DevOps Team Structures: Characterization and Implications

Abstract

Context: DevOps can be defined as a cultural movement to improve and accelerate the delivery of business value by making the collaboration between development and operations effective. Objective: This paper aims to help practitioners and researchers to better understand the organizational structure and characteristics of teams adopting DevOps. Method: We conducted an exploratory study by leveraging in depth, semi-structured interviews to relevant stakeholders of 31 multinational software-intensive companies, together with industrial workshops and observations at organizations' facilities that supported triangulation. We used Grounded Theory as qualitative research method to explore the structure and characteristics of teams, and statistical analysis to discover their implications in software delivery performance. Results: We describe a taxonomy of team structure patterns that shows emerging, stable and consolidated product teams that are classified according to six variables, such as collaboration frequency, product ownership sharing, autonomy, among others, as well as their implications on software delivery performance. These teams are often supported by horizontal teams (DevOps platform teams, Centers of Excellence, and chapters) that provide them with platform technical capability, mentoring and evangelization, and even temporarily facilitate human resources. Conclusion: This study aims to strengthen evidence and support practitioners in making better informed about organizational team structures by analyzing their main characteristics and implications in software delivery performance.

A grounded theory of organizational structures for development and infrastructure professionals in software-producing organizations

“…Although they organize their taxonomy differently from ours, both results present essential common elements, encompassing the ideas of collaborating departments, crossfunctional teams, and the provisioning of platforms. Lopez-Fernandez et al [Lop+21] acknowledge the common points among the works of Shahin et al [Sha+17], ours, and theirs, highlighting different insights brought by them and stressing how these models can be appreciated in conjunction, providing data and methods triangulation. More on the differences between our taxonomy and those of other researchers are in Section 4.5.…”

“…In other paper, Shahin and Babar recommend adding operation specialists to the teams [SB20], which favors cross-functional teams with dedicated infra professionals. These researchers [Lop+21] also found that horizontal teams usually support product teams that follow the above-described patterns. Pattern A and Pattern B are usually supported by platform teams (in the same sense of our platform teams).…”

“…Lopez-Fernandez et al developed a taxonomy concurrently with ours [Lop+21]. Although they organize their taxonomy differently from ours, both results present essential common elements, encompassing the ideas of collaborating departments, crossfunctional teams, and the provisioning of platforms.…”

“…Our taxonomy brings the following key benefits: (i) it helps practitioners to differentiate collaborating departments from a single department, which were traditionally blended under the term DevOps [HM11; FJT16], and (ii) it highlights the API-mediated departments as a promising and emergent alternative for organizations -our taxonomy was the first empirically derived taxonomy to present such a structure (other researchers working concurrently with us also found equivalent structures [Lop+21]). In this context, a valuable contribution we offer is providing empirical evidence that API-mediated departments seem to lead to better outcomes in terms of delivery performance (answering RQ1.2).…”

“…Lopez-Fernandez et al also developed a taxonomy of DevOps Team Structures[Lop+21]. They employed Grounded Theory considering: industrial workshops 8 , observations at organizations, and chiefly 31 semi-structured interviews in software-intensive companies.…”