DevOps Maturity Models: Benefits

DevOps maturity models are the key to connecting standards, processes and tools across any organization. But how can businesses build these models successfully? What best practices should they follow, and what benefits can they deliver?

Connected teams working with processes, tools and standards driven by data are the key to success in today’s marketplace – at least according to most articles published on LinkedIn and elsewhere. But once organizations investigate this, they discover a lot of complexities, which may cause them to consider partnering with an experienced DevOps consulting services team.

This approach will, of course, make answering the DevOps vs DevSecOps question much easier, while also giving them access to proven security audit services and a team that knows how to implement a proper DevOps infrastructure at speed.

However, in this time of market disruptions and global uncertainties some organizations may not want to work with a third-party provider. So, with that in mind, how can organizations assess their current level in the DevOps maturity model? What are the key stages of the DevOps maturity model? What are the main benefits of reaching a higher maturity level in DevOps and how does the DevOps maturity model impact software delivery and operational performance?

However, in this time of market disruptions and global uncertainties some organizations may not want to work with a third-party provider. So, with that in mind, how can organizations assess their current level in the DevOps maturity model? What are the key stages of the DevOps maturity model? What are the main benefits of reaching a higher maturity level in DevOps and how does the DevOps maturity model impact software delivery and operational performance?

What is a DevOps maturity model?

A DevOps maturity model provides a structured approach for organizations to assess and improve their DevOps practices. It starts with basic automation and integration, progresses through standardized and expanded DevOps procedures and culminates in a fully automated and optimized DevOps environment.

But what does implementing a model like this look like, what best practices need to be kept in mind while building a model like this, and what benefits can these models deliver to organizations?

Phases of a DevOps maturity model

Implementing any DevOps maturity model includes the following stages:

• Initial – At this level, organizations may have a good team assembled but lack cohesion and efficiency due to fragmented and siloed processes. Therefore, if organizations want to achieve true DevOps maturity, they must first find a way to consolidate teams and processes across their organization and track these efforts effectively, especially, as this new connected way of working functions as the foundation for the next stage in the journey towards true DevOps maturity.
• Managed – At this level, the new connected approach to operations organizations have implemented at the “Initial” level of this process enables proper management across all projects. This helps companies experience more planning, performance, measurement and control than ever before. This, in turn, gives them access to tried-and-tested processes – the kind of processes that can be automated later in this process – which makes it easier for them to manage market disruptions when they occur.
• Defined – At this level, organizations have well-characterized and understood processes that often come with standards, procedures and tools, etc., which enables organizations to further build out the scope of these standards, procedures and tools across the entire organization. Which, in turn, ensures they become more widespread, uniform and connected than ever.
• Quantitatively managed – At this level, organizations are striving to ensure every process and tool leveraged by their organization is driven by data. However, the secret to success at this stage of the DevOps maturity transformation journey is the sub-processes organizations choose to improve. These sub-processes increase the efficiency of any parent process, as they are controlled through statistics and other quantitative measures. But that is not the only improvement organizations see at this stage in their journey. By focusing on ensuring data lies at the heart of everything their organization does, they will also see a significant improvement in measurement and control across all their tools, standards and processes. This, of course, fixes the challenge faced by organizations during the “Initial” stage of their journey.
• Optimizing – Finally, at this level, organizations can really focus on continuous improvement as all the work done during stages 1-4 of their DevOps maturity journey grants them access to established, data-driven processes at all levels of their organization, which accelerates all their operations across the board.

DevOps maturity models – the benefits

There can be no doubt, then, that implementing DevOps maturity models into any organization is a challenge. But it also delivers a variety of benefits to businesses such as:

• Increasing reliability – By having access to fully mature processes organizations can reliably deliver what customers want quickly and easily.
• Setting achievable expectations from day one – By identifying current capability levels, fully realized DevOps maturity models enable organizations to set realistic expectations with their clients and employees on any project they work on, enabling everyone to be on the same page if/when things become more complex down the line.
• Improving benchmarking across the board – By standardizing maturity across every level of any organization, proper DevOps maturity models enable organizations to improve their benchmarking processes.
• Making continuous improvement easier – By working with the tried-and-tested steps attached to building DevOps maturity models, organizations can benefit from continuous improvement more moving forward.
• Simplifying automation – By breaking down processes to assess how mature their DevOps capabilities really are, organizations are able to see which processes will benefit most from automation, which, in turn, will further increase efficiency for them.
• Improving forecasting – By increasing process measurement and control, organizations can better control outcomes and create more accurate forecasts which help deliver better outcomes for their teams and their customers alike.
• Accelerating objective setting – By identifying inefficiencies and measuring successes, organizations can set more realistic, productive objectives that improve performance.

DevOps maturity model implementation – best practices

So far, this article has outlined what DevOps maturity models are, the stages organizations must go through to build them, and the benefits these models can deliver to any organization. But what are the key best practices organizations need to consider when building their own DevOps models? Three things to keep in mind are:

• Assess organizational needs – Assessments can establish any organization’s DevOps maturity level and its capability to move towards integrated, data-driven operations, regardless of whether they are done in-house or carried out by a third-party company.
• Define maturity level – Strategic goals and areas of assessment are the key drivers behind organizations understanding what maturity levels they can achieve. For example, having access to fully data-driven processes may be important to supply chain or finance teams but this is less important for any caterers that work in the building. Therefore, it is up to the organization itself to determine what level of maturity best suits the entire company as a whole.
• Plan for future needs accordingly – Finally, identifying what areas need to be improved early will go a long way to helping organizations achieve the level of DevOps maturity that best suits their way of working.

Developing DevOps maturity models with Software Mind

At Software Mind, we know that developing DevOps maturity models is easier said than done, and we also know that undertaking this kind of work can be extremely daunting.

That is where our experienced software experts come in. They can help choose the right development approach for you quickly and easily by connecting with you to understand more about what you need to leverage your new DevOps model for, which in turn will save you considerable time and money overall.

If you want to learn more, get in touch via this form. Our experienced software development team is happy to talk about how DevOps practices can support your software delivery and business goals.