Strategies to Adopt DevOps Model-Driven Engineering for Automating Enterprise Networks

The popularity of automation in on-premises and hybrid-cloud networking architectures has increased significantly in the last decade. However, some organizational leaders are reluctant to adopt network automation, despite the benefits of increased efficiencies in organizational processes and reduced operations and maintenance requirements. Grounded in the disruptive innovation theory, the purpose of this pragmatic qualitative inquiry study was to explore strategies used by information technology (IT) solution architects to adopt development operations (DevOps) model-driven engineered (MDE) solutions for implementing automated network architectures. The participants were six IT architects in the United States who had adopted DevOps MDE. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and a review of secondary data sources was collected from scholarly journals and industry documentation. Through thematic analysis, three major themes were identified: matching expectations with capabilities, demonstrating value to gain organizational trust, and tailoring the adoption strategy to the organizational culture. A primary recommendation is to tailor the DevOps MDE strategy to complement the organizational culture. The implications for positive social change include the potential for IT leaders to gain strategies that aid in adopting network automation, which may help some organizations reduce the operations and maintenance workload burdens on their IT staff, potentially increasing their job satisfaction and quality of life.