“Data-driven decision making” has proven to be more than just a trend. Many organizations are realizing they must get on board to maintain an edge in an increasingly competitive landscape.
This marks a shift from the traditional model of setting strategy, which was often based on the intuitive hunches and gut feelings of CEOs. Conversely, data-based strategies can more precisely and measurably increase a company’s productivity, and open up new opportunities to innovate.
IT departments are given an essential role in this new model. In the pressure to become competitively nimble, they are being forced to change the way they operate. More and more, they are turning to agile methods such as DevOps.
Embracing DevOps, though, is a massive commitment for companies. It is both expensive and time-consuming, necessitating enterprise-wide cultural changes and requiring deep technical expertise to implement.
So why are companies keen to adopt DevOps? To be viable, DevOps must demonstratively support the company’s data needs and increasing capacity demands—and ultimately contribute to its bottom line.
Has DevOps been performing to this standard? Trends seen in recent data seem promising.
According to the State of DevOps 2016 report, high-performing IT organizations deploy 200 times more frequently than low performers, with 2,555 faster lead times. This gives companies an extraordinary advantage in shepherding innovations from idea to the consumer market faster than their competitors.
We see this in large organizations that have embraced DevOps, such as Target, Nordstrom, and Capital One. “Winners in banking are going to be the ones that recognize that technology is really going to play a central role in how consumers want to bank in the future,” says Rob Alexander, Capital One’s CIO.
“We’ve got to be great at building software.” As a result of its adoption of agile, the bank has “consistently been among the first [banks] to implement new financial products, including a mobile banking and wallet applications, through digital channels.”
In addition to deploying at speed, DevOps approaches also deliver a greater quality product to the end user that requires much less unplanned maintenance. The report found that the lean product-manufacturing approach that breaks down products and features into small batches; makes the flow of work visible throughout the process; and uses customer feedback to consistently iterate and improve product leads to higher IT performance and less pain at deployment.
On the importance of being customer-centric Alexander says: “Banking needs to be real-time, banking needs to be digital, and banking needs to be enabled by data and intelligence in terms of understanding the customer and anticipating their needs.”
Continuous delivery and higher IT performance are a boon to an organization’s productivity. DevOps teams have 24 times faster recovery times and three times lower change failure rates, and spend 50 percent less time remediating security issues. Additionally, they spend 22 percent less time on unplanned work and rework.
At the core of the data-driven business model, though, is more than just a commitment to process efficiency. It is also empathetic, and strives to improve human experiences both internal and external to the organization. Along with customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction goes up—employees at high-performing organizations are 2.2 times more likely to recommend their organization as a great place to work. This is because the DevOps ethos places a fundamental value on creativity, trust, risk-taking, and a sense of shared accountability.
Courtney Kissler, Vice President of E-Commerce and Store Technologies at Nordstrom shares her initial experience when putting together a DevOps team: “Everyone wanted off of the team—they were planning their exit strategy…and at the time I had a hard time attracting people to that team.” Now, “it’s [still] the same team. People want to be on that team…and it’s actually one of the teams that is kind of trailblazing in the space.”
Along with its culture of employee empowerment and engagement, adopting DevOps can bring a host of advantages to organizations looking to maximize their efforts in an increasingly disruptive and data-driven environment.
