Trying to modernize workflows through DevOps can be a challenge for any company, but there are different challenges, risks and benefits for bigger companies
It is now more or less standard procedure to implement DevOps principles in startups or smaller companies. But what if you’re trying to utilize DevOps in large organizations? This is a bit more challenging, but let’s take a look at how such enterprises might approach a DevOps transformation through a few of the core tenants of DevOps.
Rapid Feedback
There are different types of feedback that come with DevOps: automated feedback about specific code (typically through unit and integration testing software), personal feedback from other team members, consumer feedback from customers using your product and cross-team feedback throughout the organization. Startups and small companies may find it easier to have open lines of communication between individual team members as well as across teams.
Large organizations will need to make a conscious effort to keep team communication open. On the other hand, they will have more resources available (both money and employees) to field customer and in-house feedback about individual services or larger products. They may also be able to better purchase and implement automated testing and CI/CD tools, which leads to …
Automation
One of the biggest tech benefits to a DevOps approach is automating away the manual tasks that bog down critical projects. Large organizations often have the time, money and people to set up automated tools, such as CI/CD pipelines, unit and integration test suites and config management systems. The biggest challenge in the enterprise world is trying to make everyone happy.
One approach is to standardize on a single tool for each purpose, such as Jenkins or Chef. This can enable your IT staff to specialize in those tools but may make some users unhappy with being forced into a tool they may not prefer. The alternative is to allow each team or business unit to use their own preferred software, but this can turn into a “toolset hell” with a mashup of every combination of applications within your organization. Each approach has its pros and cons, and often comes down to a management decision.
Eliminating Silos
Having individual teams that handle their part of the puzzle and nothing else is the biggest hurdle that enterprises face when trying to apply DevOps principles. The combination of “dev” and “ops” (and other disciplines, such as “sec” and “fin”) is naturally split out in a large organization, so recombining them can be a huge undertaking. Then again, that gap is exactly the problem the DevOps approach seeks to solve.
Some companies solve this by having a separate team that handles the cross-team support and communication. Other companies break down these silos by enabling employees to migrate seamlessly between teams depending on the project or application. The more “DevOpsy” method is to utilize ChatOps and centralized documentation repositories for open communication and collaboration, which can help break down unify the distinct teams.
Holistic Thinking
The idea of holistic thinking tends to come easier to larger organizations, as successful enterprises typically have a system in place for “big picture” thinking, either through a management or product team, or through a cross-functional committee. That said, communication of this vision down to the employees, along with communication up to that management team, is crucial for enabling outside-the-box thinking to get past any roadblocks and hurdles that are in the way of creating and deploying the end product. Sometimes, the hardest part is convincing programmers that not everything needs to be solved with code!
DevOps in Large Organizations: Challenging but Rewarding
Some folks think that DevOps only applies to startups and small companies, but we’re seeing more and more teams benefit from implementing DevOps in large organizations. The benefits of the above DevOps principles are numerous, but frequently come with a different set of challenges based on your organizational size. Once you are aware of those challenges and have a plan to overcome them, you can start to transform your enterprise to a DevOps shop.
