At the upcoming 2017 DevOps Enterprise Summit in San Francisco, questions about how DevOps at scale is really faring in large organizations are going to be raised and debated on the podiums and in the halls. To get that conversation started a bit earlier, we asked three DOES speakers about what to expect at the conference and the state of DevOps in 2017.

Robert Stroud, principal analyst serving infrastructure and operations professionals at Forrester, will be speaking on “DevOps In The Enterprise: The Analyst ‘Outside-In’ Perspective” and “DevOps: From Analyst Inquiry to Organizational Action.” Rob England, best known as The IT Skeptic and a management consultant with Two Hills, will speak on the subject of “Surviving DevOps.” And Torsten Volk, managing research director for hybrid cloud, the software-defined data center, machine learning and cognitive computing at Enterprise Management Associates, will also speak about “DevOps in the Enterprise” alongside Stroud.

What’s going well with DevOps right now?

Rob England: DevOps adoption is growing at an extraordinary pace right now, at least in my part of the world (New Zealand). And what they’re doing with containers is indistinguishable from magic.

Torsten Volk: The first thing companies are doing right is that they are aware there is an issue of antagonism between dev and ops, and they’re working on figuring it out. If they don’t, they can’t have faster development and high-quality releases. And the number two thing they’re doing right is looking at containers being the vehicle to transport a turnkey runtime. They are basically giving their developers the tools to very quickly and comprehensively deliver what they’ve written.

What are issues we may not hear about, or enough about, at DOES? Will DevOps at scale be on the agenda?

Robert Stroud: We hear about how DevOps is wonderful, but I don’t think we hear the horror stories. DevOps is about caring and sharing and a blameless culture, and that’s an interesting concept, but we should be made aware of things that don’t work. We may not hear about traditional IT or how to evolve to get DevOps at scale, and we need to hear about that. I don’t see a lot of content (in the conference schedule) on DevOps at scale across a true enterprise organization, and that is the stuff we need to hear.

England: Some of the biggest challenges right now are that DevOps is seen as the magic bullet. DevOps is especially being seen by management as something that will change people, but they don’t need to changethemselves or change any of the other functions in the organization, such as governance, HR, finance and so on. Also, we are on the Gartner hype cycle. As we peak, we will begin to hear the DevOps-doesn’t-work stories and see the backlash.

Ideally, what should happen next to propel DevOps at scale adoption forward?

England: We are in the middle of the IT Renaissance. There has never been a bigger change in the way we think about how we do IT. Let’s get our head around this shift first before we start thinking about something else. Our addiction to novelty is harmful to our industry.

Volk: We need intent-based DevOps. At the end of the day, what I mean by that is that if a developer has a certain task, he or she should receive a developer workspace that is tailored to exactly that task. We need to be pushing the tailoring of workspace to the developer so they don’t have those hoops to jump over.
Stroud: IT as we know it is fundamentally at a crossroads. DevOps made devs heroes, and as we transition to BizDevOps, businesses are going to be the heroes. We’re going to move R&D back into the business, and developers are now going to be part of the business team.

The Business Case for Agile Transformation

To maintain a competitive edge in today’s evolving marketplace, businesses must refocus their strategies around the customer—more efficiently prioritising work and continuously delivering value. This requires more than a process tweak. It demands a new operating model: one that empowers networks of small, cross-functional teams to collaborate, iterates rapidly on customer feedback, and gives leaders the clarity of vision to align an entire organisation around shared goals.

This kind of whole-business transformation is not optional. Customers expect products that get continuously better. They expect near-instant response times. They can—and do—switch to a competitor at the first sign of friction. Millennial customers, in particular, demand a seamless, integrated experience regardless of channel (Accenture, “Who Are the Millennial Shoppers? And What Do They Really Want?”). With product development cycles accelerating and new markets emerging faster than ever, old operating models simply cannot keep pace.

Agile is not a simple process change, nor a mere development methodology. Implemented correctly, it changes the very core of how a company thinks, acts, and collaborates.

Agile and DevOps Are Better Together

Expanded collaboration can begin close to the point where products are delivered to customers—specifically, when a company brings together Agile development and DevOps practices. Historically, engineering teams developed a product in isolation while operations teams deployed it in a separate silo. Code was thrown back and forth with little meaningful collaboration, slowing delivery and degrading quality.

Pairing Agile and DevOps removes that unnecessary barrier. DevOps reinforces Agile’s effectiveness through stronger teamwork and communication; Agile, in turn, gives DevOps the iterative structure it needs to consistently deliver on promises of speed and quality. Synchronising these teams enables easier communication, faster feedback loops, and ultimately better products delivered more quickly.

The business case for combining these practices is compelling. A global survey conducted by Coleman Parkes on behalf of CA Technologies found that 81% of senior business and IT executives agree that Agile practices and DevOps are critical to successful digital transformation (“Accelerating Velocity and Customer Value with Agile and DevOps”, CA Technologies). The same survey found that 88% and 87% of companies, respectively, have integrated Agile practices and DevOps into at least one area of their business—yet only 30% have scaled Agile beyond development, and only 34% have broadly implemented DevOps across IT.

According to the same CA Technologies research, organisations working with Agile and DevOps in tandem reported the ability to:

• Increase new business growth by 63%
• Increase operational efficiency by 41%
• Decrease IT-related costs by 65%, compared to Agile-only environments

The implication is clear: neither practice reaches its full potential in isolation. The real competitive advantage lies in combining them—and then scaling that combination beyond IT.

To Scale Agile, It Must Be a Culture Transformer

A growing number of businesses are moving beyond Agile as a purely technical practice and spreading its principles across marketing, finance, human resources, and even executive teams. An Agile organisation is one that can rapidly focus on its most important priorities and either get ahead of market shifts or respond to them before competitors do.

But this requires a genuine cultural evolution—and culture starts at the top. When Agile implementations stall or fail, it is often because developers have embraced Agile methods while those in leadership positions have not adjusted to the new mindset. Leaders who default to command-and-control management actively undermine Agile’s core premise: that the people closest to the customer are best positioned to sense change and respond to it.

A company will not change if its leaders are not flexible—and it will not sustain change if employees lack the mechanisms and psychological safety to change their behaviours. To drive genuine Agile adoption, leaders need to shift their role from directive authority to enabling coach. Practically, this means three things:

1. Be Transparent

In many command-and-control organisations, information is hoarded because knowledge is power. This directly conflicts with the Agile mentality. Agile leaders share context openly, trusting employees with the information they need to make good decisions. Transparency is not a cultural nicety—it is a prerequisite for effective self-organising teams.

2. Deepen Collaboration

Leaders must become facilitators of Agile transformation, actively connecting employees across teams and building collaborative culture. This means more than delegating tasks and stepping away. Leaders need to familiarise themselves with Agile tools, practices, and terminology—well enough to organise and nurture teamwork that drives shared objectives and reduces work in progress (WIP).

3. Identify Agile Ambassadors

Every organisation scaling Agile needs internal evangelists—people who teach, model, and encourage Agile behaviours and processes. Where internal expertise does not yet exist, Agile consultants and coaches can fill the gap. These ambassadors help create shared standards and best practices, focusing limited resources on the highest-value activities and giving teams a common language for improvement.

Agile Beyond IT: The Wider Business Opportunity

Originally developed in manufacturing and then adopted widely in software development, Agile methodology is now being applied to knowledge work across the enterprise. The core mechanism—visualising workflow, limiting work in progress, and continuously improving—applies to any consistent and repeatable process. Business functions that stand to benefit from Agile principles include:

• Human Resources: Iterative hiring cycles, continuous performance feedback instead of annual reviews, and rapid onboarding adjustments based on new-hire experience.
• Finance: Rolling forecasts and adaptive budgeting that respond to real business conditions rather than locking teams into annual plans.
• Marketing: Sprint-based campaign planning that allows rapid testing, measurement, and course-correction based on customer response data.

When employees are empowered to adapt and take calculated risks within an Agile framework, the benefits extend beyond productivity metrics. Engaged employees who own their work contribute more, better meet customer needs, and help their organisations stay ahead of the competition. The organisations that thrive in the next decade will be those that treat Agile not as an IT initiative, but as the operating system for the entire business.

Key Takeaways

• Agile is a whole-business transformation, not just a software development methodology.
• Combining Agile with DevOps produces measurably better outcomes than either practice alone, according to CA Technologies research.
• Scaling Agile requires cultural change, led from the top—leaders must model transparency, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Agile principles apply equally well to HR, finance, and marketing as they do to engineering teams.
• Agile ambassadors—internal or external—are essential to sustain cultural change at scale.