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DevOps Teams, Enterprise Agile Planning

Imitation is Limitation – Why Your Agile and DevOps Transformations are Failing

Published By Patrick Anderson
Imitation is Limitation – Why Your Agile and DevOps Transformations are Failing

You probably know that your software delivery capabilities are vital in safeguarding your organization against digital disruption from younger, more digital-native companies. To address this threat, you’ve probably adopted widely-publicized Agile and DevOps practices to enhance the delivery speed and quality of your software.

Perhaps you or your someone in your team was inspired by a dazzling presentation at a tech conference that implied, “if you copy this model, you can enjoy the same success!” Yet success has been limited (if there’s been any benefits at all) – so what gives? Sure, your agile development team seem to be creating better code faster, but why is that code not delivering value for customers? And why is waste (i.e. non-value work) so high? What gives?

The cold hard truth is that imitating the successful transformations of Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb et al. will not necessarily improve your ability to quickly deliver quality software. In fact, it could be detrimental, leading to more bottlenecks and waste that could cost your business up to $10 million in lost productivity.

Why is there no silver bullet or magical blueprint? Mainly it’s because you’re not the same as those digital disruptors. In fact, you’re two distinctly different businesses with your own unique software ecosystems. These nuances must be understood if you’re to be successful with your digital transformation. These core differences you need worry about are:

  • Criticality of applications
  • Audit / regulatory obligations
  • Size of developer workforce
  • Partner network

While these differences have a severe impact on your ability to scale Agile and DevOps initiatives, there is a solution. The key is to connect teams and tools to automate the flow of information between stakeholders to obtain visibility and traceability into your software value stream, which is achieved through ‘Value Stream Integration’. This process creates a robust backbone with which to scale Agile and DevOps transformations, enabling organizations to compete (and innovate) in a digital world.

Download our latest e-book – Why Agile and DevOps transformations are failing at scale – to discover why the aforementioned core differences between established organizations and more digital-centric rivals impact your ability to scale your Agile and DevOps transformations, and why Value Stream Integration is only way to level the playing field and optimize your software delivery capabilities.

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Written by Patrick Anderson

Patrick is Senior Content Manager at Tasktop and oversees the company's content and thought leadership programs. Outside the office, you’ll find him reading, writing, slapping some bass (poorly), rambling in nature and following his English football (soccer) team, West Ham United.