More companies and projects are proactively building DevOps, due to the methology’s success in reducing the number of errors in code production, accelerating product launch, and improving team efficiency. But managers are often unaware of all the benefits and bonuses DevOps can offer. In this article, we are going to talk about how to use DevOps more efficiently by increasing the maturity level of your team
Managing DevOps: DevOps company maturity model
Imagine that your business is a ship on which you and your team intend to sail to some port in the ocean of DevOps opportunities. When starting such a voyage, it’s a good idea to find out how well the team understands the route and the way to reach the desired destination as quickly and safely as possible, and whether each crew member understands his or her role in the teamwork.
The DevOps team maturity model allows you to know the qualifications of your staff, their readiness for such a journey, and determine what knowledge and skills they need to develop for successful achievement of the goal. This is a roadmap that clearly and consistently describes all stages of effective DevOps implementation. This tool will help you focus on the tools and techniques that are specifically important for your project.
Assessment criteria for DevOps team maturity
Business, unlike math, does not have universal formulas suitable for each individual case. On the contrary: when it comes to developments and new products, you should take into account many unique characteristics of a given project. Nevertheless, there are objective indicators and criteria that can be used to assess the degree of a DevOps team’s professional skill.
Collaboration. One of the most important indicators of team maturity is the degree of cooperation between specialists from engineering and operations departments. DevOps culture assumes effective communication between all specialists, their understanding of common processes and how different methodologies and tools work. It is important that each specialist clearly understands his or her role in the general mechanism of product creation and focuses on achieving the main business goals.
Automation. This allows you to reduce the time your team spends on repetitive routine devops tasks and reduce the amount of errors caused by human factors. This mechanism speeds up continuous delivery and deployment, and allows you to optimize testing and manufacturing.
Recovery rate. Automation significantly improves code quality and speed of its production, but it does not provide a 100% guarantee that there will be no bugs in it. Failures will inevitably occur and the level of team professionalism is evidenced by how they handle emergencies. A high recovery rate leads to a high company reputation and satisfied customers.
Customer centricity. Perhaps one of the main DevOps goals, as well as the goals of any successful project, is to make customers happy by meeting their needs. If you managed to achieve this by implementing DevOps, you can consider that you have reached the top DevOps proficiency. Your product is in demand and constantly improving, your customers are satisfied, and they don’t need to look for similar products or services from competitors. Furthermore, your successful project brings you constant profit.
Processes. The software development life cycle consists of clearly regulated processes. The better they are organized and the more relevant to the company’s business goals, the higher maturity level of the team.
Culture and strategy. DevOps is not just a set of tools. This is a cross-functional set of methods formed into a specific culture. DevOps implementation requires the company to revise the organization of many processes and success depends on how effectively the team can adapt to new practices and methods. The main thing is to realize that all these innovations will allow you to ultimately achieve your business goals faster and more efficiently.
DevOps team maturity levels
So, let’s explore how many stages of team maturity exist and how they differ.
1. Initial
At this stage, the organization is just starting to practice DevOps without a clear strategy and without defining the methods and tools best suited for the project. The development and operations teams have little interaction and are managed separately. Managers follow traditional methods and only try to implement some DevOps elements. Specialists hardly use any automation and do most of the builds manually. Development is relatively slow.
2. Managed
The vendor becomes aware of the benefits of a DevOps culture and has a general understanding of which practices are suitable for the project. There are no major changes in workflow organization yet, but teams start to work together more closely, gradually overcoming resistance to new approaches and learning more productive methods. At this stage, staffers are already more consciously trying to automate some DevOps operations. The main change happens in the team’s attitude towards DevOps practices.
3. Defined
Teams move from experimenting with individual tools and methods to a systematic approach and integrate their work. The main focus lies on implementing clear standards and automating as many processes as possible, continuous integration, and continuous deployment. Product improvement based on customers’ needs and desires becomes the overarching goal. Development cycle time and error rates are reduced.
4. Measured
This stage can be called the maturity stage of the DevOps team. It is characterized by a deep understanding of the essence and benefits of DevOps. Maximum standardization of practices, automation of processes and testing allow to speed up development, minimize the number of routine tasks, and at the same time improve code quality. Teams interact productively, work flexibly and use practices and tools that most effectively solve project tasks. Specialists take into account feedback from end users and strive to improve the experience as much as possible.
5. Optimized
After reaching this level, the team fully embraces DevOps practices and tools, using them with maximum efficiency. Specialists utilize all automation capabilities, allowing them to release new code up to several times a day. Deployment and monitoring processes are optimized and testing small code batches reduces downtime. The team takes into account feedback from end users to improve the product according to their needs. All workflows are focused on achieving the company’s business goals as quickly and efficiently as possible.
DevOps services companies
Moving to DevOps requires a significant amount of time and investment. Not every company has these resources and can afford to train its own DevOps team. But that’s not a reason to give up on moving to modern practices that will help you improve your product and bring it to market sooner.
If you don’t have your own qualified DevOps team or the time to train your employees, you can use a DevOps as a service company, involving experienced professionals in the development of your project. This will allow you to get a fully working DevOps model in the shortest possible time.
A DevOps development company provides DevOps consulting services and ensures the fastest and most efficient integration of modern practices into your project. This allows you to gain time and take your business to a fundamentally new level. At the same time, it will change your team’s view of DevOps culture and help increase its maturity level. In this way, you will not only improve your product and workflow efficiency, but also prepare your own team for the migration to DevOps.
The DevOps maturity model allows you to find out the level of professionalism of your team, evaluate its performance, and develop a customized DevOps implementation plan. As the team moves to each new maturity level, it will increasingly handle work tasks, automate routine processes, and create quality code faster. After reaching the fifth level, the company will fully implement the DevOps culture, having increased product quality and gained a competitive advantage in the market.
