DevOps Adoption: Eight Emergent Perspectives

TL;DR

This paper explores eight key perspectives influencing DevOps adoption, combining literature review and case study to provide a comprehensive understanding that can assist organizations in smoother transformation.

Contribution

It identifies and compares eight perspectives on DevOps adoption through a multi-method approach, including a systematic literature review and case study.

Findings

Eight perspectives identified: concepts, models, principles, practices, difficulties, challenges, benefits, strategies.

SLR produced 390 items, case study confirmed 75, with 29 additional items.

Provides a comprehensive view to guide organizations in DevOps adoption.

Abstract

DevOps is an approach based on lean and agile principles in which business, development, operations, and quality teams cooperate to deliver software continuously aiming at reducing time to market, and receiving constant feedback from customers. However, implementing DevOps can be a complex and challenging mission due it requires significant paradigm shift. Consequently, many failures and misconceptions can occur about DevOps adoption by organizations, despite its numerous benefits. This work identifies, describes, and compares different perspectives related to DevOps adoption in academy and industry. The perspectives can be understood as factors or variables that influence or help to understand the DevOps journey. We employed a sequential multi-method research approach, including Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and Case Study. As a result, eight perspectives were found: concepts, models, principles, practices, difficulties, challenges, benefits, and strategies. More specifically, the SLR produced 390 items, which can be understood as occurrences of a perspective. The conducted case study confirmed 75 items, corroborating the SLR findings, while another 29 items emerged. This global view on DevOps adoption may guide beginners, both theorists, and practitioners, to make the necessary organizational transformation less painful.