Every DevOps enthusiast faces the same challenge at some point: you know DevOps works, your team knows it works, but the decision makers want proof. They want a business case. In this talk at ContainerDays 2019, I break down a practical framework for convincing CIOs and managers to fund your DevOps transformation.
You want to do DevOps. Your team wants to do DevOps. Even your CIO wants to do DevOps. But then comes the inevitable question: “What is the business case?” In this five-minute Ignite Talk at DevOpsDays, I share a simple but powerful tool to convince decision makers that DevOps is worth the investment.
The DevOps business case rarely fails because the technology does not work. It fails because nobody can explain, in money terms, why doing it faster matters. Here is the version that lands with a CFO: a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow, and a feature in production today earns money that a feature in next quarter’s release does not.
Everyone is talking about DevOps. What organisation doesn’t want to develop software more efficiently? So what exactly is the business case for DevOps?
Insight in brief # Value is only created when the product or feature reaches the customer side. Economic concept: “A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.” Focus on rapid Value creation so that You can offer customers Value as quickly as possible.
If you ask a development team where value is created, you will hear a dozen different answers. In the planning workshop. In the sprint. At the demo. At deployment. They are all wrong — and getting this wrong is what makes most DevOps business cases fall apart on contact with the CFO.
Everyone wants to do DevOps. But only a few understand what DevOps is and what it does with your company.
The Challenge # When you want to introduce DevOps in a company you need to convince decision-makers that it is worth investing money, time, and resources into the DevOps transformation. They will ask you about the business case and the return on investment of DevOps.
