The main challenge with DevOps? Doing it at scale

You may be forgiven for thinking that if the debate around DevOps adoption in enterprises is not completely over, it soon will be. Most large enterprises today that are serious about innovation see the benefits of decentralising application development and leveraging agile and sprint methodologies to rapidly test, built and iterate applications. Many see it as fundamental to survival in today’s fast-moving business world, where consumers demand instant gratification.

Depending on which figures you look at, DevOps has already reached something of a tipping point in enterprises. Polling from Statista taken last year showed that 17% of software developers in businesses around the world say their entire company has fully embraced DevOps. A further 33% say that their company is using DevOps to a greater or lesser extent, and 22% have just started out on their DevOps ‘journey’. This suggests that developers are moving away from the slow, monolithic teams of the past towards something much more agile and effective.  

The true state of DevOps adoption

However, in our experience here at Accenture, these figures only point to part of the story. What we’re seeing is that while the value of DevOps is widely appreciated, it simply isn’t being done at scale. Until it is, organisations won’t unlock its potential to drive breakthrough innovation and growth.

When I look at businesses using DevOps today, what I usually see are small-scale proof of concepts (PoCs). The company will maybe start out with three to five applications that it wants to transform and will set up a DevOps team to work on these innovations. These PoCs are usually very successful because they are small enough to operate in a ringfenced environment; allowing for optimal functionality.

The problem comes when developers try to scale these new functions. When they hit the 20-30 application mark, developers have to deal with other, slower parts of the business. It’s like a sports car suddenly turning off motorway and finding itself on a congested ‘A’ road – all the agility and speed of DevOps comes against the reality of a legacy enterprise.

As a result, some of the benefits experienced in the PoC become much less apparent at the 20-30 application mark – no doubt causing some in the business to label the innovation a failure. Most businesses have between 800-15000 applications, so solving this issue of scale is of paramount importance if firms are to unlock the full value of digital. 

The race is on

In our experience, most large businesses are only at the very start of the DevOps journey. Few have yet undertaken the cultural and operational changes required to optimise the benefits of DevOps. This is good news, because it means that it’s not too late to catch up. Over my next few blog posts I’m going detail what businesses can do to solve the DevOps scale challenge. With all to play for, those that transform their organisations first will take a competitive lead and will be better able to meet the needs of today’s empowered and inpatient customers. 

Tune in to my next post, where I will discuss the need for a new, decentralised and empowering operating model for developers.