Abstract:

There exists a plethora of software system development methodologies (SSDM) and most of these have been adopted by South African system development organisations and teams. Depending on the proponents of the SSDM, formalised methods are espoused. However, due to contextual issues, almost all formalised methods need to be tailored to fit to a particular organizational culture for successful development of system products. This state also applies to the newly introduced Development and Operations (DevOps) approach that is currently being adopted by system development organizations and teams in South Africa in particular, those in the financial sector. There are prescribed ways of introducing the DevOps approach to software development teams but its successful adoption depends on the organizational environment, culture and situatedness of the problem to be addressed. This paper highlights the context upon which DevOps can be considered as a system development approach, the challenges that can be encountered during its adoption and use, and lastly, a DevOps adoption conceptual framework will be presented. DevOps is found to be an appropriate approach to adopt in lean, high velocity and culturally flexible development environments.