Boost your digitalization: DevOps

One of the models I use frequently in my consulting assignments is the 10 Types of Innovation model by Doblin/Monitor Group. As suggested by the name, it identifies ten different forms of innovation arranged around the business ecosystem, the offering and the customer experience. This model is important as most people think about improving the product when they hear the word “innovation,” but in practice, as the authors of the model show, product innovation has the lowest return on investment (RoI) of all the ten types. Instead, innovating the business model, customer experience and surrounding processes have significantly higher RoI.

One of the innovations not necessarily concerned with the product but with the other dimensions is DevOps. Although the term is used frequently, I still notice that many fail to identify how deep the impact of the adoption is. DevOps fundamentally changes, among other things, the interface to the customer, the product in the field and, frequently, the business model. As we’ve discussed throughout this series of posts, digitalization is concerned with continuous value delivery to customers, which is predominantly driven by releasing new software to products in the field. As the customer often is the owner of the product, there frequently is some involvement by the customer to ensure that the update happens when it’s convenient for the customer.

The relation to the product in the field changes in several ways. First, software traditionally was extensively tested as part of the integration into the product before being shipped to the customer, and this included several manual steps and activities. Now, the software is released and the product is expected to update itself without causing any issues or concerns. Also, if an issue is detected, the product needs to be able to roll back to ensure availability.