The IT business environment in Hong Kong is vibrant, dynamic, and highly competitive. The location offers favorable business opportunities for digital agencies, web design and development companies, and other kinds of software providers. According to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (2021), the region has innovative digital and telecommunications facilities, such as submarine and overland optical fiber cable systems, an extensive 5G network, and numerous communication satellites. Hong Kong also boasts a reliable, stable power supply and low electricity tariffs compared to other locations in the Asia-Pacific region. These benefits have made Hong Kong a significant data center and IT hub providing digital services worldwide.
Many tech giants choose Hong Kong as a location for their activities, thus placing the existing companies in a challenging competitive position. The demand for IT services is growing quickly with the rise of IoT, smart cities, and e-commerce. However, the supply market is also extensive, and companies are hard-pressed to evolve, innovate, and improve their organizational processes to stay competitive. The modern customer-oriented approach demands earlier, more frequent releases without quality compromises, which is possible only with automation and cross-functional collaboration. Thus, the IT sector of Hong Kong is on the threshold of a major change toward DevOps integration, which promises a complete redesign of internal processes for continuous delivery (Krey et al., 2022). To survive, DigiSoft needs to optimize and speed up its product delivery pipelines, enabling quick launches of new digital projects for clients.
Business Need for Change
DigiSoft operates in the IT sector, facing external environment, internal structure, and technological development pressures. Since we work to deliver innovative, robust software solutions to their clients, we need to take those pressures into account and keep pace with the dynamic market. The external environment requires quicker service deployment and application affecting the client’s competitive advantage. Internal organizational issues include the need for closer cross-functional collaboration contributing to shorter implementation cycles and agile work practices. Application maintenance expected from a top-rated digital agency like DigiSoft should be stable and easily manageable, which is also a pressing organizational challenge. Finally, new technological developments are quickly entering the software development scene day by day, pressing DigiSoft to comply with automation and productivity enhancement requirements.
All these pressures can be addressed with the introduction of DevOps, many of which allow seamless automation of processes and controls, productivity enhancement, and effective collaboration of development and operation teams. The 2020 report of Deloitte experts characterized DevOps as an innovative tool for achieving continuous integration, testing, delivery, and operations (Onderdelinden et al., 2020). DevOps works in a perfect combination with an agile approach to software development, increasing the frequency and quality of product deployments and releases. Therefore, DevOps is a reasonable solution to the current problems faced by DigiSoft with software delivery lifecycle optimization.
Project Scope
The primary objective of this project is to select and introduce DevOps into Digisoft’s IT infrastructure. The DevOps stack is expected to provide better automation, productivity gains, and a cultural shift toward smooth, effective cross-functional collaboration.
Major Deliverables
The set of deliverables expected by the end of the project includes:
- A report on the flaws of DigiSoft’s currently used fragmented value stream.
- A report analyzing the available DevOps software and giving insights into the most favorable choices for our agency.
- A DevOps target operating model (TOM).
- A list of Agile planning tools that will be used to monitor the progress of DevOps integration and success measurement.
- A carefully developed continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline tailored to DigiSoft’s business logic, IT infrastructure, and human resources.
- A breakdown of roles in DevOps TOM’s governance.
Project Constraints
In most cases, DevOps integration constraints relate to the project’s cost, risks, scope, and quality. As Krey et al. (2022) noted in their latest report, DevOps integration should follow an adequately calculated budget so that the project does not undermine other organizational activities. It is also recommended to keep the project’s scope flexible and benefit-dependent, keeping a strong focus on performance gains, automation, and business value, without sticking to rigid benchmarks and initial expectations. The integration process should start after careful risk assessment, as the success of DevOps implementation is possible only when risks are low and measurable. However, all risks cannot be adequately evaluated and predicted before the onset of integration, as DevOps involves a profound cultural change in the team.
Risk Analysis
Risks that can hinder the project’s implementation include people-related, technological, organizational, and financial risks. People-related risks come from the DigiSoft staff’s natural resistance to change, which undermines their traditional ways of doing things. DevOps adoption is a cultural change involving the adoption of the DevOps mindset, so it may be a challenging transformation for some individuals. The lack of skills and scarce DevOps talent available in DigiSoft may also slow down the process of DevOps adoption. These risks will be addressed by including thorough DevOps training early in the adoption timeline to familiarize all staff with the terminology, technology, and processes. Once the staff get more comfortable with the DevOps concept and refer to knowledgeable experts for training and help, they are expected to accept the change more willingly.
Technological risks are associated with a potential failure to adopt new DevOps tools and integrate them into the existing IT infrastructure of DigiSoft. Integration itself can slow down the company’s daily development routines, thus undermining the deadlines and causing client dissatisfaction. These risks will be mitigated by hiring DevOps integration specialists to lead the change on-site and careful deadline estimation for current and new projects with respect to the DevOps integration needs.
Organizational risks include misinterpreting the progress results because of a lack of robust DevOps evaluation checklists and tools. This problem will be addressed by developing detailed assessment protocols before the onset of the DevOps integration process. The DevOps specialist and provider of DevOps tools will negotiate evaluation tools to ensure their match with the implemented solution. Finally, the financial risk involved in this project relates to the likelihood of exceeding the set DevOps integration budget due to unexpected expenditures or price increases. This risk will be managed by setting the working budget at 75% of DigiSoft’s cap of $200,000.
Financials: Estimated Budget
The budget to complete this project is $200,000.
Required Resources
The project will involve the use of human and technical resources. An in-house Project Manager will be responsible for documentation, project progress oversight, and progress evaluation. The project also presupposes hiring a DevOps integration specialist with extensive expertise in leading software development companies through this change. The process will require allocating separate free time for all DigiSoft staff to undergo training and attend DevOps workshops. Technological resources will include the DevOps stack selected by the hired DevOps expert based on the analysis of DigiSoft’s organizational processes and pipeline flaws.
Milestones and Success Criteria
There are three milestones for the DevOps adoption project. The first one presupposes articulating the project’s vision to all concerned stakeholders, checking its alignment with funding requirements, and a detailed implementation plan. This stage will take four to six weeks of the estimated project length. The success criteria for this milestone are a clear vision of the project’s goals, a confirmed budget, and an approved implementation plan.
The second milestone is pilot testing of the MVP DevOps model in DigiSoft with the assistance of a hired DevOps expert and a representative of the DevOps provider. The agency’s involved staff and Project Manager take an active part in the process by seeking DevOps thinking alignment with their daily practices. This phase’s duration is planned for six-eight weeks, one-third of the entire project’s length. The success criteria for this milestone include a workable MVP of a DevOps model matching DigiSoft and its perceived relevance to staff’s routine operations.
The third milestone is the full-scale adoption and implementation of the DevOps model in DigiSoft. The agency will start working in iterations, each of which will contain a clear set of DevOps capabilities following the planned CI/CD pipeline. The new DevOps-based processes will be guided by in-house DevOps champions trained by the hired expert. Separate consultations on the evolving work pipeline will be provided to DigiSoft clients. This phase will take the remaining time, which is three to four months, depending on the previous phases’ completion speed. The milestone is regarded as a success once a Center of Excellence tasked with DevOps capability scaling is established and performance analysis shows the first sizable gains from DevOps implementation.
Major Stakeholders
Stakeholders involved in this change include DigiSoft’s CEO/senior management, staff, and clients. On the part of the owner, investment in this change is reasonable because it brings higher performance, shorter time-to-market, more innovative practices, and effective automation. All these metrics are strategically crucial for the agency, giving it a competitive advantage in the market, better productivity, and more impressive revenue growth. As far as staff is concerned, the employees may feel resistant to adopting a fundamentally new way of doing their work at first. Yet, with proper onboarding and continuous support throughout the DevOps adoption process, they are sure to feel the productivity gains and benefits of cross-team collaboration. The DevOps method of developing and deploying software is more error-proof than traditional software development approaches. Therefore, it may make a real difference to software developers, designers, and managers in DigiSoft.
Finally, DigiSoft’s clients are external stakeholders of the DevOps implementation process and are expected to find the change beneficial. All clients are interested in getting their software developed and launched to the market quicker, thus having a chance to outperform their numerous competitors. Besides, the DevOps approach allows keeping the client in the loop when they want to review work progress or provide insightful feedback. Therefore, clients should also be informed about the planned change to understand the added value a transfer to DevOps will bring.
Project Roles and Communication Requirements
The core team for DevOps implementation in DigiSoft will include the in-house Project Manager, a DevOps implementation expert hired on a project basis, and a DevOps consultant from the company offering branded DevOps software. A Project Manager will coordinate the project’s progress and align all involved staff’s work on the formulated milestones. The PM will work together with the invited DevOps implementation specialist to plan activities, set success metrics, and allocate the needed human and technical resources. The DevOps expert will facilitate change throughout the project’s duration, providing the needed education and negotiating the DevOps toolset with DigiSoft staff. The DevOps provider’s consultant will collaborate with the PM and DevOps expert to streamline the adoption process, conduct all on-site software tests, and train staff in terms of specific software use. All project documentation will be done in the project management software Teamwork to keep all involved entities updated. The Project Manager will report progress to DigiSoft’s CEO once a week, identifying the completed, in-progress, and planned activities within each milestone.
References
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (2021). Report on Hong Kong’s business environment: A place with unique advantages and unlimited opportunities. Hong Kong Economy. Web.
Krey, M., Kabbout, A., Osmani, L., & Saliji, A. (2022). DevOps adoption: Challenges and barriers. Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 7297-7309. Web.
Onderdelinden, E., Maijs, M., Pondman, D., Nagy, B., Smits, B., & Quekel, M. (2020). DevOps point of view: An enterprise architecture perspective. Deloitte. Web.