Today, digital transformation is more important than ever for businesses looking to stay ahead of the competition. In order to achieve digital transformation, a business culture of supporting change and use appropriate methodologies to enact that change are essential. The other key element is knowing clearly what you are changing to. The end solution, the methodology, the vision. Many businesses struggle with this, as they try to fit a square peg into a round hole when it comes to their approach. For initiatives to be successful, the end-user experience must be a top priority.
What is DevOps?
If you rely on a product for your business, whether it is through in-house development, a SaaS or a legacy system which needs modernising, you may or may not have come across the term DevOps which is the bringing together of Development and Operations to deliver solutions quickly and efficiently.
Whilst software engineers talk a lot about DevOps in the way that they deliver software, it is so much more than that. DevOps, first and foremost, is a culture before it can be used as a delivery methodology, and to be successfully implemented, it must be aligned with your business goals and objectives from the top down.
There are many benefits of DevOps, such as improved communication and collaboration, faster time to market, and increased efficiency. However, as already mentioned, it is important to remember that DevOps is not about a specific team or a specific process – it’s about people and culture.
If you want your digital transformation initiatives to be successful (and DevOps is where you are looking to move to), make sure that you start by building a DevOps culture and methodology that works for your business! In this blog post, we will discuss the benefits of DevOps and the importance of developing a methodology that works for you.
What is a DevOps Culture?
A DevOps culture is one that encourages collaboration and communication between Development and Operations teams. In order to create a DevOps culture, businesses need to focus on several things including:
- automating processes, infrastructure and testing
- allowing their employees the freedom to experiment and innovate
- increasing transparency and feedback loops
- driving efficiency into the delivery
- fostering a sense of shared responsibility – not just throwing problems or code over the wall to another team.
What are the benefits of DevOps?
There are many benefits of using DevOps, such as:
– Improved communication and collaboration between Development and Ops teams
– Faster time to market
– Increased efficiency and more frequent releases
– Reduced costs
– Improved quality of software
We probably can’t emphasise this enough, but DevOps is not about a specific team or a specific process, it’s about people and culture.
It starts at the top – if you let employees be experimental and innovative, to fail fast and learn from mistakes without a fear of failure, all whilst incorporating automation, efficiency and delivering underlying quality, you are building a DevOps culture!
But it must be focused on delivering outcomes, even if the intended outcome leads to something not working as you expected!
Here’s a key point – we recommend working with end-users and trialling innovative ideas with special interest groups, as you are more likely to have a product which end-users will want to adopt and use. You get your competitive advantage (especially if you are set up to deliver it to market before your competitors) by focusing on the end-user experiences and their needs.
What is the importance of developing a methodology that works with your business?
The importance of developing a methodology that works with your business cannot be understated. A DevOps culture and methodology that is aligned with your business goals and objectives is essential for digital transformation initiatives.
Two distinct features of a strong DevOps culture are autonomous ownership and collaboration. No two businesses are the same, they have different processes, people and cultures, so, cookie-cutter approaches can’t be relied on.
By listening to the end-user, employees or customers, a truly innovative and successful methodology can be created which suits the needs of your business.
How can a DevOps culture be implemented?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The best way to implement a DevOps culture will vary depending on the specific needs of your business. Companies that fail to involve end-users in their design and decision-making processes will struggle with user experience because their priorities are out of sync with those who use the solution on a daily basis.
Looking to implement your own DevOps Culture?
Tratech Consulting is a different type of consultancy, we specialise in IT consultancy for the Retail, Hospitality, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain industries. With deep experience across technology transformation, business analysis, design, implementation, data migration, and support, we are ideally placed to help customers solve the WHOLE problem. Get in touch today!
If you found this blog post helpful, make sure to check out our other blog posts on digital transformation.
