How to organize DevOps' teams in customer firms? A comparative case analysis

Abstract

The issue of DevOps' team structures has been seldom addressed in prior literature. Some scholars underlined certain teams' characteristics and proposed structure taxonomies. However, they hardly considered the effect of the firm's context on a structure choice, by only focusing on project-level influences in few studies. To cover this gap, we propose an organizational model for DevOps' implementation within a consulting configuration. This setting is frequent in the current digital era and is particular as the partners differ in terms of digital maturity, cognition, and goals. We explored three cases in the public administration, telecommunications, and banking sectors. Data was collected through participant observation and semi-structured interviews and thematically analyzed with Nvivo. As results, we identify the key components of DevOps' teams and highlight their synergies. We also contribute to academic literature and managerial practice by raising customer firms' awareness on the contextual factors inducing variability on DevOps' team structure.