It’s tempting to think that Software Delivery is all about technology and tools. Unfortunately, those who think this way tend to focus primarily on optimizing software development rather than on all the pieces that come before and after code has been written. As a result, they miss opportunities to maximize the value of that software to customers. Taking a technical approach to Continuous Delivery may be fine for a while, but it will not help you drive more value continuously.

Software delivery is first and foremost a business endeavor involving everyone in the pipeline from Design, Engineering, and Operations to Marketing and Sales. All the people, tools, tasks, and processes exist to drive business value. Harmonizing all these pieces requires expanding your approach to Continuous Delivery from development centered to business-value-stream centered.

Your goal is to deliver value with your software, time after time. You can automate tasks, but unless business-focused orchestration is driving your pipeline, you won’t be able scale software delivery for your enterprise.

Transforming an organization at scale, however, is not a simple task. It requires leadership, perseverance, and a continual focus on improvement.

The Deep Organizational Transformation Model

Transformation often starts with a focus on Scrum, Continuous Delivery, or frameworks to slice and prioritize work across multiple teams. The question that often arises is, ‘how are all of these instruments or practices related to each other’?

The Deep Organizational Transformation Model (D.O.T.) combines the existing tools for delivering software into a framework made up of four layers. Together, these four layers describe the total scope of an organization:

• The individual employee
• The teams with +/- 8 employees
• The domain with +/- 1200 employees
• The organization with 1200+ employees

I’ve learned that if you want to change an organization, it’s not only the teams that should change. Everyone needs to make sacrifices, processes need to be simplified, and waste must be removed. Only when this happens, from the individual employee level to the deep roots of your large organization, can an enterprise truly transform to one focused on driving value.

As you can imagine, each layer has its own focus area. For example, the focus on one layer might be on simplicity while on another layer, the focus is on experimentation. Check out the chart below. To truly transform your organization, these areas need constant attention. It’s important to remember that they are typically closely related to one another. And pay attention to the items that need to be reduced on each level, as they will have an enormous impact on the things that you want to achieve.

What instruments really matter for transforming your organization?

There are so many buzzwords out there in the Agile world, and even more instruments. If you really want to change your organization, some of these tools and terms matter more than others. With the D.O.T. model, each layer is assigned three of the most important instruments for your transformation. When applying these instruments, you will discover a slow but steady change of your organization.

If you want more information about the D.O.T. model, please have a look at this Slideshare. The purpose of the deck is not to provide an exhaustive look at all of the items that are involved in an Agile transformation. Nor is it the aim of this blog to describe a complete transformation. The simple purpose is to give an overview of all items that matter during a transformation.

The XebiaLabs DevOps Platform

The XebiaLabs DevOps Platform provides the intelligence, automation, and control that both technical and business teams need for Continuous Delivery at enterprise scale. With XebiaLabs, you can open up tools like Jenkins and Gitlab to the entire business, connecting Continuous Integration pipelines to all of the tools and processes in your software delivery pipeline.

Access to real-time status information is available to everyone involved in the delivery process, not just Developers, Operations staff, and release managers, but compliance officers, line of business owners, and more. Now you can improve collaboration across teams and ensure that everyone has the visibility they need to keep the pipeline flowing.

See for yourself. Get a free trial of the XebiaLabs DevOps Platform today.

Parts of this post originally appeared on Andreas’ blog, From Idea to IT.

Learn more

• 4 Software Delivery Mistakes Blocking Your Continuous Delivery
• 11 Black Holes of DevOps: How Not to Get Lost in Outer Space
• XebiaLabs for Continuous Delivery
• Continuous Delivery for Developers

The post Delivering Maximum Value Through Software: Why You Need to Look Beyond Technology appeared first on XebiaLabs Blog.