Creating Kaizen plans – VSM step seven

There is a real danger of failure when incrementally implementing a CI/CD or DevOps toolchain and pipeline on an ad hoc basis. To start, executive managers may not fully understand the time and costs involved, and may resist when they see unexpected and unplanned Capital expenditure (CAPEX) requests that have been sent to them for approval. The development and operations teams will become frustrated if their toolchain and platform requests are not approved. There are tools, as well as process integration and security issues, that must be addressed when developing the DevOps pipeline, and internal customers and stakeholders may have false expectations of how long the improvements may take.

DevOps is a business transformation activity. It's much more of a business process reengineering program than an incremental business process improvement initiative, and the DevOps initiative needs to be treated accordingly. In other words, DevOps...