Devops' maturity auto-assessment test

version beta

This test aims to help you evaluate the maturity level of your company

Answer this survey with your vision of the company. If you don't know how to answer to a question, skip it!

Culture

1. Do you care about/are you proud of what you and your company produces? (1 = not at all, 4 = completely)

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2. Do your teams work on only one project at a time? (1 = we don't work in project mode, 4 = all of them)

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3. Is your team a multiskilled team? (1 = no we all have the same skillset, 4 = we have totaly different backgrounds, interests and skills that complement each other)

By multi-skilled we mean some team members will be ops, some others devs, while some others will be QA, marketing, sales, functional etc
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4. Are the technical teams involved in the early phases of the projects? (1 = no, 4 = our technical teams are at the heart of our business and involved from the beginning)

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5. Do you feel empowered, trusted and free to act as you see fit? (1 = no way, 4 = completely)

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6. Would you say your work is (1) boring/overly-cautious or (4) innovative/creative/fun?

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7. Does your company favour technical excellence or on the contrary incur a growing infrastructure/technical debt? (1 = we only work in firefighter mode, 4 = we are very cautious to limit/pay back our technical debt and favour quality in all we do)

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8. How would you rate your knowledge of the toolset, constraints and work methodes of other teams involved on the same projects? (1 = absolute cluelessness, 4 = complete knowledge)

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Automation

1. Is your company using version control software? (1 = not at all, 4 = yes, in dev and in ops)

Revision control software allow to follow modifications made on files in order to capture the file history.
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2. Do you follow the 'infrastructure as code' ideas? (1 = not at all, 4 = my infrastructure can be reinstalled using 'make world')

Infrastructure as code is based on a simple idea: using configuration management software such as cfengine, puppet or chef and revision control software together it is possible to manage a technical infrastructure as if it was software. Hence it is possible to follow the history and reasons of configuration modification. It is also possible to install servers from scratch in an automated fashion to any specific revision without error.
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3. Do you use automated deployment tools for your servers? (1 = never, 4 = all our servers are deployed and maintained automatically)

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4. Do you use automated deployment tools for your desktops? (1 = no, 4 = all our desktops are deployed and maintained automatically)

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5. Do you use automated deployment tools for your development environments? (1 = no, 4 = any dev can instanciate a server and deploy his code using self-service tools)

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6. Do you use Continuous Integration? (1 = not at all, 4 = yes, for both all our development projects and our configuration management tools)

More on Continuous Integration on the wikipedia article.
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7. Do you use Continuous Deployment? (1 = no, 4 = yes for all our projects) ?

Continuous Deployment goes beyond Continuous Integration by allowing automated installation of software on production systems at the end of the Continuous Integration pipeline. This is only made possible when the test coverage is sufficient and is trusted enough to allow fully automated deployment of software, thus dramatically decreasing the time to deploy new features.
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8. When you need to fix a problem, does your company tend to put new procedures in place (manual, followed by humains, prone to errors) or do you favour automation (scripting, etc) (1 = every issue bring new pages to the procedure manual, 4 = machines do all the repetitive tasks, while humans thinks and bring creative answers to the problems specific to our business)

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9. Are your IT services fully automated? (1 = not at all, 4 = end to end, on all the perimiters)

We mean here regular end to end tests of the services bringing value to your business.
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Measure

1. Do you collect technical performance metrics? (1 = not at all, 4 = yes, for everything)

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2. Do you collect process related metrics? (1 = not at all, 4 = Yes for all our processes)

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3. Do you collect metrics related to individuals' satisfaction (clients, customers, employees)? (1 = no, 4 = we regularely poll a panel including all types of person involved in all aspects of our business)

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4. Do you measure the value of your technical/infrastructure debt? (1 = not at all, 4 = we have dashboards where we monitor them closely)

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5. Are you making risk evaluations? (1 = not at all, 4 = for every aspects of our business)

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6. Do you verify those risk evaluations afterwards? (1 = never, 4 = always)

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7. Are those risks evaluations part of your decision process? (1 = not at all, 4 = they are indivisible)

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8. Do you measure metrics linked to KPI (business alignment)? (1 = no, 4 = for every strategic aspect of our business)

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9. Do you measure metrics linked to the availability of your services? (1 = no, 4 = for all our services, end to end)

We mean here high level test, i-e tests of the actual service offered to the users, and not technical measures linked to servers, hardware.
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10. Do you build your high-level metric bottom-up, ensuring carefully that they stay within their range of acuracy? (1 = we build top-down dashboards and fill in the blanks, 4 = all our measures are build bottom-up and carefully validated)

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Sharing

1. Do you feel all the departments within your company share the same goals? (1 = not at all, 4 = completely)

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2. Do you refer to the other teams or departments as 'them' as opposed to 'you'? (1 = always, 4 = never)

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3. Is your company using the same tools in developement and operations? (1 = no, 4 = almost all)

For instance revision control tools, monitoring, etc... Applies to other teams such as Network, QA, Security, DBA, etc...
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4. Do you feel the other departments in your company share the same business problems as you? (1 = every one with its own problems, 4 = their problem is my problem)

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5. Do you have Information Radiators in place? (1 = no, 4 = yes, every team propagates informations automatically to the other teams through information radiators)

An information radiator displays information in a place where passersby can see it. With information radiators, the passersby don't need to ask questions; the information simply hits them as they pass. (from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?InformationRadiator)
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6. Are you using the same knowledge sharing tools such as wikis all over the place? (1 = no, 4 = we have more articles in our wiki than wikipedia)

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7. Is your company publishing or contributing to open source software (if using them) ? ( 1 = no, 4 = yes for every project)

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8. Do you have feedback loops in place allowing developers/software architects to have informations on the life in production of stuff they develop/design? (1 = no, not at all, 4 = for every single project)

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9. Are the company strategy, your team goals and your personal goals aligned? (1 = on the contrary they are opposed, 4 = they are in perfect alignment!)

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10. Do you share information between teams and within your team? ( 1 = no, 4 = we share everything!)

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