Harmonizing DevOps Taxonomies - A Grounded Theory Study

Abstract Context: DevOps responds to the growing need of companies to streamline the software development process and, thus, have experienced a widespread adoption in the past few years. However, successful adoption of DevOps requires companies to address important cultural and organizational changes. Understanding the organizational structure and characteristics of teams adopting DevOps is key, and comprehending the existing theories and representations of team taxonomies is critical to guide companies in a more systematic and structured DevOps adoption process. Objective: This paper presents empirical research on the structure of DevOps teams in software-producing organizations. The goal is to better understand the organizational structure and characteristics of teams adopting DevOps by harmonizing the existing knowledge. Method: To do this, we conducted a grounded theory study, analyzing existing studies on DevOps teams and taxonomies. Results: From the analysis, we built a substantive and analytic theory of DevOps taxonomies. The theory is substantive in that the scope of validity refers to the ten primary studies processed and analytic in that it analyzes “what is” rather than explaining causality or attempting predictive generalizations. A public repository with all the data related to the products resulting from the analysis and generation of the theory is available. Conclusions: We built a theory on DevOps taxonomies and tested whether it harmonizes the existing taxonomies, i.e., whether our theory can instantiate the others. This is the first step to define which taxonomies are best suited to approach DevOps culture and practices according to the companies’ objectives and capabilities.