Measuring progress in software development is hard. Our industry is defined by complexity, entropy, shifting deadlines and priorities, and customer expectations that evolve almost as quickly as the technology that we use every day. The nature of this environment means that we need to apply continuous feedback loops, robust frameworks and structured approaches to do good work.
Skilled developers are at the core of innovation, and to get the most out of this resource you need effective processes; this could be agile frameworks or CI/CD pipelines, as well as tools that reduce cognitive load, from DevOps to code review. Companies that solve this equation create efficient environments that lead to positive developer experience (DevEx) and ultimately drive customer satisfaction and company revenue.
This blog will unpack what getting operations right looks like. It will start with the definition and benefits of operational excellence, and go on to explain key principles and offer practical tips for how to implement it in your organization. We will even provide a checklist that can help any practically-minded readers to achieve operational excellence.
What is operational excellence in software engineering?
Operational excellence in software engineering describes the systematic approach of refining processes, personnel and tools to deliver high-quality software efficiently and reliably. It is a broad methodology that emphasizes continuous improvement, stringent quality assurance, and the creation of efficient and lean processes. Operational excellence operates at a high level of abstraction, unlike DevOps, which primarily focuses on bridging development and operations, or Agile methodologies that promote iterative development and flexibility. It aims to enhance every aspect of the software development lifecycle.
Key components
- People: You will never get to true operational excellence without talented and skilled individuals. Identifying, incentivizing and enabling this talent in an environment conducive to building top quality software is a central consideration. Netflix, for example, has built a platform engineering of 450, dedicating 15% of engineering headcount to enabling developers and removing any friction facing developers.
- Processes: Effective processes are essential for maintaining consistency and reliability in software delivery. This is difficult, with our State of Production Readiness report showing that 66% of organizations struggle to align on standards and no two surveyed had the same workflow. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has built highly reliable cloud infrastructure by "working backwards" from customer needs to build processes, including designing, building and operating its data centers for a fully integrated supply chain.
- Technology: Cutting-edge technology and tools play a critical role in building operational excellence. Automation, monitoring, and analytics tools allow teams to focus on high-value tasks, optimize resource usage, and make data-driven decisions that enhance both product and process quality. Google is famous for its Site Reliability Engineering, but also for developing and open-sourcing Kubernetes, the industry standard for container orchestration.
Key benefits of operational excellence
Operational excellence is not like achieving enlightenment or overcoming a phobia: the effects are immediately visible to everyone within your organization. Tangible benefits flow to developers, customers and the business as a whole. High performing operations transcends supposed paradoxes and tradeoffs between employee satisfaction and productivity, or individual autonomy vs group interests. A culture of effective operations can efficiently handle considerations about addressing technical debt or choosing between building the right software, the best software, or the one that has minimal time-to-market.
Some of these benefits include:
- Increased efficiency: Streamlined processes and automation reduce waste and accelerate workflows, allowing teams to accomplish more in less time without compromising quality.
- Scalability: By establishing robust frameworks, organizations can effortlessly scale their operations to meet growing demands, ensuring that performance remains consistent even as the company expands.
- Competitive advantage: Operational excellence fosters an environment of continuous improvement and innovation, positioning businesses to stay ahead of competitors by rapidly adapting to market changes.
- Enhanced innovation: With efficient operational processes and reduced bottlenecks, teams can focus more on creative solutions and breakthrough technologies, enabling greater innovation.
- Better alignment with business goals: Aligning software development with business objectives is a core aspect of operational excellence, which in turn facilitates overall organizational success.
- Improved DevEx: Good operations leads to reduced cognitive load and a more productive working environment. In other words, better DevEx.
- Reduced burnout: Structured processes and clear objectives help manage workloads more effectively, decreasing the risk of burnout and fostering a healthier work-life balance.
- Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Consistently delivering high-quality, reliable products enhances customer experience and satisfaction, leading to long-term loyalty and advocacy.
Principles of operational excellence in software development
Operational excellence varies across industries, scale and organizational culture. Specific business goals and resource allocations play a big role in it, but there are still some universal principles that apply. These core aspects serve as the foundation for achieving superior performance through operations. Some are based on engineering metrics, but there’s more to it than numbers.
Efficiency
Efficiency in software development refers to the optimal use of resources to achieve the desired outcomes with minimal waste. It is arguably the main priority for operations, directly impacting project timelines, cost-effectiveness, and overall productivity. Key indicators of efficiency include cycle time, throughput, and resource utilization rates.
Reliability
Reliability ensures that software products function consistently and predictably, meeting user expectations and minimizing disruptions. This principle is vital for maintaining customer trust and satisfaction. To measure reliability, businesses can track metrics such as system uptime, mean time to failure (MTTF), and failure recovery time. For deeper insights, explore Cortex eBook 4 Essential Steps to Build a Culture of Reliability Across Engineering.
Quality
Quality encompasses the degree to which a product meets or exceeds customer requirements and industry standards. High-quality software reduces the likelihood of defects and rework, leading to better customer satisfaction and reduced costs. Indicators of quality include defect density, customer feedback scores, and compliance with quality assurance benchmarks.
Customer-centricity
Customer-centricity places the needs and experiences of the end-user at the forefront of the development process. This principle demonstrates how good operations can ensure that quality products provide enduring business value and foster lasting relationships with users. Success in this area can be measured through customer satisfaction surveys, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and user engagement analytics.
Adaptability
Adaptability refers to the ability of software development teams to respond swiftly and effectively to changing market conditions, customer needs, and technological advancements. Excellent operations are flexible operations, and responding quickly to new demands and opportunities maintains competitive advantage and innovation. Metrics such as time-to-market, feature adoption rates, and the frequency of updates or releases can provide insights into an organization's adaptability.
Data-driven decision-making
Data-driven decision-making involves leveraging quantitative insights to guide strategic choices in software development. This determines how you plan and deliver on operations, and enhances accuracy, reduces bias, and supports continuous improvement. Businesses can measure their success in this area through metrics like decision accuracy rates, data utilization frequency, and the impact of data-driven initiatives on business outcomes.
Measuring operational excellence
In operations measurement and metrics are king, so being excellent means measuring frequently and exactly. You should set out to hit ambitious goals and track progress along the way. Paul Graham writes that Mediocrity is like a magnet that can only be avoided by constant effort, so operational excellence is a constant journey of measurement and iteration, not a destination.
Start by benchmarking your organization using the Cortex Engineering Maturity Curve to get a feel for where you are and what your immediate priorities should be. Your other starting point should be customer feedback - if you're not gathering this in statistically significant quantities then fix this immediately. All of this should be viewed through the lens of developer experience and productivity, as improving these are the top goals of operations.
Here are some useful metrics to measure operational excellence:
- Deployment frequency: Measures how often new features or updates are deployed. Higher frequency indicates a more agile and responsive development process.
- Lead time for changes: The time it takes for a code change to go from committed to deployed. Shorter lead times suggest more efficient workflows and faster delivery cycles.
- Mean time to recovery (MTTR): The average time it takes to recover from a failure: lower MTTR indicates robust incident management and recovery processes. The State of Production Readiness report found that 56% of engineering leaders saw an increase in MTTR as a consequence of failing to meet production readiness, showing overlap between poor readiness and operations.
- Change failure rate: The percentage of changes that result in failures in production. A lower rate reflects higher quality code and effective testing procedures.
- Code quality (defect rates): Tracks the number of defects in the code. Lower defect rates are indicative of rigorous quality assurance practices and cleaner codebases.
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): Measures customer satisfaction with your product or service. High scores demonstrate that your offerings meet or exceed customer expectations.
Understanding and tracking these metrics will help you to align your efforts with strategic goals and drive continuous improvement. For more insights on assessing productivity, check out our article on developer productivity metrics.
Best practice tips for achieving and maintaining operational excellence
Getting to operational excellence means change, and that often means struggle. Teams encounter obstacles such as cultural resistance, where developers are attached to the status quo, resource constraints that prevent them from investing in top quality talent and tools, or technical debt that has built up to the point where there is no appetite or capacity for reforms. For those able to overcome these hurdles and more, implementing certain best practices can lead to operational excellence.
Automate testing and deployment
Repetitive tasks can and should be automated. By integrating continuous testing and automated deployment pipelines, teams can ensure that new code changes are rigorously tested before reaching production environments. This frees up capacity and reduces toil while minimizing the risk of errors and downtime, leading to more stable releases and quicker reactions to market changes. Implementing DevOps automation tools like Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD can streamline this process, allowing developers to focus on writing code rather than managing deployments.
Conduct regular code reviews
Good operations derives from good standards, and code reviews help to maintain high coding standards and adherence to best practices. By systematically reviewing code, teams can catch potential errors early, removing bottlenecks while promoting knowledge sharing. Implementing a structured review process with tools like GitHub or Bitbucket ensures that reviews are consistent and effective, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration among developers.
Implement agile methodologies
Agile methodologies, such as Scrum or Kanban, promote collaboration and adaptability, and can enable teams to respond to changing requirements and prioritize tasks effectively. Agile encourages iterative development, where feedback is continuously integrated, identifying and resolving problems quickly while allowing for more flexible and efficient project management. This adaptability helps teams align more closely with business objectives and customer needs, ultimately driving better outcomes.
Invest in developer tools and training
Good tools are what turn good operational processes into results. The best you'll find are Internal Developer Portals (IDPs), which act as systems of record while offering developers a self-service infrastructure that allows them to focus more on coding and less on operational hurdles. Giving developers the tools and structures to focus on deep work and solving problems is at the core of operational excellence in software.
Foster a blameless culture
Tech professionals love to talk about failing fast and learning from mistakes, and building this into your engineering culture is difficult but crucial. Focus on learning from mistakes rather than assigning blame and developers will focus more on innovation and less on covering their back. Teams should share insights and lessons learned freely, removed from stigma or fear of failure, to build a culture that supports operational excellence.
Set clear, measurable goals
What gets measured gets managed, and in a data-rich environment you should aim for clear, measurable goals that can be clearly communicated and pursued. Take the time to secure buy-in for team goals to ensure that everyone is invested in the same outcomes, with shared coordination and focus. By making goals measurable you provide a benchmark for success, enabling teams to track their performance and make data-driven adjustments as they go.
Operational excellence checklist for software engineering teams
If you're looking for tips on where to get started, take a look at the below checklist, and check out Google's framework too.
- Verify launch plans: Ensure that launch plans are thoroughly tested and validated before deployment. This step is crucial for identifying potential issues early, confirming that all elements are functioning as expected, and aligning the launch with business objectives.
- Manage incidents and follow-up: Set a culture of quickly responding to incidents, documenting the resolution process and communicating with stakeholders. Speed is an important aspect of success in tech - maybe the most important aspect - and operations should set and maintain the pace.
- Manage on-call rotations: Establish clear responsibilities, set expectations and train team members appropriately. Your escalation procedures must be well-defined and communicated to maintain quick incident responses and reduce the burden on individual team members.
- Manage data: Robust data management practices, such as backups, version control, and access policies, give you a basis for continuity. These safeguard data integrity and availability, protect critical information and prevent outages.
- Track customer-reported issues: Customer feedback is operational gold dust. Log customer issues, prioritize them based on severity, circulate them as widely as necessary and resolve them promptly. This builds brand loyalty while ensuring your product is evolving with a changing market.
- Manage failover and recovery: Speed means recovering quickly rather than never failing, so design and test failover and recovery procedures that minimize downtime during outages. Make sure to regularly rehearse these scenarios ensures so that teams know what to expect and have confidence in the process.
- Manage CI/CD, testing, and automation: Automation and CI/CD are central to operational excellence. Implement continuous integration and deployment pipelines, use automation deployment tools, and constantly look at the SDLC from a microscope and from a plane. Automated testing will help you to promptly catch errors, improving your velocity with all its benefits.
- Foster team collaboration and wellbeing: Speed and efficiency is only sustainable where the team is motivated and psychologically safe. Find the communication style and cadence that works in your organization, and create cultural norms that strengthen relationships and promote a supportive work environment. That could be mental health support, team hikes, or getting a beer together occasionally.
How can Cortex help?
There are countless tools that support operations, but the Cortex IDP works at a higher level of abstraction to help rationalize these tools, centralize resources and act as a system of record. Our IDP also streamlines workflows, dashboards and communication, covering the personal and the technical sides of operations. This allows you to facilitate feedback while doing the hard yards of continuous improvement. We are proud to partner with companies known for operational excellence - you can see a partial list here.
Key Features of Cortex:
- Developer homepage: This feature consolidates technical and operational data in one place, allowing developers to quickly determine their targets and where to invest their time.
- Scaffolder: Our Scaffolder bakes automation into your process with project templates and boilerplate code. Its drag-and-drop functionalities allows you to build basic automation workflows easily, simplifying and enhancing operational efficiency.
- Actions: Cortex is a system of record that allows you to generate any action outside the IDP without needing to leave the IDP. This simplifies operational tasks and related processes.
- Integrations & Plug-ins: Excellent operations means staying on top of a massive range of data sources, so Cortex supports integrations and plug-ins for third party and homegrown apps.
- Scorecards: With Scorecards, users can easily track performance and set benchmarks for operational metrics, providing a comprehensive overview of individual, team and project output.
To experience the benefits of Cortex firsthand, book a demo today and see how what we can do for your engineering operations.
