DevOps Capabilities, Practices, and Challenges: Insights from a Case Study

TL;DR

This paper presents an empirical case study on DevOps implementation in a New Zealand organization, highlighting benefits like increased deployment frequency and improved collaboration, driven by technological enablers and organizational changes.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the practical challenges and success factors of DevOps adoption through detailed empirical research.

Findings

Deployment frequency increased from 30 to 120 releases per month

Enhanced communication and collaboration between development and operations

Technological enablers like automation pipelines were critical for success

Abstract

DevOps is a set of principles and practices to improve collaboration between development and IT Operations. Against the backdrop of the growing adoption of DevOps in a variety of software development domains, this paper describes empirical research into factors influencing its implementation. It presents findings of an in-depth exploratory case study that explored DevOps implementation in a New Zealand product development organisation. The study involved interviewing six experienced software engineers who continuously monitored and reflected on the gradual implementation of DevOps principles and practices. For this case study the use of DevOps practices led to significant benefits, including increase in deployment frequency from about 30 releases a month to an average of 120 releases per month, as well as improved natural communication and collaboration between IT development and operations personnel. We found that the support of a number of technological enablers, such as implementing an automation pipeline and cross functional organisational structures, were critical to delivering the expected benefits of DevOps.