  Context: DevOps and microservices are acknowledged to be important new
paradigms to tackle contemporary software demands and provide capabilities for
rapid and reliable software development. Industrial reports show that they are
quickly adopted together in massive software companies. However, because of the
technical and organizational requirements, many difficulties against efficient
implementation of the both emerge in real software teams. Objectives: This
study aims to discover the organization, benefits and issues of software teams
using DevOps & microservices from an immersive perspective. Method: An
ethnographic study was carried out in three companies with different business,
size, products, customers, and degree of globalization. All the three companies
claimed their adoption of DevOps and microservices. Seven months (cumulative)
of participant observations and nine interviews with practitioners were
conducted to collect the data of software teams related to DevOps and
microservices. A cross-company empirical investigation using grounded theory
was done by analyzing the archive data. Results: The adoption of DevOps and
microservices brings benefits to rapid delivery, ability improvements and
burden reduction, whilst the high cost and lack of practical guidance were
emerged. Moreover, our observations and interviews reflect that in software
teams, the relationship between DevOps and microservices is not significant,
which differs from the relationship described in the previous studies. Four
lessons for practitioners and four implications for researchers were discussed
based on our findings. Conclusion: Our findings contribute to the understanding
of the organization, benefits and issues of adopting DevOps and microservices
from an immersive perspective of software teams.
