A 5-Step Guide to Creating a DevOps Strategy Roadmap

DevOps promises to be the future for many software development environments. This technique aims to deliver faster, higher quality results at a lower cost than traditional methods than legacy development tools, so should be a primary option for any enterprise.

However, a poorly-implemented DevOps solution won't see any of these benefits. What's more, it may even set your progress back if employees don't know what their roles are within the environment or aren't convinced of its value. To avoid these negative outcomes, it's vital you have a clear roadmap in place for any DevOps project.

Why you need a DevOps roadmap

Developing a DevOps strategy and going ahead without a roadmap is a recipe for failure. Some of the issues that you may encounter if you don't have such a document to refer to include:

• Lack of visibility into the process
• Lack of accountability
• Lengthier development cycles
• Risk of project creep
• Poor resource management

While many of these issues may be common to all types of software development, the DevOps approach depends heavily on professionals from various teams working in a closely integrated manner, where any delays or setbacks can be highly disruptive. Therefore, any issues created by a lack of clarity or control can quickly prove fatal to a project's chances of success.

In short, a good DevOps roadmap keeps everyone on track and prevents you from getting overwhelmed by a project.

How to develop a successful DevOps roadmap

It's clear that the cost of failing to prepare effectively for a DevOps software development project can be high. So what does it take to put an effective roadmap in place? Follow these five key steps and you'll stand the best chance of running a project that meets its desired objectives.

1. Have a clear objective

The first priority needs to be to establish a clear, focused objective for the project. This may seem obvious, but too many developments are burdened by scope creep or confusion about what stakeholders actually want.

Try and keep your focus as simple as possible. You can afford to have two or three objectives for a project, but any more than this and the process will quickly become overly-complex. Ask what purpose you're looking to achieve with the application or update, and if you can't answer it in a single sentence, it's probably too ambitious.

2. Set focused short-term goals

As well as an overall goal, you need a clear idea of how to get there. Having specific targets for each step of the process breaks up the project into smaller, more easily-understood increments that teams can focus their efforts on.

Try to look no more than three months down the line when setting these goals. This should be long enough to complete the highest-priority initiatives for the engineering and development teams, but not so much time that the roadmap itself becomes cluttered.

3. Make your roadmap visually appealing

The DevOps strategy roadmap is a document that will need to be referenced frequently by the team throughout the business, so it's worthwhile to take the time to put it in a presentable, easy-to-understand format. If your DevOps roadmap is nothing more than a long text document or spreadsheet, viewers often won't have a clear picture of what the top priority items are or how the timelines should look.

Visual cues such as color-coding, diagrams and templates that highlight key points all help communicate the most important aspects of the plan to team members, identifying who's responsible for what, when key milestones are expected to be achieved and much more.

4. Keep engineering and ops teams in the loop

It's important that all stakeholders have easy access to the roadmap, but you should make it a priority to ensure your engineering, development and operations teams are given especially close focus. Make sure these teams are involved in drafting the plan as early as possible and encourage them to check it regularly to see when they receive priority items from other teams.

Having the input of these teams right from the start and ensuring they have the right tools to collaborate throughout the project makes certain no-one is confused about what their roles are and know who to turn to if they have any questions.

5. Make sure your roadmap is updated regularly

Once the DevOps roadmap is finished, don't just pin it on the wall and stick rigidly to it. The plan needs to be treated as a living document that's revised and updated to reflect changes in scope, budget or priorities. While wholesale adjustments may defeat the purpose of sticking to the plan, it's vital that any revisions are communicated quickly to the relevant teams to avoid wasted effort on areas that don't address the new reality.

However, you should also ensure it’s updated as milestones are reached and goals achieved. Consider doing more than simply ticking off tasks as done. An element such as a percentage bar to measure progress or a way to hover over a task and see its current status can be invaluable at giving information at a glance.