title: A leadership model for DevOps adoption within software intensive organisations
Creators: name: Maroukian, Krikor
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2022

description: The research, undertaken in organisational environments within IT-oriented culture and highly 
structured processes, outlines challenges and benefits associated to the adoption of Agile, Lean, and 
DevOps practices and principles. Realizing the adoption of DevOps practices and principles is no longer
restricted to technology-specific skills. Studies indicate that successful DevOps adoption is part of 
continuous organisational transformation at various levels, and that includes a shift in cultural and 
behavioural patterns, process-driven perspectives, and toolchain usage readiness. There are also 
DevOps models to suggest an adoption roadmap for organisations to follow through the transitional 
path from existing highly structured processes to agile and lean approaches. However, there is a 
considerable lack of validated adoption models which are inclusive of leadership styles, traits, 
characteristics and the connection to adoption success or failure. This thesis details the explanation of 
product development approaches and using a mixed methods approach aims to provide proof and 
evidence to support the answers towards three research questions.
The approach collected data through thirty interviews with industry practitioners, who were from ten 
countries working in nine different industry sectors. Almost two-thirds of interviewees had practiced
DevOps. A set of agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles, which organisations choose to 
include in their DevOps adoption journeys were identified. The most frequently adopted structured 
service management practices, contributing to DevOps practice adoption success, indicate that those 
with software development and operation roles in DevOps-oriented organisations benefit from 
existence of highly structured service management approaches such as ITIL®
. Furthermore, coded 
themes were generated based on the thirty interviews to expand understanding of relevant factors and 
produce the structure of an online survey.
The analysis and evaluation of the online survey (n=250) confirmed some of the initial findings of the 
interviews and expanded viewpoints on other perceived outcomes. Out of the total 250 participants, 
81% had 10+ years of professional experience and two-thirds were practicing DevOps. 73% of 
participants were from Europe and 76% had held previous leadership positions. The aim of the survey
was to unveil leadership-specific observations on characteristics and factors that would indicate certain 
reasoning behind challenges faced by organisations while transitioning to DevOps.
The research questions which evolved around (R1) an understanding of how productivity can be 
improved for software product development teams, indicated that there is a specific set of service 
management, project management and product management practices and principles to take into 
account. Furthermore, evidence produced from the qualitative and quantitative studies confirmed (R2)
that DevOps-oriented organisations have mainly preferred to extend the structured approaches 
previously adopted such as ITIL®
v3. The online survey produced significant evidence (R3.a) of industry 
practitioners’ desire to have a leadership role for the purposes of DevOps practice and principle 
adoption. (R3.b) The emergent leadership style pertinent to the transition of IT-focused organisations 
to DevOps condensed to the linkage of transformational and servant leadership.
The observations from the confirmatory study of the online survey (n=250) contributed to the design 
and development of a conceptual model which emphasizes. The conceptual model was validated using
PLS-SEM to improve understanding of significance and predictive power of construct validity and 
corresponding manifest variables. The final, model evaluation research stage of three focus group
interviews (n=19), indicated industry practitioner consensus on the validated model in a range of 70% 
- 79%.
The thesis outcomes formulate a leadership model towards the fulfilment of DevOps adoption within 
organisations. The thesis outcomes also aim to support the transitional efforts to DevOps, and 
commitment of software-intensive i.e. enterprise with an IT organisation. In this way, it become 
possible to enhance the competence level of an organisation’s adoption capability, guide DevOps 
adoption leadership through its upskilling journey, and achieve the cultural shift of mindset to enable 
continuous and habitual change.