DEVOPSdigest

DEVOPSdigest asked experts from across the industry for their opinions on the most significant advantages of DevOps. Part 4 covers processes and productivity.

Start with 25 Advantages of DevOps - Part 1

Start with 25 Advantages of DevOps - Part 2

Start with 25 Advantages of DevOps - Part 3

16. TEAM EMPOWERMENT

A critical component in executing DevOps is trust in everyone that contributes to the continuous delivery chain. A culture of trust means empowerment of every individual, ultimately resulting in more motivated employees producing better, timely output.
Andreas Grabner
Technology Strategist, Dynatrace

17. OPTIMIZING AND STREAMLINING PROCESSES

DevOps brings the confidence teams across the entire enterprise need to move forward quickly. By replacing the loosely coupled and error-prone handoffs used in the traditional waterfall process with a continuous pipeline that leads from development to operations, teams learn from experience that they can move quickly, deploy small changes often, detect issues and opportunities in near real-time and as often as possible and finally, react by rolling forward, not by reverting. DevOps lets the entire enterprise reach the next-best version today and stay one step ahead of the competition.
Dave Karow
Director of Product Marketing, BlazeMeter

Software development and delivery is a key business process, responsible for creating differentiation from the competition. So, the benefit of DevOps goes beyond "simply" getting development and operations working more harmoniously. It's about optimizing one of the organization's most important business processes.
Betty Zakheim
VP Industry Strategy, Tasktop Technologies

18. IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY

If done right, any organization from small to large can improve developer and QA productivity dramatically. DevOps is a culture of working together and working fast. It requires a real rethink of QA automation, availability of staging servers, how tasks divide between Dev QA and ops etc. The impact can be profound and improve the overall business success and ability to compete with rapid turnarounds and improved processes throughout the enterprise.
Kevin Surace
CEO, Appvance

DevOps, in one way, is simply applying a set of cultural practices and principles of lean manufacturing to the software development lifecycle. Just as traditional manufacturing firms such as car production lines have pioneered and applied lean manufacturing techniques to the assembly line to cut out waste, cut down defect rates, and produce higher quality cars quicker, DevOps helps bring in the same discipline and efficiency to the software development lifecycle.
Ashish Kuthiala
Senior Director, Strategy & Marketing, DevOps, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

19. SAVING TIME AND MONEY

By focusing on performance throughout the lifecycle – not just the testing phase – DevOps teams can prevent bugs from getting deeply baked into products, when they become harder to fix. Excessive, costly rework is avoided, while paving the way for highly satisfying and engaging user experiences. This equates to improved profitability and competitive edge.
Dennis Callaghan
Director of Industry Innovation, Catchpoint

Automation and DevOps go hand-in-hand. DevOps professionals tend to be cross-trained across several disciplines, which makes it easier to balance the work flow across the operations team, increasing overall productivity. The combination of automation and productivity can help keep DevOps teams lean and small. Additionally, automation makes it easier to hire for generalists rather than specialists. Once onboard, the organization can cross-train them across the disciplines without having to pay a premium.
Samir Ibradžić
Head of Infrastructure and Systems, Midokura

DevOps delivers much touted agility which is required in a digital business world. However, the side effect that has the biggest impact on business success is decreased reaction time. Fast reaction time means better digital “reflexes” when it comes to meeting new market demands, eliminating barriers to customer conversion, reacting to security threats, and so on. Time is money, and well executed DevOps practices eliminate costly time sinks while also reducing risk. A great example of that is using automated testing and monitoring to assure performance without adding to delivery timeframes.
James Urquhart
SVP, Performance Analytics, SOASTA

20. IMPROVING ROI OF DATA

The bottom-line benefit of DevOps is that it helps a business start making money with its data more quickly. All businesses are now data businesses, and to recognize value from its data, a business must have an automated and agile approach to operate on that data. With DevOps utilities automating Big Data tools, businesses save time and money and quickly recoup valuable opportunity costs. Ultimately, businesses react more rapidly, improving profitability, when Big Data utilities are automated with DevOps.
Brad Kolarov
Managing Partner, Stackspace

Read Brad Kolarov's blog: Big Data and Cloud Problems Are an Employment Problem

Read 25 Advantages of DevOps - Part 5, covering the bottom line.