As companies continue to invest resources transforming their software development practice into an Agile and/or DevOps model, determining the resultant ROI still eludes some. This conclusion is one of the major findings in a recent survey of CIOs published in ZDNet. On the other hand, many respondents report the faster time to production of software enhancements and bug fixes.
The study in question was conducted by Forrester Research and sponsored by Blueprint Software. While a majority of those surveyed are able to offer anecdotal evidence of the success of their DevOps transition – typically faster software delivery – they largely can’t translate that evidence into tangible business value. Forrester defines this term as increased revenue, improved competitiveness, a growing customer base, and ultimately – enhanced profitability.
45 percent of the surveyed companies currently use business value as a metric to measure the efficacy of their software development process. Nearly two-thirds of the organizations in the survey rely on that time-honored metric – speed to production – as the prime indicator of success using DevOps and Agile. Surprisingly, only one-third considers return on investment to be a valid indicator of success when migrating to these newer methodologies.
The ZDNet analysis of the survey notes that organizations need to improve communication and collaboration throughout their business to truly gauge the impact of a transition to Agile and DevOps. Since DevOps already requires this additional focus on team interaction as part of its process, these same teams can work together to devise a set of metrics to accurately measure the new methodology’s contribution to business value. Companies need to get beyond merely using status updates over email to communicate success.
Many of the surveyed organizations are trying to improve their still nascent DevOps implementations with both technical and business initiatives. 61 percent are engaged in the process of developing better metrics to measure the value of process improvement. Improving business requirements is occurring at 58 percent of the companies – another task that benefits from the additional collaboration ushered in by DevOps.
Close to half of the firms in the study are improving the management of their Agile teams, while also leveraging new technical practices, like continuous testing, to gain additional efficiencies in the SDLC. 84 percent of those surveyed feel devising a means for tracing delivered source code components to their initial business initiative would go a long way in improving business value metrics. The automation of reporting throughout the entire DevOps release chain to boost business visibility is something desired by 80 percent of the respondents.
If anything, the results of the survey reveal how DevOps is still maturing at most of the organizations currently implementing it. Improving the visibility of the process through better reporting that advertises how software enhancements are meeting vital business needs can only help. Read the survey in full to see how its conclusions can help your team go Agile!
Keep returning to the Betica Blog for additional insights from the software development world. As always, thanks for reading!
Posted on August 4, 2017 | Categories News, Software Development | Tags Agile, agile team, Business Value, DevOps, Investment