One of the last sections of the 2019 State of DevOps report is how to spread the knowledge throughout an organization. Through this vast research study, they’ve asked about what approaches were used in the disseminating DevOps. They matched this data with the various organizational and SDO performance levels (low, medium, high, and elite).

Turns out, commonly methods like big bang initiatives, mashups, and Centers of Excellence (CoE) are favored by low performing organizations. I was surprised about the Center of Excellence.

Credits to 2019 State of DevOps Report. Page 74.

Here’s the breakdown. The assumption and association by proxy is that elites and high performers have been more effective at their transformation. I’ll highlight the most effective approaches.

Communities of Practice

“Where groups that share common interests in tooling, language, or methodologies are fostered within an organization to share knowledge and expertise with each other, across teams, and around the organization”

Bottom-up or Grassroots

“Where small teams close to the work pull together resources to transform and then informally share their success throughout the organization and scale without any formal organizational support or resources.”

PoC as a Seed

“Starting with a small Proof of Concept (PoC), then spreading PoC knowledge to other groups. This is done by breaking up PoC (either the first PoC group or subsequent/ parallel PoC groups) and sending them to other”

Here’s a copy of the 2019 State of DevOps Report.