Book excerpt: DevOps is a fundamental shift in how leading edge companies are starting to manage their software and IT work. Businesses need to move more quickly than ever before, and large software organizations are applying these DevOps principles to develop new software faster than anyone previously thought possible. DevOps started in small organizations and in large organizations that had or created architectures that enabled small teams to independently develop, qualify, and deploy code. The impact on productivity is so dramatic that larger organizations with tightly coupled architectures are realizing they either need to embrace DevOps or be left behind. The biggest challenge is that they can't just empower small teams to work independently because their legacy architectures require coordinating the development, qualification, and deployment of code across hundreds of people. They need a DevOps approach that not only addresses their unique challenges, but also helps them reach an organization-wide agreement on where to start and how to scale DevOps. That is where Starting and Scaling DevOps in the Enterprise comes in. Starting and Scaling DevOps in the Enterprise is a quick, easy-to-read guide that helps structure those improvements by providing a framework that large organizations can use to understand DevOps principles in the context of their current development processes and gain alignment across the organization for successful implementations. The book illustrates how to analyze your current development and delivery processes to ensure you gain positive momentum by implementing the DevOps practices that will have the greatest immediate impact on the productivity of your organization, with the goal of achieving continuous improvement over time.