Digital Efficiency: Unique processes and tools to adapt your business continuously

Although many discussions have linked product management, design, DevOps, and data-driven approaches, little has been said about the most valuable component that such connections feature: digital efficiency, which ensures rapid adaptation, reaction, and impact generation, in addition to streamlining the traditional structures of the agile model for maximum gains in scale. 

In this scenario, it is necessary to evolve software engineering practices. We need to walk through the operational and mental models of a tech company before talking about experience and the ability to adapt to changing needs and opportunities.

Testing laboratories

According to a survey by IT Mídia (conducted in the 1st half of 2022), 58% of the companies interviewed are trying to position Information Technology (IT) as a strategic area in the business. 

Riding the wave of digital transformation, product and service companies from several sectors projected the dream of transforming IT into a large laboratory for rapid testing (which unlocks learnings with the way users interact, identifying new opportunities through what it offers more value to these people). 

With agile and accelerated development, each new feature could be treated as an experiment before being incorporated into platforms, products, and the business. After all, shortened cycles between the conception of hypotheses, development, implementation, and measurement of results based on data are the key to bringing an ever-greater impact when it comes to digital.

To make the project come true, tech companies that seek ever shorter implementation cycles, with longer time to market, need to bring the business team closer to the development teams and invest in new software engineering practices.

 DevOps Research & Assessment (DORA), acquired by Google in 2020, is an institute that has carried out annual surveys on the maturity of these engineering practices worldwide since 2014 and presents them in its report called Accelerate State of DevOps. Among the learnings, they classify companies into 4 performance levels in software delivery (Low, Medium, High and Elite performers). For instance, operations considered Elite have a software release time (from development to production) below 1 hour. On the other hand, it is not uncommon to see large companies with times in the range of 50-80 days. The difference is quite significant.

This performance level, combined with product practices integrated with technology teams, is the great race of the post-digital transformation moment.

Elite Operations

Elite Operations already represent 26% of the 32 thousand operations analyzed by research performed by DORA in 2021; in 2018, it was just 7%, according to the report. These operations perform multiple deployments daily (up to 973 times more than low-performance operations), as well as implement project changes and fix failures 6,570 times faster. The report reveals that Elite teams make three times fewer errors.

In addition, prioritizing velocity (frequency of deploying new code in production and time between the development of a feature until production) and stability (which involves identifying which codes originated incidents in production that impacted the user and the time from incident identification to correction in production) creates a healthy tension to accelerate without sacrificing quality.

Such characteristics are predicted by the s4 Key Metrics that are being adopted corporately to measure operational performance in companies.

Technical capabilities

New technical capabilities such as cloud computing, microservices, and automation-based processes are also adopted to achieve digital efficiency. As each journey is unique, it is crucial to understand which features should be prioritized in this constantly evolving market. 

For example, the Accelerate State of DevOps Report 2021 highlights that 56% of respondents are betting on the use of public cloud, that is, 5% more than in 2019. Those who opt for multi-cloud strategies (21%) highlight the exclusive benefits offered by the platforms (26%) and the availability of services (22%) as the main advantages.

The document also indicates that quality documentation matters, since teams that rely on this feature are 3.8 times more likely to implement security practices in their actions, as well as 2.4 times more likely to meet or exceed performance expectations, and 3.5 times more likely to implement Site Reliability Engineering practices (SRE) and 2.5 times more likely to take full advantage of cloud technologies.

Digital Transformation: What lies ahead?

In the last decades, structural and cultural changes have intensified in large digital transformation projects and practically all companies have managed to reach the other side with some level of maturity. 

As with any other movement of this magnitude, there are several opportunities to adjust the loose ends and optimize what is now being mastered, but not yet optimized. 

Efficiency is the name of this new game.

Source: Accelerate State of DevOps Report

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