How Do DevOps Maturity Models Work?
If you're trying to find ways to develop new products faster and decrease the amount of maintenance for existing deployments, you've likely come across DevOps as a solution to your problems.
DevOps typically involves the automation of deployments and environments to allow for continuous integration and continuous deployment, which minimizes the time required for the development of new products and the support required to maintain processes.
A DevOps maturity model is a guide that helps pinpoint where an organization is in its journey of implementing DevOps principles.
A maturity model in DevOps helps track your growth and learning in a way that can benefit your business in the long run.
It's important to note that working with development and operations teams is a continuous journey that is constantly changing.
There will always be ways your business can implement more DevOps culture and DevOps practices—and having a maturity model is one of the best ways to measure DevOps maturity growth over time.
What Are the Stages of DevOps' Maturity Models?
As your DevOps processes and procedures mature, you will move through DevOps maturity levels, aka, the “stages” of working with DevOps.
This is just a way to generalize where you are in implementing DevOps into your business in an operational maturity model.
Stage 1: Interest
The first stage of DevOps is sometimes referred to as stage zero. This is someone who hasn't started using DevOps at all but is interested in using DevOps to help their business. In this stage, you're likely looking to increase your delivery, automation, testing, and monitoring, among other things.
Stage 2: Investment
The second stage of DevOps is starting to invest and implement DevOps by hiring or working with experienced DevOps teams. In this stage, you're just getting your foot in the door of using DevOps and likely trying to find or start a small DevOps team that can help you reach your goals.
Outsourcing DevOps to a company like OpSourced removes the stress and time of hiring individual DevOps Engineers and trying to assess their competency. We are an experienced, reputable company, and we vouch for the quality of our engineers' work.
We work with your team to develop a DevOps Maturity Model and ensure a smooth transition into the process. Contact us today to learn more about our DevOps Consulting Service and how it can benefit your business.
Stage 3: Implementation & Automation
The third stage of DevOps is the first stage of implementation. In this stage, automation is first introduced.
Because DevOps aims to improve speed and reduce maintenance, automation around all levels of your infrastructure and application is a foundation of adopting DevOps practices.
Once configuration management and automation have been introduced, the next step is continuous integration. This is the automation of building and testing code.
Continuous integration in a maturity model is a major step towards mature, high-functioning DevOps practices.
After you've begun using continuous integration, your DevOps practices will be in a stage where they're considered blended. Your development and operations have been merged and are no longer working in separate environments.
See also: What Is DevOps As a Managed Service and Why Do You Need It?
Stage 4: Continuous Deployment & Delivery
The final stage in developing DevOps is continuous deployment and delivery.
Continuous delivery in a maturity model is a big step because it advances your implementation of DevOps and leads to continuous improvement. When you are using continuous delivery, the entire software release process, from code to production, can be automated.
What Goes Into a DevOps Maturity Assessment?
When DevOps maturity is looked at as a whole big picture, there are a few different criteria that are analyzed as signs of maturity.
DevOps Maturity for Application
This looks at the level of security of an application and whether or not it's maintained throughout development. In mature DevOps, the same level of security is maintained from code development through production.
DevOps Maturity by Data
This focuses on the ability and capacity for data operations to act for automated updates and automatically verify their functionality.
DevOps Maturity by Infrastructure
These are the handling abilities related to automation and supporting self-service. A mature DevOps system should have a lot of automation and be able to support self-service capabilities.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a DevOps maturity model?
A DevOps maturity model is a guide that helps pinpoint where an organization is in its journey of implementing DevOps principles. A maturity model in DevOps helps track your growth and learning in a way that can benefit your business in the long run.
How to Get Started With DevOps
Using a DevOps maturity model is a great way to start your DevOps journey and measure your success along the way.
Implementing DevOps can be a long, complicated process, and using tools to keep you on track is a good idea.
If security is a major concern for your business, similar tactics described in this article can be used to create a DevSecOps maturity model. DevSecOps is very similar to DevOps but has an added emphasis on security and continuous monitoring that we build into all of our DevOps-as-a-service implementations.
If you're interested in how security can be part of your DevOps implementation, our DevSecOps Consulting Services offer the same benefits of DevOps consulting plus added attention where you need it.
Consulting with OpSourced can help you create a DevOps environment that ensures all your business needs are being met. Contact us today to get started on a seamless, stress-free DevOps journey.