If DevOps is the strategy, then the DevOps roadmap is intended to guide the journey. There are two types of DevOps Journeys – cost-driven versus market-driven DevOps. The DevOps initiative for any business group can go either way. The leading indicators to view DevOps as cost-driven are based upon financial and operational objectives and outcomes. They include: reduce the costs of technology services, minimize dependence on outsourced services, improve user support, and streamline business operations, to name a few. The DevOps Strategy Map can illustrate the various perspectives that provide both input to and output from the range of DevOps activities—the strategic framework against which all decisions are evaluated and made.

To build a roadmap for any management program, it is critical to establish a shared vision of the future state of the business among stakeholders. As the DevOps program evolves, it is important to understand the organizational complexities and operational characteristics that are unique to its IT environment. Before a roadmap can be fully embraced, management and all stakeholders must recognize the strategic importance for the ongoing efforts. Like any change effort, there is a need for continuous learning, collaboration, and the fundamental understanding of process management in order to craft an optimal DevOps solution for the business.

A DevOps Roadmap provides management and staff with an agreed upon path to organizational and operational change. It provides the team with a breakdown of the multi-faceted work components as a sequence of activities that build upon the basic elements of technology management and the current organizational capabilities.

The roadmap can be based upon the varying levels of operations within an organization, an understanding that the environment is not a greenfield operation in most cases, but a brownfield environment with legacy systems, distributed lines of authority and/or a user community that is geographically distributed across multiple business functions. In addition, the core work processes and workflows have been operating with multiple hand-offs and potential divergent business objectives.

To build the best roadmap consider a program and activities that are aimed to nurture the appropriate environment for DevOps and build sustainable capability. The roadmap can be set against a simplified DevOps maturity model with the initial stages addressing base level activities that must be completed to lay the foundation and prepare the organization for the operational change that DevOps will entail. Each stage contains a focus, a set of programs and/or activities, and observable evidence that the group is ready to move to the programs and activities of the next stage.