DevOps without compromising on compliance, says Mathias Blichert Christensen.
The whole organization must be onboard
Technology makes the code system-independent, so it can relatively easily be moved between platforms and deployed very quickly. However, this requires that developers can understand and use the concepts such as cloud, containers and micro-services. In many companies, this is easier said than done:
– For many, DevOps is far away from the approach some developers usually take in their work. They’re used to working more traditionally, tied to servers, data centers and monolith systems. An agile DevOps mindset is often a paradigm shift, both inside and outside development departments. It takes training, new processes and focused change management, is Mathias Blichert Christensen’s assessment.
And according to the DevOps expert, this is where we hit a nerve:
- Success with DevOps demands a new mindset – for all developers and throughout the rest of the organization. Usually, some employees will take to the DevOps approach very quickly, while others are slower, meaning there’s a risk of ending with an A team and a B team. In this context, it’s about transforming the front-runners into ambassadors who can help get the rest onboard. It has to be a management priority if DevOps is to be anchored in the organization.
Clear away obstacles with Developer Experience
DevOps is not necessarily the method to replace all waterfall projects and other linear work processes. But if you can get it to work, you can go from 3-4 complex and high-risk releases a year to many small, rapid updates of new pieces of code that constantly make your systems better.
In this context, more focus on Developer Experience (DX) can help to create a clear and well-designed structure that forms the ideal framework for the work. NNIT has been working with both DevOps and DX for many years, and today it is the backbone of our way of working.
