A DevOps implementation framework for large agile-based financial organizations

Abstract

Modern large-scale financial organizations show an interest in embracing a DevOps way of working in addition to Agile adoption. Implementing DevOps next to Agile enhances certain Agile practices while extending other practices. Although there are quite some DevOps maturity models available in the literature, they are either not specific to large-scale financial organizations or do not include the Agile aspects within the desired scope. This study has been performed to identify why such organizations are interested in implementing DevOps and how this implementation can be guided by a conceptual framework. As a result, a list of drivers, a generic DevOps implementation framework and driver-dependent variations are presented. The development of these artifacts has been realized through a design science research method and they have been validated by practitioners from financial organizations in the Netherlands. The practitioners have identified the developed artifacts as useful, mainly to educate people within their organizations. Moreover, the artifacts have been applied to real organizational goals to demonstrate how they can be of help to identify the useful measurement units, which in turn can help to measure and achieve their DevOps transformation goals. Thus, the developed artifacts are not only serving as a baseline for future research but are also useful for existing financial organizations to commence and get ahead with their DevOps implementations.