Software development companies aim to shorten the development life cycles of their products for quicker delivery and timely deployment. To achieve this, they adopt a proven set of best practices, called DevOps, that create harmony between software development and IT operations. CTOs of such companies are responsible to establish a robust DevOps culture that establishes a shared understanding between the developers and the IT operators.
With a successful DevOps culture, the company can deliver software applications and technology services faster. In 2020, around 42% of global enterprises are applying DevOps at multiple project levels to establish this work culture. Synchronizing the development with IT operations, however, is not that easy. To run a successful DevOps culture, CTOs must implement some effective strategies.
Key strategies to finding success in DevOps culture
In 2022, DevOps culture will play a key role in helping CTOs provide quick deliverables of their software products and services. Here are the seven proven strategies that can help CTOs create a highly-productive culture in their organization.
#1 End-to-End Accountability
To replace traditional software development practices with DevOps, CTOs must define the roles and responsibilities of developers and operations congruently. Developers should not write code independently and expect operations to deploy it as this may lead to all sorts of production inefficiencies and performance problems. When both groups work as a team, their productivity increases multi-fold. It makes your DevOps culture fully accountable for the application being developed – from its conception beginning to its deployment.
#2 Unilateral Collaborations
A CTO implements multiple ways to combine development and operations. In doing so, the DevOps culture becomes successful only when this combination is built on common objectives. The culture needs to appear as a unilateral team that collaborates actively. Development processes, as well as operations tasks, should gain a balanced encouragement, which is possible by brainstorming problem-solving together. Such an alignment minimizes the surprises that hamper the delivery of the application.
#3 Increased Focus on CI/CD
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) is the core principle of DevOps culture. However, several CTOs fail to place a strong focus on their CI/CD pipelines. To optimize performance as well as the speed and cost of delivery, the culture needs to provide more support to CI/CD processes such as:
- Source Code Control
- Code Versioning
- UAT Code Deployment
- Code Testing
- Code Reuse
- Runtime Analysis
CTOs should also unite these teams by using IoT technologies to boost their CI/CD efficiency in delivering applications with rapid release and minimal downtime.
#4 Customer-centric Actions
A successful culture focuses on building innovations that ensure maximum customer satisfaction. While pivoting such a DevOps strategy, the CTOs should no longer invest their efforts towards the profits of their organization. Instead, they should refocus their brand in building features that cater to their customers, clients, and the end-users. Executing customer-centric actions across multiple metrics helps the DevOps teams to capture errors and service interruptions well in advance. It helps them prioritize the impact of the end-use of their application while building scalable and dynamic products.
#5 Hybrid IT Automation
To generate high cycle rates, CTOs should have an immediate response team that analyses and mitigates customer feedback. By utilizing hybrid IT operations, most processes in the culture can be automated. This makes notable improvements in the CI/CD pipeline. DevOps engineers can expedite the rapid release of new software features. Such hybridization also supports infrastructure provisioning, code testing, systems development, and software deployment at multiple stages. It makes the overall DevOps culture more functional, compliant, and secure.
#6 Team Upskilling
DevOps teams should be involved in every stage of the development lifecycle. CTOs should make sure to improve the cross-functional skills of these teams in planning, building, and deployment processes. Customizing teams based on feedback and improvements can create a well-rounded and balanced DevOps culture. It can enhance the production capabilities of your projects and save costs of restaffing and upsizing your software development company.
#7 Failure Assessment
Lastly, CTOs who embrace and learn from their failures can build a great culture. Changing attitude towards DevOps failures is critical in modern-day agile environments. By accepting failures, CTOs can create a climate for learning. This positively affects the organizational culture and encourages introspection in every developer and IT operator. Such a psychologically safe environment empowers the DevOps culture to adopt radical digital transformations.
Build the Best DevOps Culture
DevOps is a game-changer for CTOs in this software-powered world. It enables them in taking the right decisions towards organizational progress and product delivery. A strategic establishment of DevOps culture becomes successful when CTOs partner with the experts. Kilowott’s DevOps expertise can help you instill the best workforce culture in your software development organization. With the software game always evolving, developing a successful DevOps culture with Kilowott is the most impactful move you are yet to make.
