What is BizDevOps?
Constantly changing market conditions mean that companies need to be more agile, i.e. more flexible and quicker to adapt. To achieve this, a new form of collaboration within companies has proven itself in practice.
Traditional organisational structures are often characterised by internal customer-supplier relationships and silo mentalities. Specialist departments and IT spend a great deal of time creating requirements and coordinating them; shared goals are the exception rather than the rule. Specialist departments, development teams and IT operations often work against each other rather than with each other. This can lead to considerable delays and additional financial expenditure in day-to-day project business.
BizDevOps combines product development and operations to bypass existing silos, shorten development cycles, reduce dependencies and increase overall product quality. It is an approach in which all necessary functions from within the company work together in a product team. BizDevOps is an approach to organisational development that builds on DevOps principles and expands them to include technical components.
BizDevOps cannot be regarded as a "one-size-fits-all" solution. Experience shows that it is best suited to business areas that develop new products and are end-customer-driven and market-oriented. This approach supports a high level of customer interaction, an agile mindset and a continuous process of adaptation and change in product development.
Many companies today are striving for cultural change, new leadership approaches, higher employee motivation and self-fulfilment. BizDevOps can be a solution to the current challenges in the digital world.
Excerpt:
DevOps is a concept with different interpretations and definitions, but in general it is about developers and operations teams breaking down silos and working together to innovate faster. DevOps is a set of practices that enable fast, reliable and predictable software delivery. If you expand the two perspectives (Dev and Ops) to include a business perspective, you get BizDevOps.
The areas of business, IT development and IT operations are usually highly interdependent, but typically work in silos. Merging them into a single unit that can respond quickly and flexibly to different business/IT requirements and market developments makes it possible to keep customer focus in mind at all times. The close integration of the various departments enables more targeted work on business objectives. As a result, customer requests can be fulfilled more frequently and more easily. The respective teams live up to their assigned end-to-end service responsibility in close and regular contact with customers.
In Detail
BizDevOps is a largely unknown term and is usually associated with technology. We see BizDevOps as part of a cultural organisational change. Companies such as ING-DiBa AG, BMW AG and E.ON SE have been successfully applying this approach in some areas for years.
Background
BizDevOps (a fusion of business, development and operations) is a customer- and service-oriented way of working in which different disciplines within a company collaborate across functions in dedicated teams. This offers companies significant improvements in terms of time to market, customer satisfaction, operational security and stability, and financial benefits.
BizDevOps is derived from the DevOps model, which was originally developed for IT departments and is mainly used there. However, it can also be adapted for other services where cross-functional and close cooperation is important in order to create added value.
Our glossary entry on DevOps explains the basic definitions and advantages resulting from its introduction. What BizDevOps is, why it is needed, what advantages it offers, where it should be used, how it can be integrated into organisations and how it could be introduced are all explained in more detail below.
What is BizDevOps?
BizDevOps is a concept with different interpretations and definitions, but in general it is about product development and IT operations teams breaking down silos and working together to shorten development cycles and improve quality.
BizDevOps is a concept that combines business, development and operational expertise in one team. The areas of business, IT development and IT operations are usually highly interdependent, but often work in silos.
This concept is based on trust between team members, but also on trust in the organisation. The concept focuses on innovation, improvement and automation. Other important values include product focus (as the team works on a product), shared responsibility (the entire team is responsible for the product) and collaboration.
While almost all of this also applies to agile projects, the idea of BizDevOps is more sustainable:
In a classic project setup, the project team works closely with the business to develop the product during the development phase, and after go-live, it is handed over to another operations team. The BizDevOps approach is to form a joint team that remains in place throughout the entire product lifecycle. This means that the same people, including representatives from the business department, continuously maintain and improve the product.
The team size may vary depending on the workload and required skills, but certain individuals remain in the team. Another advantage is that skills are distributed across the entire team over time (T-shaped skill set), so that in the best case scenario, even users from the specialist department will ultimately be able to understand the application code.
Why do we need BizDevOps?
Constant market changes and customer needs require the development of new (digital) products in order to remain competitive in the market. The implementation of BizDevOps initiatives enables the company to respond quickly to rapidly changing market requirements. On the one hand, BizDevOps can shorten time to market and enable continuous product delivery, while on the other hand reducing the number of problems and problem resolution times.
Furthermore, it guarantees a strict focus on customer value, as the specialist departments are embedded in the team. BizDevOps eliminates resource bottlenecks by implementing stable, long-term collaborative teams. Reducing errors by maintaining operational E2E responsibility and accountability will increase personal responsibility, productivity and efficiency. Since BizDevOps teams are self-organising, overhead and costs can be reduced.
The above points, together with an end-to-end view of the products and the automation of product delivery, guarantee optimal and value-adding results.
When and where can we use BizDevOps?
An important question is when and where BizDevOps teams should be deployed, or where it makes sense to introduce them. When does it make sense to build products in BizDevOps mode?
The BizDevOps approach should be the first choice for new products. There may already be teams working in a DevOps-like mode. These could be the first candidates to begin the transformation to the BizDevOps concept. Teams or products that have operational problems that could be solved by switching to BizDevOps should also be considered at an early stage.
In the long term, every product that meets the criteria in the following "Where" section should be set up in BizDevOps mode.
Where should BizDevOps be used?
The following six categories can be used to assess suitability for a BizDevOps implementation.
– Customer interaction: high customer activity – by customers, we mean both internal and external consumers.
– Agile mindset: the development team thinks agilely and wants to develop the product based on certain values and principles.
– Frequency of changes: the number of changes to the product represents another category.
– Significant IT component: This is not just a process adjustment or minor IT development.
– Continuous and frequent delivery: The product is suitable for regular and continuous delivery.
– Frequent cross-functional coordination: Diversity in product development (significance for communication effort, etc.).
How can BizDevOps be embedded in the organisation?
BizDevOps as a model cannot be viewed in isolation from the overall organisation, as there are naturally interfaces with the line organisation, both in terms of technical and IT-related matters.
The core of BizDevOps is a cross-functional team that aims to develop and continuously improve a product. The product owner is responsible for maximising the value of the product resulting from the work of the development team. The way this is done can vary greatly between companies, Scrum teams and individuals. The product owner is the only person responsible for managing the product backlog.
In scaled agile approaches, there may be a role of Chief Product Owner (CPO). The CPO is the senior Product Owner within a Product Owner team for a large development project. In this role, the overall strategy and vision are maintained. All other agile practices and patterns are applied to the CPO role in the same way as in the case of the Product Owner.
The Delivery Manager works closely with the CPO and provides the IT assets (knowledge, IT strategy, resources, etc.) necessary for the successful implementation of customer requirements.
The business owner is usually a senior manager in the functional line organisation who is responsible for a specific business segment, often in combination with profit and loss responsibility. They are responsible for product budgets and ensure that the BizDevOps team has the appropriate capacity from all areas of the company at their disposal.
BizDevOps roles
A BizDevOps team usually consists of the roles familiar from agile Scrum teams.
IT line organisation/business line organisation
In a BizDevOps team, employees from the line organisation are deployed to support product development in the long term and ensure stable operational systems. In addition to internal on-site employees, the organisation also provides near- and offshore resources from partners. Furthermore, it promotes continuous improvement and training programmes for colleagues, often in collaboration with the human resources department.
IT platforms
In order to achieve the shortest possible time to market and an optimal cost structure, BizDevOps teams should use shared IT platforms. The platform teams then assign SMEs to the BizDevOps teams as needed.
Classic Ops
A BizDevOps team also interfaces with traditional operations, e.g. connecting to the general IT management service with its relevant ITIL processes, the (IT) helpdesk or customer knowledge management via the customer call centre.
IT security/data protection/works council
Of course, a BizDevOps team must also comply with legal, competition law or internal regulations or standards, as appropriate interfaces to these teams must be installed.
Business Processes
In order to work efficiently, a BizDevOps team needs simple integration into various business processes such as purchasing (e.g. to provide new tools) or finance (e.g. to enable transparent cost forecasting and planning).
What are the challenges and opportunities?
Five major topics can be identified here:
Culture – BizDevOps requires a change in corporate culture towards greater responsibility, tolerance for mistakes, exchange of knowledge and feedback, and leadership change.
Collaboration – Bringing together all the necessary skills in the team creates stronger collaboration that transcends the line organisation and reduces dependencies on other teams.
Holistic process – To ensure end-to-end responsibility, it is also necessary to take a holistic view of processes and adjust them if necessary.
Products – The interdisciplinary structure of BizDevOps teams is purely product-centric.
Automation – One of the biggest levers for increasing speed and quality is automation. This also enables continuous compliance with guidelines such as data protection and security requirements.
All five areas are affected by various challenges. Some of these challenges also represent direct opportunities and contribute to the success factors of BizDevOps. It should be noted that the nature of the challenges and opportunities varies from team to team and should always be considered on an individual basis.
What are the advantages of BizDevOps?
The introduction of BizDevOps offers companies significant improvements in terms of quality, time to market, customer satisfaction, operational security and stability, as well as financial benefits. It provides every opportunity to continuously improve productivity in a simple manner.
However, many of the benefits can already be achieved in whole or in part by applying or implementing agile working methods (e.g. Scrum). Therefore, in order to determine the benefits that a company can derive from implementing the BizDevOps approach, it is important to evaluate and define where the company currently stands.
Advantages such as cross-functional collaboration, short and regular product releases, focus on customer needs/feedback, and maximisation of product value are very typical for organisations that use an agile framework (e.g. Scrum).
The potential benefits of BizDevOps concepts, which can be aligned with business requirements, are manifold. It is important that the team defines these goals in advance and continuously works to achieve them. Cross-functional collaboration, tight improvement loops, and an open learning and working atmosphere are the right ingredients for greater productivity.
The technical advantages include less complex software deployment, faster problem resolution and reduced susceptibility to errors. The business advantages include faster deployment, a more stable operating environment, improved communication and collaboration, more time for innovation and thus greater customer benefit. The integrated collaboration of business and technical units leads to a deeper understanding of the possibilities and requirements of all areas. Operational advantages such as version control and better versioning, higher development speed, better collaboration between teams, lower IT costs, higher productivity, and automated configuration options also contribute to significantly reducing the time required for resource management.
BizDevOps also creates cultural benefits. Teams take responsibility for a service throughout its entire lifecycle, which increases their commitment and enhances loyalty and career development opportunities.
Communication within the BizDevOps team is facilitated by close collaboration between cross-functional team members working in different locations. This way of working enables team members to gain a holistic view of the entire E2E service and its processes. This leads to the identification and improvement of potential weaknesses and gaps in the processes.
Enabling the team to collaborate in this way will significantly reduce the time needed to resolve issues/problems, as there is no need for handoffs between different teams. The efficiency gained in this way allows teams to focus on value-adding tasks.
Shifting decision-making authority to the teams creates the best conditions for increasing the motivation of each individual team member.
How can you get started?
The implementation of BizDevOps should initially be applied to a few flagship products before being rolled out to all use cases at a later stage.
Most teams and projects remain within the existing structures, and a few flagship products begin with the implementation of BizDevOps. Products and projects that are already operating in DevOps mode can continue to be activated and used as flagships. Over time, and after gaining experience and trust, additional projects should be migrated to BizDevOps mode, and new initiatives should be set up directly in BizDevOps mode, if appropriate.
Implementation can begin according to the following schedule:
1. Include existing lighthouse areas and learn from them
2. Define organisational structure, roles + methods for BizDevOps
3. Identify/select new lighthouse candidates
4. Introduce/define goals and metrics
5. Define and automate, automate, automate ...
6. Review and adjust – people, processes, products
7. Share lighthouse successes, failures and lessons learned
8. Repeat & scale
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