Why does DevOps fail?

Or does it really fail? Or is it just too much everyone expects out of it, too quickly, too cheaply? 

Think about travelling from point A to point B. If we want to travel fast, we think about condition of connecting highways first before we start planning about upgrading vehicles, upgrading driving skills etc. That highway here is synonymous of DevOps way of working. Like creating fast highways need some planning, good investment, regular maintenance etc, DevOps does need a vision, planning and, ofcourse, the investments to implement and maintain. And a little patience!

In this article, based on my observations on number of assignments I have been the part of over the years, and feedback from friends and colleagues, I would be touching few points on why many a times DevOps is termed as not working. Elaborating each one of the below, with data points and examples would provide more insights, but it would also make this article huge. So, I would be breaking this into series of articles to expand each of the below observations, with some analogies, in coming weeks –

Organization & culture

• Misunderstanding of DevOps, specially by top leadership, that creates huge expectations mismatch. Few questions to be answered beforehand –

1. Sometimes it is understood as set of tools, technologies and integrations. George Spafford from Gartner says "DevOps has nothing to do with technology; it's about taking end to end responsibility"
2. No clear thought on what are org’s/BU’s goals and expectations by adapting DevOps?
3. How much flexibility leadership has, to change their mindset towards technology adaption? Are we enough agile?
4. Shall one do Top-Down (necessity) or Bottom Up (benefits only from the IT perspective)? Or there should best of both (can be confusing sometimes)?

• Alignment of DevOps within the organization. And alignment of Technology, Operations.
• Alignments of integrators – Automation, Performance Engineering, Security and so on.
• Trying to do new things in the old ways. However, its rather opposite almost all the time.

Technology gaps

• Technical debt – shall we first focus on reducing technical debt or align ourselves with DevOps way of working and reduce Technical Debt later. A million dollar question.
• Lack of Test Automation coverage, early from development cycles
• Fear of Infra as a code, especially for on-prem applications
• Less adaptability of DevSecOps

In a nutshell –

• DevOps is more than ‘Team Collaboration’
• DevOps is more than ‘Toolchain’
• DevOps is more than ‘Software development model’
• DevOps is more than ‘Agility and quality’
• DevOps is more than a ‘Bridge between Development & Operation Team’

Fact of the matter is DevOps focuses on people and culture more than the tools. Tools are not the solution to a cultural problem like -

• “Others will adapt, not me” mindset
• Lack of “if you can’t beat failure, automate it” mindset

So, if we want to summarize - DevOps doesn’t fail. It is always a mismatch in understanding about what is it and what are the expectations out of it.

However, I’d love to hear and discuss your point of view on this.