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A Custom Technology Adoption Profile Commissioned By Blueprint | April 2017
Aligning Agile And DevOps Practices With
Business Value
FORRESTER.COM
OVERVIEW
SITUATION
APPROACH
OPPORTUNITY
CONCLUSIONS
A Custom Technology Adoption Profile Commissioned By Blueprint | April 2017
Aligning Agile And DevOps Practices With Business Value
Aligning Agile And DevOps Practices With Business Value
The key role of software in today’s increasingly digital business makes linking business outcomes to
software and application delivery a mission-critical imperative. Unfortunately, there is a disconnect
between the investment and the payoff in Agile and DevOps because it is difficult to measure the value.
There is no straightforward method to connect the results of the release cycle to the business goals.
Focusing Agile and DevOps transformation initiatives on value streams — the sequence of activities
development teams undertake to deliver to business and customer objectives — and measuring the
outcome of delivery seems to be the most promising industry approach. Nascent value stream
management practices and tools are the missing link that prove the value of software delivered by Agile
and DevOps.
In January 2017, Blueprint commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the adoption of value stream
management-based practices and tools and the challenges companies face with measuring the business
value of Agile and DevOps delivery.
Geography
› US: 100%
Company size by annual
revenue
› $2 billion to $5 billion: 62%
› > $5 billion: 38%
Top three industries
› Financial services: 15%
› Healthcare: 14%
› Travel and hospitality: 14%
Responsibility for DevOps
› Final decision maker: 22%
› Part of decision team: 58%
›
Influence decisions: 20%
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A Custom Technology Adoption Profile Commissioned By Blueprint | April 2017
Aligning Agile And DevOps Practices With Business Value
Agile And DevOps Must Provide Value To
The Business
As large organizations transition to Agile and DevOps, they
recognize that these practices must primarily focus on delivering
more value to the business, such as improving the customer
experience of the software or delivering new services to acquire new
customers. That's why organizations are coming around to the notion
that Agile and DevOps should have a clear business mandate. In
fact, 80% agree that it should focus on driving business value.
BUT THAT VALUE GOES UNMEASURED AND UNRECOGNIZED
However, organizations are challenged to move beyond typical IT-
focused Agile and DevOps metrics like speed and quality to
business-focused metrics like CSAT, competitiveness, and so on. In
reality, 62% still rely on speed to determine the success of these
efforts, and only 45% focus on value as a metric.
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Eighty percent of organizations
agree that DevOps drives
business value, but they
struggle to use value as a
metric of success for Agile and
DevOps initiatives.
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A Custom Technology Adoption Profile Commissioned By Blueprint | April 2017
Aligning Agile And DevOps Practices With Business Value
Challenges Exist With Agile And DevOps Practices
Large organizations are plagued with manual processes, organizational silos, and linking DevOps to
business outcomes. DevOps decision makers have encountered the following issues in their Agile and
DevOps practices:
› Almost half struggle with linking DevOps practices to business outcomes. Agile is an app dev-only
initiative with no links to upper stream requirements, while DevOps and operations rely on the value to
the business developed in these Agile processes.
› Close to 40% struggle with a lack of cultural readiness by the business and IT. This points to a greater
need for communication and collaboration across teams.
› Thirty-five percent have difficulty meeting industry and compliance standards, despite these regulations
coming to the forefront as Agile and DevOps initiatives mature beyond simplistic, website projects.
› Only 30% completely agree that they can automate or orchestrate all pre-coding activities and are able
to effectively reuse requirements and user stories across teams.
› Finally, companies struggle to communicate the status of DevOps initiatives efficiently. The majority
still rely heavily on email and provide status updates on a weekly basis or less.
DevOps decision makers from
large organizations are
experiencing challenges with
Agile and DevOps initiatives.
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A Custom Technology Adoption Profile Commissioned By Blueprint | April 2017
Aligning Agile And DevOps Practices With Business Value
Companies Are Taking Steps To Improve
Agile And DevOps Initiatives
Application development and delivery professionals plan to improve
their DevOps practices by:
› Defining better business-related metrics and measuring
business outcomes. Measuring the success of initiatives allows
organizations to understand where they need improvement. For
that reason, it’s important to specify the metrics that demonstrate
business value beyond traditional measures such as costs and
incorporate them directly into the upfront release objectives.
› Modernizing legacy applications. Organizations must
modernize applications in order to keep up with customer
demands for new and better experiences. This means not only
delivering new applications but also updating older ones.
›
Improving requirements definitions and management. Clear
and concise requirements definitions enable companies to
improve customer experience and avoid costly rework. A more
comprehensive view of requirements is also essential at scale,
since Agile alone does not cut it.
›
Improving Agile management and scaling. Adopting more-
advanced Agile techniques requires tools that support automation
and collaboration. Scaling Agile requires integration and
collaboration across PPM, requirements management, and PM
governance to facilitate team collaboration across the enterprise.
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Ninety-four percent expect
notable improvements to their
DevOps initiatives from
implementing a value stream
management solution.
A Custom Technology Adoption Profile Commissioned By Blueprint | April 2017
Aligning Agile And DevOps Practices With Business Value
Value Stream Management Is The Solution
DevOps decision makers place high value on solutions that remedy
a variety of Agile and DevOps problems. Foremost is the need for
capabilities that automate the complexity of the DevOps toolchain.
This includes business alignment and pre-coding steps, scaling of
Agile and DevOps processes, automating translation of business
initiatives, market requirements, or customer experience
enhancements to shippable code in order to go faster.
Given the high importance large organizations place on these
solutions, it is no surprise that 94% expect notable improvements on
their Agile and DevOps initiatives if they implement a solution that
includes all these capabilities. This is value stream management,
which Forrester defines as a solution that enables companies to
extend automation, value delivered, costs, burn rates, and other
management reporting capabilities for a given value stream to the
business.
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A Custom Technology Adoption Profile Commissioned By Blueprint | April 2017
Aligning Agile And DevOps Practices With Business Value
Value stream management
solutions extend automation,
value delivered, costs, burn
rates, and other management
reporting capabilities for a given
value stream to the business.
Organizations Expect To Realize Benefits From Value Stream
Management Solutions
As a result of implementing this solution, large organizations in this study reported that they expect to
achieve efficiency early on, continuous value to the business, and visibility across the DevOps toolchain.
61% Efficiency gains in the earliest
definition and analysis stages
58% Value delivered to the business at
any time by the value stream
54% Visibility into all components
of the DevOps toolchain
46% Improved understanding of
costs and budget burn rate
44% Visibility into a user outcome
of implemented features
43% Visibility into the automated
governance control points of the pipeline
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A Custom Technology Adoption Profile Commissioned By Blueprint | April 2017
Aligning Agile And DevOps Practices With Business Value
Conclusions
Companies will be successful only if they can link development and delivery initiatives to proof of the
business value that is delivered. Today, large organizations are especially challenged to link this value,
due to a lack of alignment of the DevOps pipeline managed by IT and the results expected by the
business, a lack of visibility throughout the entire development process, a failure to prove the value
delivered, and an inability to provide total transparency on compliancy standards.
Organizations need value stream management solutions to offset these hurdles and advance their Agile
and DevOps initiatives. As such, they expressed interest in a solution that helps them with value stream
management. This solution would provide end-to-end traceability from business initiatives and source
code requirements to test assets and deployed components, automated reporting of the status of the
toolchain, and much more. By adopting value stream management tooling and processes, large
organizations expect to increase the value they deliver and drive their businesses in the digital age.
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METHODOLOGY
This Technology Adoption
Profile was commissioned by
Blueprint. To create this profile,
Forrester leveraged its existing
research on Agile and DevOps
practices. Forrester Consulting
supplemented this data with
custom survey questions asked
of US decision makers
responsible for DevOps. The
auxiliary custom survey began
and was completed in March
2017.
Project Director
Andia Vokshi
Market Impact Consultant