What you can expect from DevOps in 2018 Solidify

What you can expect from DevOps in 2018

Published January 10, 2018

While 2017 definitely was a good year for <a href="http://solidify.se/devops-software-development/">DevOps</a> and organizations around the globe, there is still much left that needs to be done. The trend suggests that even more companies will adopt the philosophy, and Puppet stated in their <a href="https://puppet.com/resources/whitepaper/state-of-devops-report">2017 State of DevOps Report</a> that the number of respondents working in a DevOps department has increased from 22% to 27%. Some have even gone as far as <a href="https://go.forrester.com/blogs/2018-the-year-of-enterprise-devops/">calling 2017 the “year of DevOps”</a>. So what can we expect regarding DevOps in 2018? During the past year, the big question remained “What exactly is DevOps?”. We believe that many now have a firmer grasp on the answer, and instead are looking at questions such as: <ul> <li>How do we begin doing DevOps?</li> <li>How can we do DevOps at scale?</li> <li>What are the benefits?</li> </ul> As DevOps is fitting for almost every industry, ranging from healthcare to banking and pure software devleopment, it’s only a matter of time before the experimentation stage transitions into full-scale implementation. Here are a few things we think you should keep an eye out for DevOps in 2018. <h2>Culture and Enterprise Devops in 2018</h2> As the understanding of DevOps grows, more and more organization’s start looking at implementing at a bigger scale. However, many have not yet understood the necessity of a new company culture. In 2018, we will see more and more how crucial the culture really is and we believe enterprises will start to react accordingly. Traditional silo thinking moves toward collaboration, slow and big changes become small and fast iterations and failures become learning opportunities. Another key to successful enterprise DevOps is automation. It has been proven time and time again that automation is one of the most important tools for <a href="http://solidify.se/continuous-delivery-integration/">continuous delivery</a>, especially when automating bigger tasks instead of simply individual processes. To put it short: a more deliberate automation strategy that spans across the entire life cycle enables opportunities for expansion. It’s easy to say, we know. But keep in mind that almost all high-performing teams rely on automation for everything from configuration management to testing and deployment. <h2>Metrics and DevSecOps</h2> Many organization’s now do quite well with their DevOps initiatives. Enterprise scaling is becoming a real question and with that, the need for metrics comes to light. You need a good overview of things in order to keep track of the state of your development. This is where metrics come in. Your decisions will always be based on the information you have, so it’s obvious that better information leads to better decisions. Tracking things such as <a href="http://solidify.se/devops-metrics-mean-time-to-recovery-mttr/">mean time to recovery</a>, <a href="http://solidify.se/devops-metrics-3-change-lead-time/">change lead time</a> and <a href="http://solidify.se/increase-release-frequency/">release frequency</a> will give companies around the world a better map to navigate from. Alongside the need for metrics, we believe that companies doing DevOps in 2018 will need to address security issues. Scaling up naturally leads to bigger threats and right now, few have integrated security into their pipelines. Automation will likely play a leading role and with better tools, we believe that many will find answers to their security concerns. <h2>Increasing importance of management</h2> What might be the very most important thing when looking to do DevOps in 2018 is how well the team handles the change. Studies show that most change initiatives fail and the most common reason is the lack of <a href="http://solidify.se/8-steps-successful-change-project/">good transformational leadership</a>. Using inspiration, motivation and efficient communication, leaders can pave the way for change to happen. We believe that enterprises looking to implement DevOps at scale will need great leaders to communicate their vision, support their team and in many other ways help the team achieve higher performances. In a kind of unexpected way, management may also become the next bottleneck in software development. We’re starting to see more and more optimized best practices, DevOps tools become more and more efficient, and teams show stronger signs of collaboration and maturity. This in turn shifts many decisions from being IT’s responsibility – how fast can we deploy this change? – to being management’s – when should we deploy the change?. As the organization and its team changes, so will its leaders need to as well. We believe that 2018 can be the year that DevOps truly blasts off, as long as management gets it right.   What do you think we’ll see for DevOps in 2018? Let us know in the comments below!