In DORA’s 2022 State of DevOps Report, they made some observations about the importance of culture in an organization’s ability to successfully implement DevOps practices. The three key components they identified are Work Arrangement Shifts, Employee Churn, and Employee Burnout. DORA observed that in high performing teams, employee churn is low, employees are invested and motivated in the team success, and the company provides flexibility in work arrangements for their teams.
The linked blog describes these key components nicely:
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/devops-sre/culture-in-the-2022-state-of-devops-report
What have you observed as you’ve worked in successful DevOps organizations? Were these key components present? How about in less successful DevOps organizations?
These components resonate with me, and they build on each other. At the root of them all is trust. Does the company trust its employees to try to do what’s right, or do they expect them to deliberately do what’s wrong? If they trust them to try to do what’s right, they are more willing to give flexibility and to push authority down as low as possible so that employees are empowered to do their jobs. If employees are empowered, they tend to be more content and less likely to jump to other opportunities. And if employees are content, they are similarly less likely to experience burnout.
