News
fostering a culture of dev-ops
October 2022 by Alistair Doran, Principal Consultant - Digital Transformation & DevOps, at Exponential-e
The one crucial ingredient underpinning our transition to a digital-first economy, more than any other, is software and based on the current speed of transformation, we know demand for software engineering is only going to increase. So, business and technology leaders need to urgently consider vital cultural changes to help better integrate software development teams within the wider organisation. But what exactly should they be?
Alistair Doran, Principal Consultant - Digital Transformation & DevOps, at Exponential-e, explores:
• The development dilemma: Agility has quickly emerged as a competitive advantage, as businesses strive to deliver on customer expectations quickly and effectively. That’s heralded the rise of DevOps, which aims to write high quality digital solutions more efficiently, and have the ability to continuously update in a secure and low risk way. However, without a collective approach to development, getting the back-end systems up and running for a product can take up to six months. But modularising the options and breaking down the functionality can shorten timelines to weeks.
• Revisiting personalities and processes: The role of the software engineer has changed. It is no longer about writing code in isolation, without much regard for or knowledge of how it benefits the business. Developers work better when they have clarity about the direct impact their work will have on achieving business goals and on the bottom line. Recognising and harnessing this spectrum of skills also helps bridge many of the barriers to development that exist within businesses.
• Channelling change to deliver better outcomes: Clearly, cultural change is needed to embed software engineering at the core of modern business. But revisiting project management practices is also imperative to continually deliver software that provides value to the business, the world of Scientific Management and Waterfall delivery methods is no longer appropriate for the development of digital solutions. By reviewing organisational processes, and bringing the wider business and software developers together, we can create teams that deliver digital solutions effectively and quickly, so that every user, whether internal or external, reaps the benefits of a more sophisticated approach to software engineering.
