Explore shared goals and define timelines

  • 2 minutes

Effective DevOps transformation requires goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). These outcomes should have specific, measurable targets that directly relate to customer value and business objectives.

SMART goals examples for DevOps transformation:

Deployment Frequency

  • Specific: Increase deployment frequency to production
  • Measurable: From monthly to weekly deployments
  • Achievable: Based on current CI/CD maturity
  • Relevant: Enables faster customer feedback and value delivery
  • Time-bound: Achieve within 6 months

Bug Resolution

  • Specific: Reduce time spent on fixing critical production bugs
  • Measurable: Decrease by 60% from current baseline
  • Achievable: Through improved testing and monitoring
  • Relevant: Improves customer satisfaction and team productivity
  • Time-bound: Achieve within 9 months

Unplanned Work

  • Specific: Reduce time spent on unplanned work and fire-fighting
  • Measurable: Decrease by 70% of total working time
  • Achievable: Through automation and proactive monitoring
  • Relevant: Allows teams to focus on innovation and new features
  • Time-bound: Achieve within 12 months

Out-of-hours Work

  • Specific: Minimize emergency after-hours work for staff
  • Measurable: Reduce to no more than 10% of total working time
  • Achievable: Through improved deployment practices and monitoring
  • Relevant: Improves work-life balance and reduces burnout
  • Time-bound: Achieve within 8 months

Production Patching

  • Specific: Eliminate all direct patching of production systems
  • Measurable: Zero manual production patches
  • Achievable: Through proper CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code
  • Relevant: Reduces risk and improves audit compliance
  • Time-bound: Achieve within 10 months

Business value focus

DevOps aims to provide excellent customer value, so outcomes should maintain a customer value focus:

Customer-centric metrics:

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): Customer satisfaction and loyalty
  • Feature adoption rates: How quickly customers use new features
  • Customer support ticket volume: Reduction in customer-reported issues
  • Time-to-resolution: How quickly customer issues are resolved
  • Customer retention rates: Impact of improved service reliability

Define timelines for goals with OKRs

Measurable goals need realistic timelines and regular checkpoints. Use the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework to structure your DevOps transformation goals.

OKR structure for DevOps

Objective: Qualitative, inspirational goal Key Results: Quantitative measures of progress toward the objective

Example OKR:

  • Objective: "Become a highly reliable software delivery organization"
    • Key Result 1: Achieve 99.9% uptime for production services
    • Key Result 2: Reduce mean time to recovery (MTTR) to under 30 minutes
    • Key Result 3: Deploy to production daily with zero-downtime deployments

Timeline best practices examples

Short-term goals (2-8 weeks):

  • Easy to change plans or priorities when necessary
  • Reduced delay between work and feedback ensures quick learning incorporation
  • Easier to maintain organizational support when positive outcomes are clear
  • Examples: Implement basic CI, Set up monitoring dashboards, Automate one manual process

Medium-term goals (3-6 months):

  • Substantial improvements that require multiple iterations
  • Build momentum and demonstrate significant value
  • Examples: Complete CI/CD pipeline, Implement Infrastructure as Code, Establish testing automation

Long-term goals (6-24 months):

  • Strategic transformations that reshape the organization
  • Cultural and process changes that become embedded
  • Examples: Full DevOps transformation, Platform modernization, Cultural shift to continuous improvement

Goal tracking template

Timeline Objective Key Results Owner Status Next Review
Q1 2025 Improve deployment reliability 1. 95% deployment success rate
2. <5 min deployment time
3. Automated rollback capability		 DevOps Team In Progress Weekly
Q2 2025 Enhance monitoring capabilities 1. 100% service coverage
2. <2 min alert response
3. Proactive issue detection		 Ops Team Planning Bi-weekly

Review and adaptation cycle

Weekly reviews: Track progress on immediate goals and remove blockers Monthly reviews: Assess medium-term goal progress and adjust tactics
Quarterly reviews: Evaluate long-term objectives and strategic alignment

Key questions for reviews:

  • Are we making measurable progress toward our key results?
  • What blockers are preventing faster progress?
  • Do our goals still align with business priorities?
  • What have we learned that should influence our approach?
  • How can we accelerate progress while maintaining quality?

Advantages of shorter timelines:

  • Agility: Easier to change plans or priorities when market conditions shift
  • Learning velocity: Reduced delay between doing work and getting feedback helps ensure learnings are incorporated quickly
  • Organizational momentum: Easier to keep organizational support when positive outcomes are visible and measurable
  • Risk management: Smaller iterations reduce the risk of major failures
  • Team motivation: Regular achievements maintain team engagement and morale