MeepleTeamLaptop-narrowmarginWhat do high-performing IT orgs have in common?

They’re more agile: They are deploying 30x more frequently and with 200x shorter lead times than their peers.

They’re more reliable: They have 60x fewer failures and recover 168x faster.

They’re #winning: They are twice more likely to exceed profitability, market share and productivity goals.

Source: Puppet Labs 2014 and 2015 State of DevOps report, based on responses from more than 20,000 technical professionals.

These IT orgs are embracing the IT revolution. A recent survey from HDI showed that the consumerization of technology is raising the bar in terms of what companies expect of their IT teams and the services they deliver. It’s natural, when you think about it: everyone now owns multiple devices, works from all over the world, and expects more services to be available 24/7. So it’s no wonder that the best IT teams are adapting to (nay: embracing!) this service-oriented world, while others may be headed for the dustbin of history.

If you suspect your IT team is slipping behind, take heart: it’s not too late.

Encourage your team to take a good, hard look at process by asking these three questions:

  • How do you make your IT services more iterative and responsive?
  • How do you improve service quality?
  • How do you solve problems faster?

And speaking of history, there are a number of lessons IT teams can learn from recent decades. The Lean Movement revolutionized the automobile industry in the early 80s. In 2001, the Agile Manifesto rocked the tech world and has completely changed the way we develop software. And starting around 2010, cloud services have truly become a standard. And this has led to the rise of the DevOps movement.

But what is DevOps?

It’s a movement that advocates a collaborative working relationship between development and IT/operations teams.

DevOps has brought success to many well-known companies like Netflix, Amazon and Google. Amazon, for example, has been able to speed up their software development lifecycle by automating their releases. If your ultimate goal is faster releases and higher quality services – whether you’re providing a service to consumers or internal employees – then applying DevOps principles can help you.

This sounds exciting until we realize that embracing DevOps principles and practices in IT isn’t quite the same as waving a magic wand. In fact, it’s nothing like a magic wand. And that’s the real challenge.

Without a concurrent cultural transformation, it’s impossible to make happen. Collaboration and transparency hold the keys – whether it’s your support team providing incident reports, developers allocating a portion of resources, or executives embracing a culture of measurement and sharing.

If you’re thinking “Hey, bring it on! I eat challenges for breakfast.”, then check out our new ebook with loads of tips for applying DevOps principles to your IT support team. You learn how to:

  • Deliver higher quality services
  • Reduce the cost of IT services
  • Improve collaboration across teams
  • Increase employee morale
  • Empower the business with products and services they want to use

And besides all that, we like to think that you’ll have a pretty good time reading it. Enjoy!

Grab the ebook

How to become a high-performing IT support team with DevOps