In the end, in your company, it is all about the bottom line. The question is, how do we increase the performance of our business? And as an IT professional, that can be a hard question. Your department is probably seen as a cost center. There might be pressure to reduce costs, while it is expected for you to deliver quality on time.
But from research we know that the performance of the IT department does have an impact on the performance of the organization as a whole. And thanks to the work of DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA), we also know how to increase that performance.
How to measure a high performing IT organization
It is all about the performance of your organization. You want happy customers, a profitable business and so on. And as we mentioned, the research of DORA shows that the software delivery and operational performance has a direct impact on the performance of your organization as a whole.
We measure the software delivery and operational performance by 5 key metrics. Lead time, Change failure rate, Deployment frequency, Availability and Time to restore.
The software delivery and operational performance can be further detailed in 5 categories.
Continuous Delivery capabilities
To what level are you capable to deliver your product continuously. Is everything under version control? And do you practice trunk based development? Is the deployment process automated? Etc.
Architectural capabilities
Do the teams have the power to decide on architectural issues? Are you using a decoupled architecture?
Product and Process capabilities
Is your work visible? Do you work in small batches? And do you use customer feedback to enhance your product?
Lean management and Monitoring capabilities
Is your change process light weight? Do you have observability implemented in your product? Do you monitor over application and infrastructure?
Cultural capabilities
Is there a generative culture that supports learning and collaboration? And do you have transformational leadership?
That sounds like a lot right? And to be fair, we did not even mention all the capabilities that have an influence on the performance of your software delivery and operations. But do not worry. You do not have to improve on all these items at the same time. You might be doing very well on some of them. So what should you do to increase your performance? Well, that is exactly what we can figure out for you. Using a proven assessment with a scientific basis, we can help you to make investments in capabilities that will help you most to improve.
We will go into more detail on a number of these capabilities in the following blog post(s). Follow our LinkedIn page to stay updated about our latest news & blogs.