research-article

A guidance to implement or reinforce a DevOps approach in organizations: : A case study

Authors:

Mario Negrete RodríguezAuthors Info & Claims

Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, Volume 36, Issue 3

https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.2342

Published: 10 March 2024 Publication History

Abstract

In recent years, stakeholders expect the delivery of new features almost every day to give fast feedback about changes or issues in software projects. To achieve this, they have opted to try new practices such as those from DevOps to improve their processes. Organizations such as IBM, Facebook, Amazon, and so on are implementing a DevOps culture. However, for small organizations, which are a large majority in the software development market, it is complicated to adopt DevOps because there is no guide to follow. Organizations have experienced issues trying to implement a DevOps approach, mainly for reasons such as a lack of process, guidance, or uncoordinated activities among organizations. Moreover, some organizations have a wrong understanding of DevOps: as just a set of automation tools to achieve a continuous release. This paper presents a guide to implement or reinforce a DevOps approach. Besides, the results of a case study of implementing the guide in a small organization are included. These results have shown that the guide helped the team: to identify its gaps toward the implementation of a DevOps approach; to have a better understanding of DevOps; and to facilitate the DevOps implementation providing a set of tasks, roles, and metrics.

Graphical Abstract

In recent years, stakeholders expect the delivery of new features almost every day. To achieve it, they opted to try practices such as those from DevOps. However, small organizations, which are a majority in the software development market, have experienced issues trying to implement a DevOps approach without a guide. Our research provides a guide to implement DevOps or to reinforce their DevOps approach and results of a case study of a VSE that use the guide to implement DevOps.

References

[1]

Claps G, Svensson B, Aurum A. On the journey to continuous deployment. Tech Soc Challenges Along the Way, Inf Softw Technol. 2015;57(1):21‐31.

[2]

Bass L, Weber I, Zhu L. DevOps: A software architect's perspective, Addison‐Wesley Professional. 2015.

[3]

IBM C . Devops: The IBM approach. IBM. 2014:112.

[4]

Kitchenham B. Procedures for Performing Systematic Reviews. Keele University, Keele, 33, 2004.

[5]

Miramontes J, Muñoz M, Calvo‐Manzano J. Establishing the state of the art of frameworks, methods and methodologies focused on lightening software process: a systematic literature review. Trends Appl Softw Eng. 2016:405.

[6]

Muñoz M, Negrete M, Mejia J. Proposal to Avoid Issues in the DevOps Implementation: A Systematic Literature Review. In: Rocha Á, Adeli H, Reis L, Costanzo S (eds) New Knowledge in Information Systems and Technologies. WorldCIST'19 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Vol 930. Springer, Cham; 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16181-1_63

[7]

Virmani M. Fifth International Conference on the Innovative Computing Technology (INTECH 2015). In: Fifth International Conference on the Innovative Computing Technology (INTECH 2015). Galcia, Spain; 2015:78‐82. https://doi.org/10.1109/INTECH.2015.7173368

[8]

Ringu‐kalliosaari L, Simo M. Product‐focused software process improvement. Trends Appl Softw Eng. 2016;10027:590‐597.

[9]

Muñoz M, Diaz O. DevOps: Foundations and Its Utilization in Data Center. In: Marx Gómez J, Mora M, Raisinghani M, Nebel W, O'Connor R (eds) Engineering and Management of Data Centers. Service Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy. Cham: Springer; 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65082-1_10

[10]

Laporte C, Menaceur J, Poliquin D. Implementing the new ISO/IEC 29110 systems engineering process standard in a small public transportation company. EuroSPI. 2016a;633:15‐29.

[11]

Laporte C, Menaceur J, Poliquin D. A multi‐case study analysis of software process improvement in very small companies using ISO/IEC 29110. EuroSPI. 2016b;633:30‐44.

[12]

Paucar LG, Laporte CY, Arteaga J, Bruggmann J. Software Quality Professional. Vol 17. Milwaukee; 2015:16‐29.

[13]

Wettinger J, Breitenbücher U, Kopp O, F L. Streamlining DevOps automation for cloud applications using TOSCA as standardized metamodel. Futur Gener Comput Syst. 2016;56:317‐332.

Digital Library

[14]

Humble J, Farley D. Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (1st. ed.). Addison‐Wesley Professional; 2010.

[15]

Gupta V, Kapur J, Kumar D. Modeling and measuring attributes influencing DeVops implementation in an enterprise using structural equation modeling. Inf Soft Technol. 2017;92:75‐91.

[16]

Nelson‐Smith S. Test‐Driven Infrastructure with Chef [electronic Resource]. 1st ed. Sebastopol: O'Reilly Media; 2011. Print.

[17]

Forsgren N, Humble J, Kim G. The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations. Portland, OR: IT Revolution Press; 2018. Print.

[18]

Gene K, Patrick D, John W. The DeVops handbook. how to create world‐class agility, reliability & security in technology organizations. IT Revolution. 2016.

[19]

Kim G, Behr K, Spafford G, et al. The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win. 1st ed. IT Revolution Press; 2014. Print.

[20]

Muñoz M, Negrete M. Reinforcing DevOps Generic Process with a Guidance Based on the Basic Profile of ISO/IEC 29110. In: Mejia J, Muñoz M, Rocha ÁA, Calvo‐Manzano J (eds) Trends and Applications in Software Engineering. CIMPS 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Vol 1071. Cham: Springer; 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33547-2_6

[21]

Kaiser A. K. Introduction to DevOps. In: Reinventing ITIL® in the Age of DevOps. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3976-6_1

[22]

Colavita F. DevOps Movement of Enterprise Agile Breakdown Silos, Create Collaboration, Increase Quality, and Application Speed. 2016. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27896-4_17

[23]

Puppet, Splunk . 2018 state of devops report; 2018.

[24]

DASA . Devops agile skills association (DASA). https://www.devopsagileskills.org/, the HAL Open Archive. Accessed Oct 5, 2018; 2018.

[25]

Runeson P, Höst M. Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empir Softw Eng. 2009;14(2):131‐164.

Digital Library

[26]

Yin RK. Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications; 2003.

[27]

Wohlin C, Höst M, K H. Empirical research methods in software engineering. Empir Methods Stud Softw Eng Experiences from Eser. 2003;2765:7‐23.

[28]

DORA . Accelerate: state of devops. Strategies for a New Economy; 2018.

Cited By

Amaro RPereira Rda Silva M(2025)Mapping DevOps capabilities to the software life cycleInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107583177:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107583
Amaro RPereira RMira da Silva M(2024)DevOps Metrics and KPIs: A Multivocal Literature ReviewACM Computing Surveys10.1145/365250856:9(1-41)Online publication date: 13-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652508
Port DTaber BEmkani P(2024)Investigating effectiveness and compliance to DevOps policies and practices for managing productivity and quality variabilityJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.112030213:COnline publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2024.112030

Index Terms

A guidance to implement or reinforce a DevOps approach in organizations: A case study
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Project and people management
      2. Software management
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Collaboration in software development
    2. Software development process management
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Software configuration management and version control systems

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

Recommendations

A Systematic Literature Review for Investigating DevOps Metrics to Implement in Software Development Organizations
ABSTRACT
DevOps is a collaborative software development process where practitioners work as a team to continuously develop, deploy, and deliver software. DevOps practices still need to be mature, and practitioners face numerous challenges while ...

Our study aims to identify metrics for measuring practices and activities responsible for DevOps implementation. The systematic literature review (SLR) method was used to identify metrics responsible for measuring DevOps practices. Using SLR, we have ...
DevOps Maturity Diagnosis – A Case Study in Two Public Organizations
SBSI '20: Proceedings of the XVI Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems

Organizations have been applying practices and elements of DevOps culture in the last decade to approximate development and operation teams. Many software development processes address problems associated with keeping the desired stability in ...
CMMI guided process improvement for DevOps projects: an exploratory case study
ICSSP '16: Proceedings of the International Conference on Software and Systems Process

Very recently, an increasing number of software companies adopted DevOps to adapt themselves to the ever-changing business environment. While it is important to mature adoption of the DevOps for these companies, no dedicated maturity models for DevOps ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Journal of Software: Evolution and Process

Journal of Software: Evolution and Process Volume 36, Issue 3

March 2024

210 pages

EISSN:2047-7481

DOI:10.1002/smr.v36.3

Issue’s Table of Contents

© 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

United States

Publication History

Published: 10 March 2024

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

3
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 03 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Amaro RPereira Rda Silva M(2025)Mapping DevOps capabilities to the software life cycleInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107583177:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107583
Amaro RPereira RMira da Silva M(2024)DevOps Metrics and KPIs: A Multivocal Literature ReviewACM Computing Surveys10.1145/365250856:9(1-41)Online publication date: 13-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652508
Port DTaber BEmkani P(2024)Investigating effectiveness and compliance to DevOps policies and practices for managing productivity and quality variabilityJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.112030213:COnline publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2024.112030

View Options

View options

Figures

Tables

Media

View Issue’s Table of Contents