For organizations using the Atlassian toolchain, DevOps delivers some transformative benefits. But driving the intended outcomes from DevOps doesn’t come easy. A thorough DevOps maturity assessment and effective DevOps discovery are critical to establish the right processes, frameworks, and tools across the Atlassian toolchain.

The Need for DevOps Maturity Assessment 

Let’s face it. Almost every organization today relies on DevOps processes to overcome the inherent product development challenges and accelerate quality and time-to-market. However, not all organizations are at the same level of DevOps maturity. While some have just begun determining the tools and frameworks needed to meet their objectives, others are reaping sustained and transformative benefits from robust DevOps processes and methodologies.

Conducting a DevOps maturity assessment is a great way for teams to know where they stand on the DevOps maturity scale and where they want to be. It allows them to

•   Evaluate current capabilities and determine the steps needed to advance their DevOps expertise.
•   Identify areas of improvement to fuel better collaboration, improve project speed, and drive enhanced results. 
•   Implement best practices across agile project management, shift-left testing, observability, etc. to enable faster delivery, better quality, and more reliable software.

Understanding the Different Types of Discovery

Discovery enables organizations to get a deeper understanding of their development and testing processes. From service management to DevOps and agile, discovery can help teams dig deeper into DevOps challenges and opportunities and get guidance to improve team performance and project success.

DevOps discovery evaluates the level of DevOps maturity in any organization across various aspects, including:

o   Source code management

o   CI/CD

o   Containerization and orchestration

o   Code quality

o   Configuration management

o   Release and deployment management

o   Automation

o   Observability

o   Toolchain integration

Agile discovery enables organizations to deep-dive into their current state of agile adoption and solidify their agile foundation via effective:

o   Process evaluation

o   Tooling audit

o   Gap analysis

o   Continuous improvement

o   Process and workflow analysis

ITSM discovery empowers organizations to modernize and strengthen their IT service management practices through:

o   Thorough current-state assessment

o   Vision and strategy building

o   Process analysis

o   Tooling evaluation

o   Stakeholder engagement

o   Change management

The Objectives of DevOps Discovery

DevOps discovery allows organizations to evaluate their current DevOps capabilities, identify areas for improvement, and implement best practices across software development, delivery, and operations.

Effective discovery helps in analyzing the effectiveness of current DevOps processes, determining the level of collaboration, identifying gaps in the current toolchain, and analyzing security. Encompassing a wide array of assessments and strategies, it helps teams maximize outcomes and minimize risk. Let’s look at the top objectives of DevOps discovery:

•   Streamline processes: Effective DevOps Discovery allows teams to optimize software development and delivery processes. For example, if manual tasks are taking too much time, teams can introduce automation into the DevOps lifecycle to accelerate processes and increase efficiency.
•   Enhance collaboration: Successful DevOps requires teams to engage in frequent dialogues and work towards achieving common goals. An effective discovery session can help identify silos existing between development, operations, and other stakeholders and bridge them to improve collaboration and communication.
•   Improve quality and reliability: DevOps teams often struggle to enhance the quality and reliability of their software. Discovery can help in identifying project bottlenecks or team issues, allowing teams to take the necessary steps. Through the implementation of best practices, they can reduce downtime and defects and ensure higher-quality software and more reliable releases.
•   Speed up time to market: A comprehensive DevOps discovery session can also help teams unearth roadblocks to software delivery. From time management issues to integration concerns, poor communication to lack of clarity of roles and responsibilities – with discovery, teams can identify and work on these issues and respond quickly to market demands and customer needs.
•   Enable continuous improvement: DevOps discovery also empowers teams to cultivate a culture of continuous improvement. An environment where ongoing learning, experimentation, and feedback are valued and encouraged can lead to better quality, delivery, and user satisfaction.

The Outcomes of DevOps Discovery

Teams that undergo a comprehensive DevOps discovery phase can enjoy a range of benefits, including:

•   Improved IT operations that support dynamic provisioning, scaling, and management of application environments.
•   Integrated environments that ensure the software is developed, tested, and moved to production quickly and consistently.
•   Enhanced deployment through the implementation of automated processes that minimize disruptions and ensure controlled rollouts of new features and fixes.
•   Increased observability that enables deep insights into application performance and system health, and allows for proactive issue resolution.
•   Better code quality and security through integrated quality checks and security assessments early in the development lifecycle.

Key Deliverables

enreap’s Atlassian Advisory Services offer strategic guidance and optimized solutions that enable organizations to maximize their Atlassian investment. Through a detailed and comprehensive study of an organization’s DevOps maturity, these services help in understanding the current state of DevOps practices, highlighting areas for improvement, and outlining actionable steps for greater maturity.

Here are key deliverables that organizations can receive once they undergo a DevOps discovery assessment:

•   Maturity report: The DevOps maturity report provides a clear picture of the organization’s current level of DevOps maturity. These are listed across various aspects, including collaboration, automation, standardization, security integration, and the use of metrics and KPIs.
•   List of improvement areas: DevOps discovery will enable organizations to get a deep understanding of areas that need improvement. These can range from poor goal setting, the absence of KPIs, limited security practices, and more.
•   Next-step recommendations: Organizations that undergo a detailed DevOps discovery receive tailored recommendations to advance to the next level of DevOps maturity. This can include tasks such as improving CI/CD, integrating security into development processes, cultivating a culture of continuous learning and improvement, etc.
•   Roadmap for transformation: DevOps discovery also helps organizations obtain a detailed and strategic roadmap with initiatives that can elevate their DevOps practices. Using the organization’s specific needs and objectives as a base, this roadmap will help in taking a phased approach to DevOps with clear milestones and success metrics.
•   Metrics for progress monitoring: With DevOps discovery, organizations can get assistance in defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Result Areas (KRAs) to monitor their DevOps progress. Metrics such as deployment frequency, change failure rate, mean time to recovery (MTTR), and user satisfaction scores will enable them to measure the success of implemented changes and take steps to pivot, if necessary. 

Success Stories 

Success Story 1

A global leader in technology solutions for communications and media providers was facing significant infrastructure and maintenance expenses with its on-premises Jira IT instance. To optimize costs and enhance operational efficiency, it wanted to embark on a cloud migration journey and transition its Jira environment to Atlassian Cloud.

A detailed discovery phase and comprehensive examination of current automation and script helped in systematically prioritizing the migration of critical workflows while seamlessly moving plugin data and configurations to the cloud-based platform. The global leader could successfully replicate the functionality of numerous third-party apps and configurations, reduce operational costs, and eliminate future overheads – all while maintaining the high availability of their Jira instance.

Success Story 2

A large pure-play financial services software was facing several challenges within its existing IT ecosystem. The multi-level technology stack with many loopholes and limited scope coupled with the lack of automation made it difficult to manage internal dependencies and respond promptly.

A thorough analysis of the existing technology setup helped the company accurately identify areas for improvement. The discovery phase aided in the design and development of a new technology architecture with a focus on compliance and minimal downtime. A customized application integrated with existing tools improved team collaboration and productivity and paved the way for informed decision-making.

Transform DevOps with enreap

Despite the pace of digital transformation, every organization faces its share of challenges in accelerating software development. Navigating these challenges requires them to build a future-focused strategy to ensure technology works in their favor – and not the other way around.

As they look to drive better results and value from their Atlassian investments, effective discovery can help them reflect on their DevOps journey and the steps they need to take to improve DevOps efficiency.

Explore the different types of discovery Atlassian offers, or contact us to undertake a fruitful DevOps discovery session.