Puppet and the State of DevOps Report

I want to start this post with the following thought: This week GE fell off the Dow Jones Industrial average. GE had once been the fourth largest company on the planet. It had been a stalwart of the Dow Jones since its very foundation in 1896. Lesson? Innovate or die….

On a happier note, most people know Puppet for orchestration and automation. However, there is a lot more to Puppet, which I will cover in a separate blog. In this post, I want to share why the 2017 State of DevOps Report is an important body of research and why it is a must read for everyone who is implementing and baselining their ‘DevOps strategy’. For anyone reading, I am making the assumptions that you are familiar with DevOps, and that you have, or will, read the 2017 State of DevOps Report. You can read it by clicking here.

What is the State of DevOps Report?

 Puppet have co-authored the State of DevOps Report for the past six years. It is a comprehensive body of research profiling the global state of DevOps. The report is based on primary research surveying 27,000 respondents, covering the tools, models, business practices and processes that enterprises engage in whilst implementing a DevOps methodology. The report surveys the global market, including North America and Europe, and  spans industries and enterprises of all sizes. It is the only report in the DevOps space that has the breadth, depth and tenure, to survey this market and provide actionable recommendations.

Summary of the key findings

·             DevOps applies to all organizations.

·             Transformational leaders are the lifeblood of DevOps. Successful leaders share five common characteristics that significantly shape an organization’s culture and practices, leading to high performance.

·             High-performing teams continue to achieve both faster throughput and better stability. They also automate significantly more of their configuration management, testing, deployments and change approval processes than other teams.

·             Lean product management drives higher organizational performance. These high performing organizations are twice as likely to achieve their own reported goals across both financial and non-financial measures.

The correlation between DevOps and high performing organisations 

These findings may seem obvious, but it’s the correlation between DevOps and high performing organizations that I find particularly interesting. The report found that high IT performance leads to high organizational performance, and that high performers implemented DevOps practices — in fact, they were twice as likely to exceed profitability, market share, and productivity goals than their low performing counterparts. This was evident from their market cap, which showed 50% higher growth over three years.

So, what characterises a high performing IT organization? According to the report, a ‘high-performing’ IT team is one that has adopted DevOps methodologies, specifically, the automation of manual processes. Automation enables businesses to be more agile, and focus on delivering customer value. Organizations who have adopted these agile methodologies are better positioned to meet business goals. Being more agile means that these high performing IT organizations are 96 times more likely to recover from critical system outages sooner, and will be able to release and commit code (services) 46 times faster than their lower performing piers. This is evident in ‘born in the cloud’ high performing IT organizations like Spotify and Facebook, whose very foundation is DevOps. These companies are able to release new features and services to their customers multiple times a day and are able to respond to market needs quickly.

So what do we do?

Most companies do not have have the luxury of being a born in the cloud type company. Therefore, to be more agile they need to adapt their business models so they can begin to act like a born in the cloud type software company. They need to encourage an environment of collaboration, agility, teamwork and underpin this with transformational leadership. Technologies like automation need to be adopted right through the business which will allow teams to collaborate together. 

Moving to this model is not easy — BUT, by starting off in small cycles and focusing on individual project streams, they will slowly see a snowball effect across their entire organization. ITV, a large British broadcaster, are a great example of this. I recently heard Tom Clark, Head of Common Platform at ITV, speak at ‘yet another DevOps’ conference. He spoke about the ITV’s unexpected transformation following the 2008 market crash. When trying to implement DevOps practices, ITV found that the organization was split into three camps;, 20% wanted change, 20% were fighting change, and 60% were neutral. ITV focused on the neutral 60% and encouraged them to a join the transformation, which subsequently encouraged a climate of change, resulting in ITV adopting DevOps practices. This is evident in the innovative platforms ITV Player and ITV Hub. Tom mentions that “DevOps is only the start for ITV – not an end point.” It will be interesting to see how traditional organizations, like ITV, develop and push the boundaries of DevOps. Otherwise, they could face the prospect of an unsure future like General Electric (GE).

Summary

I think the State of DevOps Report is relevant for two reasons; One, if you’re unsure whether to adopt DevOps practices, read the report to understand why you should. Two, if you have already started to adopt DevOps practices, use the report to baseline your journey, as it is the only report that has the coverage, tenure and credibility to help you do so. Puppet have just launched the 2018 survey so will be interesting to see the continued evolution. 

The 2018 survey for DevOps is now open – please participate here:

2018 State of DevOps survey

I hope you found this post interesting, and please remember that all opinions expressed are my own and not representative of any company. Feel free to leave comments and tear me down where appropriate.