A brief 11-step guide to understanding DevOps, one of the key pillars of operational efficiency in any modern company. DOWNLOAD THE PDF FILE ON YOUR DEVICE TO SEE THE IMAGES AT A HIGHER RESOLUTION.

1. The Scrappy Manager’s
Guide to DevOps
Cristian Mitreanu
2020
in 11 Steps

2. 1. BCG: The efficiency and speed gains that DevOps can deliver are particularly critical in
today’s environment, when customers as well as technological developments are demanding
ever-shorter development cycles and ever-increasing quality.
Source: DevOps Takes Agile Further – and Across the Software Life Cycle, Boston Consulting Group (Retrieved from https://www.bcg.com/digital-bcg/agile/devops/default.aspx on 4/1/2020)

3. 2. BCG: In combination with agile, DevOps delivers six key elements that serve as the building
blocks of a holistic transformation of software development. Each improves the efficiency of
the IT organization and the development process in valuable and tangible ways.
Source: DevOps Takes Agile Further – and Across the Software Life Cycle, Boston Consulting Group (Retrieved from https://www.bcg.com/digital-bcg/agile/devops/default.aspx on 4/1/2020)

4. 3. BCG: A DevOps approach takes agile a step further and applies it beyond the plan, design,
build, and test stages of software development to the rest of the software lifecycle:
deployment, release, operation, and monitoring.
Source: DevOps Takes Agile Further – and Across the Software Life Cycle, Boston Consulting Group (Retrieved from https://www.bcg.com/digital-bcg/agile/devops/default.aspx on 4/1/2020)

5. 4. BCG: Achieving agile transformation across an entire enterprise is a feat in any industry.
Many companies still hesitate to make the leap into an agile way of operating, and are being
outpaced when it comes to time to market, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement
by agile competitors.
Source: The Value Unleashed by DevOps, Boston Consulting Group (Retrieved from https://www.bcg.com/digital-bcg/agile/devops/benefits.aspx on 4/1/2020)

6. 5. BCG: By integrating employees from IT operations into cross-functional agile teams and
emphasizing automation, DevOps can further boost the benefits of an agile approach, creating
tremendous value in three important ways.
Source: The Value Unleashed by DevOps, Boston Consulting Group (Retrieved from https://www.bcg.com/digital-bcg/agile/devops/benefits.aspx on 4/1/2020)

7. 6. BCG: The EFFICIENCY Benefit: Developers spend more time developing and less time waiting
for machines to be configured or integrating code. At the same time, automation means fewer
manual processes within IT operations — which in turn results in lower costs and lower error
rates.
Source: The Value Unleashed by DevOps, Boston Consulting Group (Retrieved from https://www.bcg.com/digital-bcg/agile/devops/benefits.aspx on 4/1/2020)

8. 7. BCG: The AGILITY Benefit: By automating as much as possible — in testing, integration, and in
some instances even deployment — DevOps enables companies to work with much smaller
sections of code, even just a few lines at a time. Under the DevOps approach, deployments
can occur 100 to 200 times more frequently.
Source: The Value Unleashed by DevOps, Boston Consulting Group (Retrieved from https://www.bcg.com/digital-bcg/agile/devops/benefits.aspx on 4/1/2020)

9. 8. BCG: The QUALITY Benefit (1 of 2): In the agile model, developers hand over completed
development projects to the IT operations function, which then monitors and maintains those
projects. By engaging both sides throughout the entire development process, DevOps enables
faster and easier fixes, and motivates developers to prevent future problems, therefore,
embracing a mantra of “you build it, you fix it."
Source: The Value Unleashed by DevOps, Boston Consulting Group (Retrieved from https://www.bcg.com/digital-bcg/agile/devops/benefits.aspx on 4/1/2020)

10. 9. BCG: The QUALITY Benefit (2 of 2): As DevOps brings more automation and standardization to
the development process, human errors can be reduced and best practices more easily shared
across teams. This also improves quality. The results are one-half to one-third fewer failures,
about 20% less time spent on unplanned work, and one-half to one-third less time spent on
remediating security issues.
Source: The Value Unleashed by DevOps, Boston Consulting Group (Retrieved from https://www.bcg.com/digital-bcg/agile/devops/benefits.aspx on 4/1/2020)

11. 10. McKinsey: The implementation of agile has typically affected interactions only among small
groups of business stakeholders and discrete application-development teams. By contrast, the
move to a DevOps model requires that companies make broader, more systemic changes that
could significantly alter interactions among all software-delivery teams, IT-operations staffers,
and business stakeholders. This is a more complex undertaking.
Source: Beyond Agile: Reorganizing IT for Faster Software Delivery, McKinsey & Company, September 2015 (https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/beyond-agile-
reorganizing-it-for-faster-software-delivery)

12. 11. McKinsey: Most important, automation tools and cloud-based technologies can serve as the
bridge between legacy IT systems on the back end and consumer-facing applications on the
front end, allowing companies to pursue seamless testing, provisioning, deployment,
governance, and security of servers and new software releases.
Source: Beyond Agile: Reorganizing IT for Faster Software Delivery, McKinsey & Company, September 2015 (https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/beyond-agile-
reorganizing-it-for-faster-software-delivery)