How do you become a high performing technology organization? Over the past five years, the State of DevOps Report has shown how the highest-performing technology teams decisively outperform their lower-performing peers. The report has also investigated the effects of burnout, culture and employee engagement on organizational performance. Nicole Forsgren shares insights into the key leadership, technical, architectural, and product capabilities that drive these outcomes, including new findings from cloud, outsourcing, and open source. She offers highlights and surprises uncovered over the last five years from over 30,000 responses.
Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2024: BNC CataList - Tech Forum 2024
The Data Behind DevOps: What Does it Take to be a High Performer? Jenkins World 2018 keynote
1. @nicolefv
The Data Behind DevOps:
What Does it Take to be a
High Performer?
Nicole Forsgren, PhD
Co-founder, CEO and Chief Scientist, DORA
Research Affiliate, Clemson University, Florida Atlantic University
13. @nicolefv
Highest Performing DevOps teams
More agile
More frequent
Code deployments
46x
That’s the difference between multiple
times per day and once a week or less.
Faster lead time from
commit to deploy
2555x
That’s the difference between less than
an hour and more than a week.
@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/151876933@N04/38992268995/
14. @nicolefv
Highest Performing DevOps teams
More reliable
Faster time to recover
from downtime
2406x
That means high performers recover in
less than an hour instead of weeks
As likely that changes
will fail
1/7x
Highest performer’s changes fail 0-15% of the
time, compared to 46-60% of the time.
@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/151876933@N04/38992268995/
15. @nicolefv
Software Delivery Performance is
comprised of throughput and stability,
and both are possible without tradeoffs
@nicolefv@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/151876933@N04/38992268995/
20. @nicolefv
Elite Performing tech organizations are
1.5x as likely to meet or exceed
Commercial Goals
• Productivity
• Profitability
• Market Share
• # of customers
Non-commercial Goals
• Quantity of products or
services
• Operating efficiency
• Customer satisfaction
• Quality of products or
services
• Achieving organizational
or mission goals
1.5x
@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/151876933@N04/38992268995/
21. @nicolefv
Elite Performing tech organizations are
1.5x as likely to meet or exceed
Commercial Goals
• Productivity
• Profitability
• Market Share
• # of customers
Non-commercial Goals
• Quantity of products or
services
• Operating efficiency
• Customer satisfaction
• Quality of products or
services
• Achieving organizational
or mission goals
50% Higher market cap
growth over 3 years
1.5x
@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/151876933@N04/38992268995/
22. @nicolefv
How do we get there?
@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/fantascapes/4530372648
28. @nicolefv
Maturity models tell us
(and leaders) to stop
dedicating resources
once we have arrived.
@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/volvob12b/9988822123/
29. @nicolefv
Maturity models tell us
we all follow the same
path to success
@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/mortaupat/6410006785
30. @nicolefv
Maturity models tell us
technology is a checklist to be
completed and not an exciting
journey to continually explore
and improve.
@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/pebb/42467336382
32. @nicolefv
Technology stack doesn’t matter
•Low performers are more likely to:
• be working with outsourced software
• be working on a mainframe system
BUT
• Working on a mainframe system was not correlated
with performance.
• Working on greenfield or brownfield (or any other
system) was not correlated with performance, either.
@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/serenasoftware/3288275568
33. @nicolefv
Architectural outcomes matter
Can my team
•Change the design of its system
•Test the system
•Deploy the system
... without communication and coordination with
people outside the team?
@nicolefv https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BalticServers_data_center.jpg
49. @nicolefv
Employees in high performing
organizations are 2.2 times
more likely to recommend
their organization as a
great place to work
@nicolefv https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/17383831292
50. @nicolefv
Some of my other favorite
misconceptions
Some of my other
favorite data findings!
51. @nicolefv
Some of my other favorite
misconceptions
Some of my other
favorite data findings!
• Change advisory boards are useless*
• Industry doesn’t matter
• Integration times and branch lifetimes
lasting hours are better than days
54. @nicolefv
HERE’S HOW TO GET IT
To receive the following:
• A link to the 2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Report
• A 93-page excerpt of Accelerate: The Science of DevOps
• This presentation
• DORA’s ROI whitepaper: Forecasting the Value of DevOps
Transformations
• Metrics Guidance whitepaper
• My ACM Queue article on DevOps Metrics with Mik Kersten: Your Biggest
Mistake Might Be Collecting the Wrong Data
Just grab your phone and send an email:
To: nicolefv@sendyourslides.com
Subject: devops
I just wrote a book called Accelerate. It summarizes 4 years of research.
But WHYYYYYY? I don’t like writing.
I’d much rather sit around drinking Diet Coke.
Our story begins with Harvard Business Review.
BUT WHAT IS HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW?
HBR is a magazine that managers and executives read that presents research in an short, easy-to-read format.
This is where management gets all of their ideas from.
In the year of our lord 2003, Nicholar Carr wrote an article TITLED
Who is Nicholas Carr? He is a Pulitzer Prize nominated writer. So his ideas count even more!
Well, this idea can die in a fire.
IT, and technology, DOES matter.
But we need more than stories and intuition to tell us that. We need data. We need proof to tell management so that we can get our work and our initiatives funded.
So let’s get started. After working in tech and building systems, I pivoted to research.
I’ve been digging into data on tech impacts for a decade, and studying DevOps for four years.
That whole “IT doesn’t matter” thing? Nicholas Carr had a point.
He was making his case based on the way companies were doing tech in the 80s and 90s.
…
… but I don’t believe you
OR
… but I’m not going to invest in it. What good does it do for me?
OR
… why should I care?
b/c if we don’t invest the right way, it’s a missed opportunity
Data backs our intuition… it’s factual
This is important, and something that we could only verify with data.
Our intuition told us this was possible.
But others have told us it wasn’t so. Who here works in highly regulated fields, or government?
ITIL and groups in Europe have said for over a decade that we have to slow down to be safe and stable.
Four years of data show that this isn’t the case at all. High performers…
IN FACT.. It might be the opposite.
Who here is on the OPS side of the house? Or SRE?
Data backs our intuition… it’s factual
Data backs our intuition… it’s factual
Okay… but “SO WHAT?”??”
But… how are we going to get there?
Let me explain to you: Maturity Models.
These are a rubric, invented by someone, that explain how to go from sucking at technology, to being amazing at technology.
At one point, World of Warcraft came out and Level 60 was amazing and as high as you could go. A Level 60 mage or warlock was awesome and it was freaking HARD to get there. So this was a serious GOAL. So if you use a maturity model…. 40 is moderate, 50 is super high, 60 is epic. And once you achieve this, you are amazing and you are set.
(go)
OH WAIT. Except the world changed. The competition changed…. And now you can get to level 110. Suddenly being a Level 60 just isn't’ very cool anymore, and frankly, it isn’t good enough. Technology is the same way. And so is business. The best, most innovative companies know this. Their competition is getting better, the world is changing, and customers demand more. So instead of picking a destination, like in a maturity model, they point in a a direction,
As engineers, we know that abstractions never fully map to the world.
MORE fun things we found in the data that debunked myths!
Who here is on the OPS side of the house? Or SRE?
Who here is on the OPS side of the house? Or SRE?
Who here is on the OPS side of the house? Or SRE?
Who here is on the OPS side of the house? Or SRE?
Data backs our intuition… it’s factual
Data backs our intuition… it’s factual
Change approvals
OTHER – days of time to have branch active
We can only do this with data.
With math, we need a proof
Intuition is great, but we need to know for sure.
You’re a part of this thing
We can only do this with data.
With math, we need a proof
Intuition is great, but we need to know for sure.
You’re a part of this thing