A study into Critical Success Factors during the adoption and implementation of Continuous Delivery & Continuous Deployment in a DevOps context

Abstract

Continuous practices research needs to increase in both number and, especially, rigour of empirical studies. Some studies conducted research into critical factors which apply to the adoption and implementation of Continuous Delivery and / or Continuous Deployment, but the definition of the critical factors mentioned in their studies was not based on scientific literature.
The objective of this research is to verify Critical Success Factors (CSF’s) which apply to the adoption and implementation of Continuous practices in a DevOps context, that meet three criteria related to “CSF” scientific literature. This is done by carrying out a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) in order to find potential CSF’s. After carrying out the SLR, 92 potential CSF’s were found. These potential CSF’s have been classified on the basis of similarity, which resulted in a newly compiled list of only 19 potential CSF’s. Information about the three criteria in order to be a verified CSF have been retrieved by having interviews with DevOps team members.
All potential CSF’s have been empirically verified, 6 potential CSF’s contain performance improvements and no potential CSF’s could be measured. No verified CSF’s were found, which met all criteria in order to be a verified CSF.
These Critical Success Factors can make practitioners aware of the factors that may affect the success of Continuous Practices in their organizations. Further research is recommended in order to verify the remaining criteria on the list of potential CSF’s.

Date of Award	9 Feb 2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	prof. dr. ir. Jos Trienekens (Examiner) & Michiel Van Belzen (Co-assessor)