The value of DevOps and experimentation

In this article, we will discover how valuable experimentation is.

The value of taking risks

By not taking risks, you begin losing the competitive advantage for your organisation, and that might end up costing more money than the experiment itself. Even if the experiment ends up failing, everyone on the team learns what exactly worked and didn’t work to improve upon next time.

One of the ways that DevOps and experimentation complement each other is that DevOps encourages a cultural shift of quick release for fast feedback cycles, so you know that when you’re trying something new, you will receive feedback quickly for your experiment and change direction if necessary.

If you are trying to experiment in a non-DevOps process, you might be experimenting for six months to a year before receiving any feedback versus a shorter time, such as a few weeks. The time to feedback with experiments using DevOps alone potentially save enough costs to outweigh the risks of the experiment.

Weighing experimentation risks and benefits

An unexpected benefit of taking risks and hypothesis-driven software development is that they motivate the team. By not feeling as though there will be consequences when suggesting new ideas or features that don’t work, it might turn out that the team will be inspired to be even more creative than they were before.

Team experimentation is very helpful but individual experimentation is important as well. Utilisation ties in with individual experimentation because teams are often continuously utilised at maximum capacity. This might leave little time in the workweek to contribute to the organisation with even more features.

Driving new business

Some organisations have even adopted strategies for teams to work four out of five days on committed features, and then spend a day working on whatever they want that might help the organisation. These organisations are now considered some of the most innovative companies because the experiments that individuals worked on for one day a week have driven new business.