Towards a unified and transparent working day
DevOps Assessment of Elisa Mobile Access
OVERVIEW
At the end of last year (2023), Sevendos company Polar Squad evaluated Elisa's Mobile Access unit's DevOps practices and operational methods. This deep dive involved interviews and surveys aimed at creating an unbiased view of the current situation to identify opportunities for smoother operations and better collaboration in the future. We also created a roadmap for strategic improvements.
Key findings
Strengths and areas for improvement
Polar Squad's findings highlighted several strengths within Elisa Mobile Access, including high-level expertise, a culture of freedom, and strong team spirit. Positive feedback was given especially for leadership and internal communication in teams. The unit’s agility and deep domain knowledge were also seen as a competitive advantage.
"Having seen different working environments, this place definitely tops the list in terms of supervisory work. The communication is open and direct, and collaboration feels friendly. There's no barrier to go and have a chat."
Key findings
However, we also identified several improvement areas. These included:
- Challenges in implementation
- A tendency towards working in silos
- Gaps in learning and personalization
- Quality assurance and knowledge
Inconsistent practices and a lack of cross-team collaboration led to overlapping work and feelings of isolation. Prioritization and decision-making were highlighted issues at the higher levels of management as well. QA was dismissed in many situations as requiring more work than the development itself.
Continuing current practices risked further separation of leadership and development, fragmentation, increased siloing, loss of expertise, and heavier workloads. We saw that these factors could significantly restrict the unit's efficiency and effectiveness.
"A strategy hasn't been made for testing, or anything else. - - Testing hasn't even really been required."
Strategies for improvement
A COMPREHENSIVE ROADMAP
The assessment concluded with a roadmap for enhancing operations at Elisa Mobile Access. Our key recommendations included:
Enhancing internal coordination
This involves regular team reviews, shared information for potential synergies, a culture of experimentation, and joint planning meetings to ensure better alignment toward common objectives.
Reducing siloing
Building trust and respect in daily interactions and aligning activities towards common goals. To put this into action, a central virtual development team was formed instead of teams with previously separate development efforts. This also involved establishing netiquette that emphasizes these values and maintaining a balance between freedom and a unified direction in work.
Agile learning culture
Identifying critical areas of expertise, especially those reliant on a single person, and distributing knowledge-sharing responsibilities. Proposed measures include learning sprints and targeted knowledge-sharing sessions.
Harmonizing development efforts
Strategies for managing cybersecurity risks, dependency management, and preventing technological debt are vital. Emphasizing agile methods, automated testing, continuous integration, and maintaining proper documentation were recommended to ensure software quality and reduce bugs.
Next steps
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
The presentation of these findings was well-received, with appreciation for the concrete development suggestions. We also want to thank the team at Elisa for all the fruitful discussions and open collaboration. The Elisa team seeing a true potential for impactful change, also made our consultants want to go the extra mile. With the assessment, we hope to have helped the whole department eliminate bottlenecks in their work and focus on what is truly meaningful while accelerating their efforts.
The DevOps assessment also raised discussion for future steps, including addressing systemic problems with a Design team and exploring Quality Assurance strategies.