6 Key Reasons Businesses Fail in DevOps Implementation

Within a few years of its inception, DevOps has become the primary focus of IT companies and has been disrupting the digital world. DevOps facilitates faster and reliable software delivery by combining development and operations. It eliminates human error by automating repeatable actions, including builds, testing, deployments, patching and more. 

DevOps is a great approach and cultural tech movement for its potential to overcome the problem of speed and quality of software.While every IT company is seeking the perfect way to deliver software faster, some DevOps models are failing to meet the expectations. Even the leading businesses are failing when it comes to the right DevOps implementation.

According to Gartner, 90% of the DevOps initiatives will fail to fully meet expectations by 2023. 

Key Reasons behind the Failure of DevOps Fails 

1) Overlooking Organizational Change
Overlooking organizational change is one of the biggest reasons for DevOps failure. When organizations try to adopt and implement a new technology with big impact,it’s important to ensure the employees are prepared for the upcoming change. If you don’t give an ample amount of time for the employees to learn, then it leads to a decrease in success rate. 

The business entrepreneurs should instigate the organizational change by completely understanding and communicating customer value. The companies shouldn’t overlook the cultural transformation that’s required to make the transition across all the teams. Cultural transformation is key to the success of DevOps implementation.

So, when the organizations are planning to implement DevOps and the associated changes, they need to ensure that the employees understand it, along with the need for the change. Moreover, the companies should focus on customer value, as people connect with value more than with the term ‘DevOps’ itself. 

2) Speed as the Primary Goal
It’s obvious that one of the core benefits of DevOps is faster software delivery, but that doesn’t indicate that speed should be the key aim of the organization. Many companies strive to leverage the speed benefit of DevOps while neglecting the quality code improvement along the way. One should ensure that the basic fundamentals are strong, and there are no instances of incomplete or inaccurate code. 

3) Relying on Manual Procedures
Even after knowing the automation benefits of DevOps, many companies are still relying on manual procedures for their business operations as they are afraid to relinquish control to technology. 

According to the report by 2nd Watch, 78% of organizations have separate teams for managing infrastructure/operations and development. 

Moreover, 30% are using manual process for code deployment and management, while it is 38% for managing infrastructure. 

But in order to make the most of the benefits, the organizations must instil a deep level of trust on the tools they have implemented into their process. The preference should be given to automation, as manual processes tend to be time-consuming, more expensive, and prone to errors.

4) Not Focussing on the Right Tool
Tools have a key role to play in the success of DevOps implementation, and organizations should understand this. Getting the right tool can make all the difference, and some examples of tools to use are Git, Docker, Kubernetes, etc. These are cloud-based tools that work great with DevOps, and are essential for processes like collaboration, automation, security, etc.

5) Silos in DevOps:
Breaking down silos in business is the ultimate aim of DevOps. In the silo approach, teams work independent of one another without any collaboration. However, DevOps is all about effective collaboration between the teams. 

Some companies try to use DevOps in smaller portions across different teams. In this case, DevOps, which aims at increased team communication and collaboration, is being separated across different teams who have their own goals. So, continuous delivery and continuous integration become far from simple as these disparate teams are only focused on their own targets. This way, there will be little true collaboration across the teams in the organization.

So, organizations should not simply educate a specific individual or team on DevOps. They should train every member involved in the business process on Agile methodologies and DevOps processes.

5) Micromanagement:
Nowadays, micromanagement has become a festering aspect for DevOps practitioners. It is considered to have a negative impact on the team. It is believed that the developers feel stifled if their coding work is monitored closely on a daily basis. 

So, the organizations should give their developers the freedom to experiment and find what works best for their requirements. Rather than compelling tool standards on the team members, allow them to test their own tools and processes.It is of utmost importance to know that autonomy plays a prominent role in an automated-centred system. 

Conclusion:
If you are planning to embrace DevOps simply because it’s the future, rather than out of an impulse to fundamentally reconstruct and enhance your business processes, success is highly unlikely to happen. Do remember that adopting DevOps takes time and effort, requires strong management and team support, and must be implemented on par with the organization’s goals. Set yourself up to embrace success in your DevOps journey by avoiding the mistakes made by the organizations ahead of you. 
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