How aware are your employees of core DevOps principles and their benefits to your organization? How skilled is your organization in DevOps methods and practices? Different businesses have different structures and needs, but many have the same goal: enterprise-scale continuous delivery. Understanding where your organization stands can clear the path to where you want to be-and maturity assessments can help.
A Bird's-Eye View
In complex enterprises, it's not always easy to get a clear view of workflows between different teams or identify areas of (in)efficiency, and it can be even harder to see how each unit affects the whole enterprise. A 2017 report by Forrester showed that many executives think their organization is closer to continuous delivery than it actually is, and might invest less than they should in their IT innovation. This is a problem because having immature development processes slows down the development and deployment of new business services-which will become even more important as ongoing technological advancements raise the baseline for acceptable service.
CA Technologies has developed the DevOps Maturity Assessment, which asks a series of questions to help you reflect on the CD-readiness of your workforce. The assessment evaluates four different aspects of your organization, each of which is key to achieving DevOps: culture and strategy, automation, structure and processes, and collaboration and sharing.
Measuring Up
The DevOps Maturity Assessment provides an overall score from zero to four, as well as bar graphs displaying comparisons with all other assessment-takers, and a full report with recommendations for progressing further down the maturity journey. These scores are useful for tracking progress and seeing positive change.
An organization with a low level of DevOps maturity might be missing trust or collaboration between units in the organization, a clear focus on the customer, and metrics for tracking progress-areas that can all be improved with cultural change and the right tools.
At the other end of the spectrum, mature companies have a few things in common: everyone is held accountable, collaboration occurs throughout the entire software lifecycle, metrics are in place for assessing customer experiences, and full software release automation is deployed.
Very few companies have reached full maturity; almost everyone can use the advice found at each level of the assessment. But those companies that truly are mature only got there by making DevOps a priority, and they enjoy the benefits of frequent deployments and continuous delivery every day.
The Role of Automation
Mature companies can better deliver products with less downtime, mistakes, and stress, providing the high-quality service that customers have come to expect. So, how do large enterprises with legacy tools reach DevOps maturity and continuous delivery? One of the most important steps is by linking business processes together with automation, which drives accuracy and efficiency. Find your organization's maturity score for automation and each of the other categories by taking the DevOps Maturity Assessment for yourself.
