5 Effective Ways to Convince Your Management To Embrace DevOps.

This article is originally written on 'Computer Weekly'

The scenario is simple, your old school management doesn't know the value of DevOps and is not ready for the change yet. You are very enthusiastic to apply DevOps principles at your company, you know the effectiveness, impact and how important DevOps mindset is. But there is a lot of resistance from the higher level management. How do you convince your management to embrace DevOps at your company?

This is not going to be easy, we all know it.

But, it is possible if you try to do so. So, how can you tackle this situation? Simple baby steps at a time...

Here are five tips,

1. Offer some wider reading on DevOps

Compile a reading list of articles about corporations that have benefited from adopting DevOps, including industry-specific examples, and links to research reports that detail how organisations that have gone down this route have benefited

2. Solve a small, but meaningful problem with DevOps

Find a place where you think your software development is visibly lacking and try to improve it. If you have demonstrable proof employing agile-like methodologies helped fix it, senior management might be more inclined to start experimenting with it on other projects.

In this vein, try not to talk about abstract stuff (“we need to optimize the release cycle”). Instead, create a process with a continuous integration (CI) tool and show them how it works in practice. For instance, if the CI automatically tests the application for errors on every push, and the release to production has shortened from 2 hours to 15 minutes, make that known.

3. Measure the success.

Find a way (beforehand) to measure the effect of your efforts (using KPIs, for example) and perform these measurements. That will guide the organisation’s efforts, and provide concrete evidence to your peers or managers to convince them that DevOps is the way to go.

4. Pinpoint business processes that can be improved with DevOps.

Model how they can be enhanced and calculate an ROI based on this input versus the “legacy” way of doing things. You can start implementing some practices and create success first. Once that’s done it should be easier to convince the manager to go further.

5. Set out a strategy for introducing DevOps to your organisation.

This should feature concrete suggestions to help you create a small but convincing implementation plan that sets out the benefits of adopting this approach to software development and deployment.

Ask your management/manager where they think the software project in question is heading and let them know you are keen on pushing the DevOps agenda, alongside carrying out your day-to-day duties. And, prepare a presentation for the rest of the organisation, and share what you think the business has to gain from embracing DevOps.

Have you ever faced any challenges convincing your management while working on DevOps? Share your stories.