Nicole Forsgren, Assistant Professor, Utah State University, at the 2014 DevOps Enterprise Summit
DevOps and the Bottom Line
For the first time in recent history, researchers have found a link between IT investments and organizational performance — if these IT investments occur with the right mix of IT, culture, and practice called DevOps. For the last two years, Dr. Nicole Forsgren has worked in collaboration with Gene Kim, Jez Humble and Puppet Labs to determine the health and habits of DevOps organizations, examining over 14,000 survey responses to identify the top predictors of IT performance and organizational performance. Dr. Forsgren will give a brief summary of the shocking findings of the 2013 survey, as well as an outline of the desired outcomes for the 2014-2015 survey. She will close with a call to action, inviting the DevOps Enterprise Summit attendees for their help in shaping the IT Revolution research agenda.
DOES14 - Nicole Forsgren - DevOps and the Bottom Line
1. DEVOPS AND THE BOTTOM LINE
Nicole Forsgren, PhD
Utah State University
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. 10 deploys per day
Dev & ops cooperation at Flickr
John Allspaw & John Hammond
Velocity 2009
That was then…
8. Etsy Code Deployment
What once required 6-14 hours and an “Army”
…Now takes 15 minutes and 1 person
This is now…
30+
Deploys
per day
2013
2013 Mike Brittain, Continuous Deployment: The Dirty Details
3/2014 Daniel Schauenberg , Qcon London
4/2014 tweet @philkates
50
Deploys per day
March 2014
QCon London
80-90
Deploys per day
April 2014
Chef Conf
9. Amazon Deployment Stats
(production & host environments only)
This is now…
1,079
Max deploys
In a single hour
Every 11.6 seconds!
10,000
Mean # hosts receiving
Deploys simultaneously
30,000
Max # hosts receiving
Deploys simultaneously
10. Intuit
“By installing a rampant innovation culture, we performed 165
experiments in the peak three months of tax season.
Our business result? Conversion rate of the website is up 50%.
Employee result? Everyone loves it, because their new ideas can
make it to market. ”
- Scott Cook, Intuit founder
15. HIGH PERFORMING IT ORGANIZATIONS
2x
More likely to exceed
Profitability,
Market share, and
Productivity goals
2014 PuppetLabs State of DevOps Survey
50%
Higher market cap
growth over 3 years*
Hi everyone, I’m Nicole Forsgren, and thanks for letting me visit with you about some of the exciting things we’ve found about DevOps, and the impact it can have on your company.
For the first time in recent history,
For the first time in recent history,
researchers have found a link between IT investments and organizational performance –
but only if these IT investments occur with the right mix of
IT,
culture,
and practice
called DevOps.
For the last two years, I have worked with Gene Kim, Jez Humble, and Puppet Labs to study organizations that use DevOps practices, to truly understand what contributes to the success of their DevOps, and for the first time, test and measure the impacts of these practices on their bottom line.
This is revolutionary. [pause] We would like to think this is common sense, but it isn’t. In fact, it flies in the face of decades of research and experience.
Investments in IT don’t impact the bottom line.
Time and time again, studies fail to show any link between IT investment and any kind of organizational impact. ANY KIND! It actually has a name! It’s called the productivity paradox. … Any company can buy a server, throw it in the closet, maybe give it some pretty uplighting like we see here. But then so can any other company. You put enough lipstick on a pig… it’s still a pig. Your pretty server is still just a server. This doesn’t create any kind of sustainable advantage. And the path from IT investment alllll the way down to the 10-K is long and winding. ROI rarely pans out, and even then, it’s usually after years… if that!
So… I knew this, but I just didn’t have it in my heart to tell it to the team, especially since I had a hunch that DevOps might be different. I’ll tell you why in just a minute.
So… what makes DevOps different? Why are we seeing this impact NOW? It is because DevOps is fundamentally different. It is because the impacts are seen only when IT investments occur with the right mix of IT, culture, and practice. So we can’t just *invest* in IT. We have to invest in IT *and* our culture and practices… very much like the stories we’ve been hearing here at DevOps Enterprise Summit.
In fact, just as Lean and the Toyota way revolutionized manufacturing in the 80s and 90s, we believe DevOps will be the force that revolutionizes the way that technology is done across all industries in all organizations. THIS is that hunch I had when we were planning the DevOps study last year. THIS is why I suggested we include organizational performance, even though it flew in the face of every other case of IT investment strategy. DevOps isnt’ just and investment strategy. It is a revolution.
But how did we get here?
Velocity 2009: John Allspaw & John Hammond “10 deploys per day: Dev & ops cooperation at Flickr”
- Crazy. Maybe even irresponsible. Historic. Visionary.
This is fascinating throughput, and clearly good for IT.
Stark contrast to Intuit…
165 experiments during busy season. Five years ago, we would not have seen this… but when else to deliver or test delivering functionality to customers?
And you see that second emphasis? (Added by me) Conversion rate is up 50%. Those are organizational impacts. That is the bottom line.
THIS ISN’T JUST FOR THE UNICORNS. THIS IS FOR THE HORSES, TOO.
“All the stories you heard yesterday are examples of how organizations are creating business value and competitive advantage by adopting DevOps principles and patterns. These stories paint a rich, nuanced picture of what DevOps looks like in organizations, and suggests that it can – and does – help organizations achieve their goals. But we wanted to take this a step further, and see if the data agreed with these stories we see over and over again.
And the data we collected over the past two years – covering 14,000 respondents and hundreds of organizations – backs this up. DevOps is good for IT. DevOps is good for organizations. Let’s start by looking at the impacts of DevOps on IT.
In the past, we’ve known that DevOps is good for IT.
But NOW we know that DevOps is good for organizations. DevOps has impacts that can be seen in the bottom line.
This is because DevOps isn’t just IT. It’s the practice of IT.
This is because DevOps isn’t just IT. It’s the practice of IT.
This is why we see the impacts to the organization and the bottom line. This requires
IT, yes. But it also requires
CULTURE
PEOPLE
PROCESSES
This isn’t just an investment in IT. This is an investment in IT practice.
And these investments are revolutionary in the change they bring about.
Not just to the IT function, but to the organization as a whole.
But what if these revolutionary changes could have impactsthat go beyond the organization?
Let’s think about DevOps in a larger context.
I look at the things in our environment and how they influence our IT practices. Is it our work environment? Our coworkers? Our support structures? Our home life? Take a moment and think about your own environment.
How does this influence our own IT practices and patterns, such as DevOps?
I also investigate the ways that IT practices and patterns, such as DevOps, impact, [….]
… people
… teams
… organizations
Let’s use this lens to Revolutionize the way we do Business in the 21st Century…And specifically, the role of DevOps in driving organization growth and value.
I will be working with IT Revolution this year to continue our investigation into DevOps and organizational impacts.
I want to hear from YOU. What should we study? What are your pain points? What are your big questions?
This is your chance to shape our research agenda.