Reasons why DevOps implementations fail.

Over the last few years we have seen a monumental rise in the number of organisations adopting a DevOps working culture. This trend shows no signs of slowing down whatsoever and whilst many are now realising the benefits of these working practices many are also struggling with the adoption and in some cases it's either stopped completely or not even started.

There's a number of reasons of why this happens and I've seen some common causes, which is actually a good thing because we can recognise where these are occurring or even prevent them before they start to become a problem.

No clear direction.

It's very difficult to drive to a destination if you don't know where you're actually going (trust me on this, I've tried it). This is obviously very reasonable advice however many DevOps projects fail because of a lack of direction. It's actually a common issue with many buzzing trends, particularly in IT where organisations rush into a technology stack or movement just for the sake of doing it. Inevitably this often always leads to failure.

Organisations need to fully understand what a DevOps culture is, its objectives and its close relationships with their existing business processes and frameworks. A common misconception is people often viewing DevOps as a direct replacement for ITIL when in actual fact it's more of a cultural change built on top of ITIL principles. By fully understanding DevOps the benefits of adoption become much more viable and ultimately the path to it's success becomes much simpler.     

Adopting a silo approach to DevOps.

I often see individual teams being very successful in implementing components of DevOps practices only for other teams being behind in terms of adoption and/or understanding. The classic case is the Developer and DBA; the developer is pushing for much more frequent releases (a realised benefit of DevOps) but then the DBA, who perhaps isn't on board, is then trying their best to slow down all of these changes to their production databases. In the words of Bon Jovi, "we're half way there".

This lack of cohesion or a shared direction can result in a significant bottleneck and the DevOps practices start to creak a little. Then other unintended side effects start to creep in, such as blame and finger pointing (some of the things that a healthy DevOps culture seeks to eliminate) and then it can all start to fall apart. 

DevOps for databases is one particular area that is so heavily reliant on lots of people in different roles working together in a collaborative manner. An organisation must identify this and start to encourage teams to engage and build with each other in the early phases of a DevOps implementation, but organisations also have to be very careful in how they seek to develop this collaborative culture...

Forced collaboration.

I believe collaboration underpins the entire DevOps methodology so it makes perfect sense for organisations to work towards developing much closer working relationships between teams however organisations can also over-formalise things, even making the activity seem very process-driven which often leads to much less buy in from individuals, even entire teams.

This causes obvious problems, not least the silo approach mentioned in the previous point, so organisations have to find the balance on being almost relaxed in how they let relationships build and at the same time provide a certain degree of steer. This isn't as easy as it sounds and it is certainly reliant on strong leadership. In my experience successful implementations have been led by those that enable positive change rather than those who try to dictate it.

Rushing into new tools.

New tools are awesome, fact and in a DevOps ecosystem there are so many to pick and choose from that each bring new ways of doing things and [hopefully] improving productivity. The advantages are great, without a doubt but often tools can be implemented way too early without a focus on the underlying processes. This can significantly reduce the effectiveness of what a particular toolset/platform is trying to achieve; a release management tool for example won't improve a change/release process if the process is fundamentally flawed.

The most successful DevOps implementations focus on people and process first, leveraging the strengths and principles of existing frameworks and building strong collaborative working practices. New tools are going to be an important factor of a system designed with DevOps principles in mind but they need to be leveraged correctly and for the right reasons.


These are some of the common pitfalls that I've seen occur during DevOps implementations, many of which are deeply rooted in the working culture, not the technologies. There is undoubtedly so much to gain by adopting the principles and often it requires organisations to step back and observe their working practices first and spend time exploring the benefits of working with DevOps.

In my next post I'll cover how to address some of these issues and offer some insights into the benefits of building collaborative relationships between data professionals.