The devops handbook how to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, & Security in Technology Organizations By Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, and John Willis

Figure 9:
 The Technology Adoption Curve (Source: Moore and McKenna,
Crossing The Chasm
, 15.)
Especially in the early stages, we will not spend much time trying to convert 
the more conservative groups. Instead, we will focus our energy on creating 
successes with less risk-averse groups and build out our base from there (a 
process that is discussed further in the next section). Even if we have the 
highest levels of executive sponsorship, we will avoid the 
big bang approach 
(i.e., starting everywhere all at once), choosing instead to focus our efforts in 
a few areas of the organization, ensuring that those initiatives are successful, 
and expanding from there.
†
EXPANDING DEVOPS ACROSS OUR ORGANIZATION
Regardless of how we scope our initial effort, we must demonstrate early wins 
and broadcast our successes. We do this by breaking up our larger improvement 
† 
Big bang, top-down transformations are possible, such as the Agile transformation at PayPal 
in 2012 that was led by their vice president of technology, Kirsten Wolberg. However, as with 
any sustainable and successful transformation, this required the highest level of management 
support and a relentless, sustained focus on driving the necessary outcomes.
Promo 
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for 
distribution 
or 
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Chapter 5 • 59
goals into small, incremental steps. This not only creates our improvements 
faster, it also enables us to discover when we have made the wrong choice of 
value stream—by detecting our errors early, we can quickly back up and try 
again, making different decisions armed with our new learnings.
As we generate successes, we earn the right to expand the scope of our DevOps 
initiative. We want to follow a safe sequence that methodically grows our 
levels of credibility, influence, and support. The following list, adapted from 
a course taught by Dr. Roberto Fernandez, a William F. Pounds Professor in 
Management at MIT, describes the ideal phases used by change agents to build 
and expand their coalition and base of support: