Organizational Culture - Key to long-term DevOps growth

DevOps exists for human outcomes. Specifically, happier customers, end-users, product teams, business stakeholders, and organizational leaders. 

The more empathy product teams have for their customers, the more likely they are to uncover innovations for them. Unfortunately, the pandemic has made it more difficult for product teams to maintain a connection with the people they develop for. Product teams who are not afraid to experiment are finding innovative ways to get this vital feedback. Their companies are gaining a competitive advantage as a result. Product teams that have this kind of psychological safety also tend to be happier and proud of what they do. At the same time, leaders of these teams are happier because their teams are uncovering innovations.

Product teams do not work in a vacuum. Instead, they interact with people throughout the organization.  The more everyone in the organization is open to change, the more DevOps can grow. Everyone, includes all levels of management, from the CEO to line managers. Everyone includes all internal business stakeholders such as compliance, security, legal, marketing, finance, people management, etc. 

For example, continuously optimizing value streams and sharing knowledge are core tenets of DevOps. When internal stakeholders refuse to experiment with product teams, value stream optimization is limited. When legacy policies encourage competition (between team members, teams, areas, stakeholders, and leaders), knowledge sharing is limited.

As major global organizations are adopting or scaling their DevOps capability, 75% of these initiatives will fail to meet their objectives through 2022, according to Gartner1. The top reasons are unrelated to technology but to managing the organizational, cultural, and people side of the change. As John Willis shared in 20102, “If you do not have a culture to support your DevOps adoption, all automation attempts will be fruitless.”

Honest participation is critical for any assessment to be of any value. It must be made clear to participants that their participation is anonymous and the picture that emerges is their tool. They use this tool to map out their journey together. When everyone is honest, the picture of their current state is simply more accurate. Having everyone on the same page in terms of what their current state looks like, is the critical first step of a DevOps journey.

In regards to the human aspects of your journey, organizational culture is a focus of Agility Science, see https://www.agilityscience.llc/culture. With Agility Science, you gain access to an organizational culture partner. Combined with consulting, training, processes, and train-the-trainer services, we can evolve your entire organization into a responsibility-based “Teal” organization.

References

1. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/the-secret-to-devops-success/

2. https://blog.chef.io/what-devops-means-to-me/