Transforming software delivery through DevOps
Summary
A billion-dollar company, confidentially called “ACME Corporation,” engaged us to help them become a high-performing software delivery enterprise through DevOps.
The challenge
As a progressive IT leader over a 400+ person operation, the CIO of ACME Corporation understood the benefits of DevOps practices, such as test automation and continuous integration, which result in:
- Faster software delivery time
- Higher quality software
- Better customer experiences
- Happier employees
- Improved business performance
Unfortunately, the CIO’s previous attempts at implementing DevOps yielded only a small fraction of such outcomes, fell short of preparing management for full-scale adoption, and left the organization questioning the value of DevOps.
Given this situation, the CIO sought an outside partner to help reignite and accelerate the organization’s DevOps transformation journey.
The solution
Our approach focused on building up ACME’s internal DevOps capacity as quickly as possible so they could manage their transformation journey sustainably, self-sufficiently, and effectively.
High-level phases of our engagement with ACME
To accomplish that, we began the engagement by conducting an assessment to better understand the current state of ACME’s DevOps culture and practices. This step featured the use of DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment), an outcome-oriented, science-based DevOps assessment methodology that benchmarks an organization’s software delivery performance against thousands of data points.
DORA Assessment Methodology
Based on our insights from the assessment, we then collaborated with the CIO’s team to ready the organization for the changes that needed to be made. This included activities such as:
- Socializing the assessment results, which identified current levels of software delivery performance against industry benchmarks and high-priority areas for capability improvement (such as version control and test automation)
- Establishing an internal DevOps center of excellence (CoE) model, similar to Disney’s highly successful DevOps CoE, that would be responsible for continually pushing ACME’s DevOps maturity forward through coaching, hands-on support, and community building
- Defining the talent model necessary for running the DevOps COE successfully based on ACME’s needs
- Creating a comprehensive DevOps transformation roadmap that identified key actions required to improve their capability/performance and build out the DevOps COE
- Providing a set of tools that ACME could use (such as a health check model) to manage their transformation in a outcomes-based, continuous improvement fashion
After preparing the organization for change, we then worked hand-in-hand with ACME to successfully jumpstart their DevOps transformation journey. For example, we helped recruit, interview, and onboard high-end talent for the DevOps CoE, including the group’s leader. We delivered a series of coaching and training activities to help the organization start making critical capability improvements. We conducted periodic health checks that pinpointed course corrections for keeping the transformation on track. Lastly, we transitioned the scope of our support over to the DevOps CoE.
Through our support, we helped set ACME down a path to becoming an industry model for delivering software with speed and stability.
The results
- Helped stand up ACME’s DevOps CoE within months and with an initial staff of over ten people
- Guided and inspired ACME to evolve the DevOps COE into a broader digital COE that eventually grew to over 60 people
- ACME became a recognized industry leader in DevOps and digital in general