  Many organizations adopt DevOps practices and tools in order to break down
silos within the organization, improve software quality and delivery, and
increase customer satisfaction. However, the impact of the individual practices
on the performance of the organization is not well known. In this paper, we
collect evidence on the effects of DevOps practices and tools on organizational
performance. In an extensive literature search we identified 14 DevOps
practices, consisting of 47 subpractices. Based on these practices, we
conducted a global survey to study their effects in practice, and measure
DevOps maturity. Across 123 respondents, working in 11 different industries, we
found that 13 of the 14 DevOps practices are adopted, determined by 50\% of the
participants indicating that practices are `always', `most of the time', and
'about half of the time' applied. There is a positive correlation between the
adoption of all practices and independently measured maturity. In particular,
practices concerning sandboxes for minimum deployment, test-driven development,
and trunk based development show the lowest correlations in our data. Effects
of software delivery and organizational performance are mainly perceived
positive. Yet, DevOps is also considered by some to have a negative impact such
as respondents mentioning the predictability of product delivery has decreased
and work is less fun. Concluding, our detailed overview of DevOps practices
allows more targeted application of DevOps practices to obtain its positive
effects while minimizing any negative effects.
