From 12 Deployments a Year to 33 a Quarter: A DevOps Transformation Story
From 12 Deployments a Year to 33 a Quarter: A DevOps Transformation Story
When I joined my current company, we were deploying to production once a month—if we were lucky. Each deployment was a multi-day affair with all-hands-on-deck war rooms, frequent rollbacks, and inevitable weekend work. Our failure rate hovered around 30%, and the team was burned out.
Today, we deploy 33 times per quarter with a failure rate under 2%. Here's how we transformed our DevOps practices and culture.
The Starting Point: Deployment as an Event
Our deployment process was treated as a major event:
- Deployments scheduled weeks in advance
- Multiple teams required for coordination
- Manual checklists with dozens of steps
- Lengthy approval processes
- Weekend deployments to minimize business impact
- Frequent rollbacks and emergency fixes
The Results: By the Numbers
After 18 months of transformation:
Transformation Results
Deployment frequency: From 12/year to 33/quarter (11x increase)
Lead time: From 3 weeks to 2 days (90% reduction)
Change failure rate: From 30% to under 2% (93% reduction)
Mean time to recovery: From 4 hours to 30 minutes (87% reduction)
Conclusion
DevOps transformation is a journey, not a destination. We're still improving, but the results have been transformative for our team and business.
If you're starting your own DevOps transformation, remember that it's as much about culture as it is about technology.