Analysis of DevOps in complex product-service system development

Abstract

DevOps, a paradigm in which development and operations processes and teams are considered elements of the same stack, is a new way of thinking in the software engineering domain. It has recently gained significant momentum in development of Product-Service-Systems (PSS) where operations play a significant role in product and service delivery. We hence study a DevOps software development process for a PSS using a design structure matrix (DSM) representation to find out the structure of information exchange in DevOps processes. We find unique features such as nested iterations at differing rates which are not evident in conventional engineering development projects. We describe the impact of integrating ongoing operations into a development process and identify some of the enablers that lead to adoption of a DevOps process. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings and raise questions for further research.