DevOps adoption benefits and challenges in practice: A case study

Abstract

DevOps is an approach in which traditional software engineering roles are merged and communication is enhanced to improve the production release frequency and maintain software quality. There seem to be benefits in adopting DevOps but practical industry experiences have seldom been reported. We conducted a qualitative multiple-case study and interviewed the representatives of three software development organizations in Finland. The responses indicate that with DevOps, practitioners can increase the frequency of releases and improve test automation practices. DevOps was seen to encourage collaboration between departments which boosts communication and employee welfare. Continuous releases enable a more experimental approach and rapid feedback collection. The challenges include communication structures that hinder cross-department collaboration and having to address the cultural shift. Dissimilar development and production environments were mentioned as some of the technical barriers. DevOps might not also be suitable for all industries. Ambiguity in the definition of DevOps makes adoption difficult since organizations might not know which practices they should implement for DevOps.