From Projects to Products

The 2023 State of DevOps report highlights that high performing organizations leverage DevOps to gain competitive advantage. But realizing the benefits requires leaders to shift mindsets and rethink how they empower teams.

Adopting a product vs project mindset is key. Leaders must orient teams around delivering ongoing value to customers rather than completing temporary projects. This means prioritizing outcomes over outputs - continuously improving how solutions benefit users rather than finishing prescribed scope and moving on. It requires building adaptable systems not rigid applications, designing loosely coupled architecture with flexibility to respond to changing needs.

Working in rapid iterations based on user feedback is better than long release timelines and big bang launches. And keeping teams accountable to operate and evolve solutions over time rather than throw solutions over the wall enables ownership.

Obsess Over Customer Experience

Laser focus on making life phenomenal for customers pulls work upstream into priorities that deliver tangible value:

Continuous discovery of pain points and needs, not just at the start, allows teams to gather user insights in an ongoing way. Looking across system boundaries to map journeys end-to-end reveals opportunities to smooth key interactions. Relying on data over opinions ensures user behavior analysis informs roadmap direction. And actively involving customers in co-creating solutions goes beyond just presenting to customers for acceptance.

Coach Self-Sufficient Teams

Command and control gives way to empowered teams who design, build, and run solutions themselves. Guiding with principles and guardrails, not step-by-step directions, clarifies context so teams can move fast. Equipping them with all needed capabilities - tools, training, authority - removes roadblocks.

Trusting teams with autonomy and accountability within agreed parameters lets them determine how to meet goals. And facilitating innovation and experimentation accepts some failure on the path to brilliance.

Enable Flow by Bridging Silos

Smooth value delivery requires connecting fragmented functions. Implementing DevOps platforms and practices links activity across teams. Structuring around value streams rather than functional departments follows the work end-to-end.

Fostering shared goals, incentives, and outcomes across boundaries aligns activity. And building relationships and empathy between functions humanizes collaborators as people.

DevOps demands leaders relinquish command-driven ways and empower teams. It's a journey requiring courage, humility, and often external guidance. If you are seeking help coaching your leaders or teams through this transformation, please reach out. I offer DevOps coaching tailored to accelerating your organization's shift.

Effective Leadership Practices for Scaling DevOps

A key finding from the 2023 State of DevOps Report is that effective leadership is critical for successfully scaling DevOps across large, complex organizations. As leaders guide their teams on the DevOps journey, certain practices unlock high performance at scale:

Provide Clarity of Vision, Goals, and Constraints

In dynamic, rapidly changing environments, teams need a fixed point to orient around. Leaders must paint a vivid picture of the future state, ground it in meaningful goals for major milestones, and transparently communicate organizational constraints. Clarity of purpose and priorities enables empowered action.

Increase Team Autonomy Within Guiding Guardrails

Balancing autonomy with alignment is key. Leaders cannot dictate play-by-play direction top-down across large organizations. They must set guiding principles and strategic guardrails, then trust teams to take ownership of solutions tailored to their domain. Psychology safety enables risk taking within defined parameters.

Drive Extensive Enablement - Training, Coaching, Tools

Expecting teams to optimize workflows without extensive enablement sets them up for frustration. Leaders need to invest up front in broad capability building via training, hands-on coaching, and optimized tools. Create the conditions for teams to then innovate on their slice of the system.

Foster Psychological Safety to Take Risks and Learn

Innovation requires failure, feedback, and growth in a safe environment. Leaders should actively nurture team psychological safety where people feel trusted, respected, and free to take chances without repercussions. Mistakes become lessons when blameless culture replaces fear.

Break Down Silos and Barriers to Collaboration

Matrixed organizations default to silos without conscious intervention. Leaders seeking broad DevOps adoption must proactively think cross-functionally, highlight interdependencies between teams, incentivize collaborative behaviors, and standardize platforms and practices across boundaries.

Lead with Empathy, Humility, and Servant Leadership

Enabling hundreds or thousands of employees to work differently takes sensitivity, compassion, and service. Leaders must remain humble, resist sweeping mandates, meet people where they are, and serve teams by removing roadblocks. Patience and understanding trump pace.

Coach Teams - Resist Mandated Solutions

Prescriptive solutions from the top often backfire. Leaders get better results coaching teams to creatively apply principles to their domain rather than enforcing specific playbooks. Facilitate, don't dictate.

For leaders, balancing alignment with autonomy, investment in enablement with urgency for outcomes, and directive with coaching is key to scaling DevOps. It requires a commitment to growth, leading from beside, and compassion. To discuss challenges and solutions in your context, please reach out.

The High Costs of the IT/Business Divide

A persistent challenge highlighted in the 2023 State of DevOps Report is the alignment gap between IT and business teams. When these functions operate in silos, significant costs accumulate:

Wasted Time and Rework

Lack of coordination leads to duplicated efforts, redundant systems, and frequent miscommunications that require rework. Without shared understanding, additional cycles are wasted clarifying ambiguous requirements and sorting through disjointed solutions.

Delayed or Deprecated Solutions

Trying to piece together fragmented systems built separately by teams that don't collaborate results in solutions that fall short. Poor integration and partnership means technical innovations launch late, if at all, while business needs go unmet.

Customer Experience Issues

From the outside, fragmented systems and processes feel confusing and disjointed for customers. Misalignment becomes obvious and erodes trust.

Slowed Innovation

When IT and business units don't share vision and accountability, they miss opportunities to brainstorm creative solutions drawing from their diverse expertise. Silos stifle potential.

Cultural Issues

Perhaps most importantly, absence of meaningful connections breeds toxicity like blame, mistrust, and resentment across functions. Teams operate as adversaries rather than collaborators.

Ways Leaders Can Strengthen Bonds

Leaders play a pivotal role in cultivating connections and cooperation that enable smooth flow of information, transparent priorities, and unified mission. Here are some high-impact strategies:

Implement Cross-Functional Teams

Blending IT and business experts on shared deliverables diffuses divides. Working interdependently toward common goals weaves understanding and empathy.

Increase Transparency Between Teams

Providing visibility into systems, data, projects and decisions reduces mystery and prevents black boxes. Hidden motives breed suspicion, while transparency builds trust.

Develop Shared Services Over Silos

Common tools, practices, and systems unite, while fragmented functions isolate. Shared getting work done accelerates it.

Foster an Empathetic, Psychologically Safe Culture

Cultural DNA transcends functions. Taking down walls and building relationships enable vulnerability, creativity, and care.

Coach Integrated Product Teams

Don't just mandate solutions. Take time to listen, customize to constraints, and unlock potential. Imposed change breeds resistance; collaboration breeds commitment.

Bridging the Gap

While specialized expertise has advantages, we must thoughtfully weave cross-disciplinary connections. Silos drain potential. Leaders should consciously role model empathy, transparency, and cooperation.

The challenge of bridging divides persists but is surmountable through care, courage, and commitment. If you would like to discuss further how we can coach your organization toward greater alignment, please don't hesitate to reach out. Now is the time for bridge building.