Are you having problems convincing your stakeholders to adopt DevOps practices or perhaps you’re confused about what the benefits of DevOps actually are? Don’t worry you’re not the only one!

What is DevOps?

Before we get started it’s probably best we explain what DevOps is and what it means I highly recommend that you read “The Phoenix Project” by Gene Kim. It tells the story of a fictional failing organisation that adopts DevOps and will have some resounding themes with many people.

Much of the focus is placed on explaining what DevOps is, and how maturity can be improved but often the true benefits to a company are overlooked.

This is a shame because when implemented correctly, DevOps can directly impact your sales, revenue and profitability, improve product and service offerings and also improve customer satisfaction. These areas all have one direct correlation, they make your business successful.

In this blog post I’ll cover what, in my view, are the top three business benefits of adopting DevOps.

1. Delivering products to your customers.

It sounds simple, but products and services don’t deliver any value until customers are using them. If it isn’t being used, then it isn’t making any money and it certainly isn’t providing value to your customers. A DevOps company can get new or updated products in the hands of their customers at a rate that is unparalleled.

There are many ways in which they do this; they tend to use automation rather than manual processes, they will have a holistic view of their business and services, and their teams will work together towards a clearly understood and common goal. All of this is DevOps.

Studies such as The 2017 State of DevOps Report have found that DevOps companies deploy solutions 30 times faster than that of their non-DevOps peers. Put another way, if you’re not embracing DevOps against someone who is, they can, on average do what you do but 30 times faster than you.

2. Reacting to customer need or demand.

The best product features are the ones the customers need. So, your focus should be on features they want to have. How long does it take your organisation to put a single, new line of code into production? For many companies the answer will be months. For a DevOps company, the answer can vary from a couple of weeks to as short as an hour, but it will be much faster than a company who does not apply DevOps principles.

A mature DevOps company has a 200x faster lead time over their non-practicing peers. That difference is significant competitive advantage. If your competitor takes months to deliver something a customer wants and you deliver this in an hour you’re in a very strong position to react to customer demand.

3. Reducing unplanned work.

Unplanned work is a reality faced by many organisations. By having to deal with this companies often have to assign their key resources from other areas of work and priorities to address issues and restore services.

This will almost always have an impact on team productivity. With proactive and well-established processes companies can reduce the amount of unplanned work that needs to be completed. This allows them to provide clear definitions of priorities allowing their development and operation teams to focus on adding value.

How can we implement DevOps to our work environment?

DevOps requires a strong cultural and organisational change for a successful implementation. A shift towards collaboration, communication, and integration between development and operations. This cultural change can be difficult to achieve in some organisations.

Within DevOps there are techniques and tools that can be used to address your key issues. By identifying key areas of pain or value you can implement key changes such as automation tools, continuous deployment, and monitoring as part of an incremental program of change.

So why DevOps?

A DevOps company makes changes faster, more frequently and with greater quality. All of this means that your business is more agile, innovative and better able to meet the needs of your customers.

DevOps with IJYI

At IJYI we’re committed to DevOps as an approach to successfully deliver the true value of technology to our customers. Using our DevOps Build For Speed methodology our team helps organisations to understand and implement DevOps for successful project delivery.

Find out more about IJYI DevOps services here.