Overcoming challenges when scaling DevOps enterprise-wide: Deloitte’s blueprint for scaling DevOps with the NextGen IT delivery model

Reflection on DevOps Point of View 1.0 and challenges faced when scaling DevOps enterprise-wide

Published in 2020, Deloitte’s DevOps Point of View 1.0 set the ground rules of effectively implementing DevOps in your organization with the introduction of eight DevOps principles that revolved around workforce “People”, way-of-working “Process”, and IT Landscape “Technology”. It provided a structured approach to rethink an organization’s operating model to “create an optimized flow from an idea towards value for the business, enabled by an environment in which multidisciplinary teams work collaboratively to continuously deliver high quality solutions.”

While still applicable for many DevOps transformations, since the initial publication, DevOps has gained further ground in the IT ecosystem, where enterprises are at the stage of scaling DevOps enterprise wide. Scaling DevOps could result in unwanted effects that hamper adoption enterprise-wide: Developer’s cognitive overload and Sourcing challenges.

Developer’s cognitive overload is the state of mental exhaustion caused by excessive demands on working memory perceived by developers. Cognitive overload is caused by two developments that are often overlooked by organizations: 1) increased stakeholder expectations negatively impacting the engineering culture and 2) increased complexity in the IT landscape resulting in architectural inefficiencies that distract developers from their key tasks. While DevOps advocates the iconic phrase as stated by Werner Vogels of “You build it, you run it” and is true in its essence, you cannot expect a developer to be able to process all incoming information and make all the right decisions.

Sourcing relates to the ability of an organization to recruit and use its talent-pool to scale DevOps enterprise-wide. When scaling DevOps, organizations struggle to efficiently orchestrate their resources throughout the organization, reducing momentum and causing organizations to become stuck.

Conclusively, increased cognitive load and sourcing challenges result in productivity decrease, slowly crawling its way across the workforce and throughout the organization. As a response to these developments, the DevOps at Scale Point of View particularly provides insights to structurally address them through changing the IT delivery model.

Changing IT delivery model to overcome the challenges and enable DevOps enterprise-wide

An organization that enables DevOps and scale enterprise-wide must change its IT delivery model to effectively reduce the cognitive overload and properly orchestrate its workforce. Reducing cognitive overload can be realized by funneling the availability of information and functionalities for developers to ensure that all their attention can be on the key tasks. In addition, the IT landscape needs to provide the right balance between adaptability of tools and what architecture is centrally organized to allow tailoring of tools to the organization’s needs. Lastly, effective orchestration of the workforce requires a sourcing strategy that coordinates the acquirement and management of resources.

Overcoming the challenges when scaling DevOps enterprise-wide (i.e., cognitive overload of DevOps teams and sourcing) requires four distinctive patterns in the IT delivery model: organizing product-oriented, leveraging Internal Developer Platforms and modular architectures, and implementing a sourcing ecosystem.

• Organizational Model: Product oriented organization A product-oriented organization consists of a fully embedded business product model that allows scaling agility / DevOps principles across technology. Capabilities are structured around cross-functional business-technology products or platforms that deliver both Change and Run. 
• Development Model: Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) IDP is a platform within an organization designed to streamline the software development process for developers. It offers integrated environments that automate operational tasks, manages complexity, and allows scaling by standardizing development environments and ensuring consistency across multiple deployments.
• Sourcing Model: Sourcing Ecosystem When scaling a DevOps organization, a sourcing strategy and ecosystem becomes increasingly relevant. A well-defined sourcing model plays a crucial role in supporting the DevOps practices by providing the necessary resources and capabilities to enable the software delivery lifecycle with speed, efficiency, and reliability
• Architecture & Hosting Model: Modularity (Microservices & Cloud Native Services) The Modularity (Microservices & Cloud Native Services) architecture & hosting model is a service-oriented architecture, moving away from monolithic architecture and towards more modular systems to achieve decoupling, allowing for greater scalability, flexibility, and better utilization of resources

Services offered by Deloitte

Building upon the challenges articulated of scaling DevOps organizations, Deloitte’s suite of DevOps services is designed to give organizations key insights of root causes and provides guideways to tackle them. These services are combined into two tiers (from periodically assessments to full organizational transformation):

• Assessment of Dev(Sec)Ops Potential: Targeted at organizations that have implemented DevOps and want to enhance their current practices or solve various problems, this tier includes services such as Dev(Sec)Ops Quick Scan, Dev(Sec)Ops Maturity Assessment, and OKR Dashboarding. These services can be leveraged to evaluate your current Dev(Sec)Ops maturity, identify operational bottlenecks, and establish clear objectives and results, setting the stage for targeted improvements and strategic growth.
• Transformation of Organization: For fully committed DevOps organizations looking to refine and prepare them for the potential problems when scaling DevOps in their operations, the Transformation Journey and Accelerate Tech Delivery services provide an end-to-end transformation experience. These services support the implementation and scaling of DevOps models, facilitating complex, tech-driven business transformations and the adoption of cutting-edge practices. 

Besides these tailored services, Deloitte continues to offer services for organizations that are at the start of their DevOps journey. These services provide a comprehensive introduction to DevOps concepts and a strategic framework for service delivery. If you are interested in these types of services, please feel free to contact us.

Want to learn more?

Want to learn more about the DevOps principles and their detailed implications on organizations target operating model, please feel free to reach out to the Deloitte DevOps practitioners mentioned at the bottom of this blog post. This Deloitte transformation approach has been proven in practice and in the next blog post, an insight will be given into the best practices and lessons learned of a DevOps transformation project delivered at a client. Stay tuned if you want to learn more about DevOps transformation and real-life experiences.