# Towards Sustainable DevOps: A Decision Making Framework

**Authors:** Muhammad Zohaib  
**arXiv:** [2303.11121](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11121)  
**Date:** 2023-03-20  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/en/arxiv-id/2303.11121v1/

## Key points

- The study aims to explore guidelines for sustainable DevOps implementation in software development organizations.
- The research design involves a systematic literature review, a questionnaire survey, and fuzzy AHP.
- 71 studies were identified through the systematic literature review.
- Data extraction and synthesis resulted in a list of 48 guidelines important for sustainable DevOps implementation.
- An online survey questionnaire was created to verify the SLR findings.
- The questionnaire survey is divided into three sections: bibliographic information, organizational information, and closed-ended questions about the identified list of DevOps guidelines from SLR.
- Culture is the most important principle for sustainable DevOps implementation out of CAMS (Culture, Automation, Measurement and Sharing).
- Building a collaborative culture with shared goals, assessing organization readiness to utilize microservices architecture, and educating executives about benefits of DevOps are identified as highest priority guidelines for sustainable DevOps implementation.
- Inter-rater reliability test was used to assess mapping team's baseness with external specialists participating in mapping process.
- Results showed significant agreement between study authors and external experts suggesting consistent findings.

## Summary

This study aims to explore the guidelines for sustainable DevOps implementation in software development organizations. The research design involves three steps: a systematic literature review (SLR), a questionnaire survey, and fuzzy AHP. The SLR was conducted using the procedures defined by Kitchenham and Charters to identify 71 studies that corresponded to the research goal. Data extraction and synthesis were carried out by paraphrasing the claims, primary themes, concepts, practices, and actions reported in the selected literature. This resulted in a list of 48 guidelines that are important for sustainable DevOps implementation. To verify the SLR findings, an online survey questionnaire was created using Google Forms platform. The questionnaire survey is divided into three sections: bibliographic information of participants, organizational information of participants, and closed-ended questions about the identified list of DevOps guidelines from SLR. An open-ended section allowed respondents to add any extra guidelines not included in the closed-ended section. Five-point Likert scale feedback was received from participants ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree with a neutral option. Pilot testing was conducted with three experts who recommended several changes to improve understandability of questionnaire questions and layout. The updated questionnaire was used for data collection process. The results show that culture is the most important principle for sustainable DevOps implementation out of CAMS (Culture, Automation, Measurement and Sharing). Building a collaborative culture with shared goals, assessing organization readiness to utilize microservices architecture, and educating executives about benefits of DevOps are identified as highest priority guidelines for sustainable DevOps implementation. Although there may be bias in study outcomes, inter-rater reliability test was used to assess mapping team's baseness with external specialists participating in mapping process. Results showed significant agreement between study authors and external experts suggesting consistent findings. In conclusion, this evidence-based study provides practitioners with core principles and guidelines for sustainable DevOps implementation through systematic literature review and questionnaire survey approach validated by external experts' input.