Understanding DevOps Critical Success Factors: Insights from Professionals

Abstract

This paper explores the factors that contribute to the success of software development undertaken with DevOps practices. DevOps is a set of practices that aims to increase software development process efficiency by reducing barriers between operation and development teams. Despite the wealth of information available on DevOps practices, adoption, and the respective challenges, there is a dearth of research focusing specifically on the DevOps critical success factors. This paper seeks to fill this gap by analyzing and discussing the key factors that are essential for success in software development with DevOps. To this end, we have conducted an open-ended survey among 72 DevOps professionals. By employing the Gioia method, we elaborate on the professionals’ perspectives on the DevOps success factors identified and connect them to the prior literature. These success factors encompass intra-organizational collaboration, organizational hierarchy, strategic planning, team dynamics, cultural shift, performance engineering, integration, build and test automation, infrastructure, and DevOps as a service. We propose five DevOps implementation advice that could benefit companies while implementing DevOps practices. Those include management support, investment in DevOps tools, sharing knowledge within teams, sharing responsibility in teams, being willing to explore and experiment with the practices, and being agile are crucial for DevOps performance and organizational success.