Cybersecurity has evolved from a nice-to-have to a must-have in the last decade. Gartner projects that global information security spending will grow by 15% in 2025. As organizations reassess their cybersecurity budgets for the new year, they focus on strategic investments to deliver the biggest bang for their buck.
While SecOps teams have garnered much of the spotlight for being essential to defense and risk mitigation, DevOps teams are equally critical to protecting and advancing digital assets through application reliability and innovation. While security and developer teams have historically been at odds, as security shifts left, developer teams can take advantage of the stake that security teams have made in the ground to demonstrate their value.
To secure their rightful place in the budget, DevOps teams must prove they are mission-critical to the success of their organization — because they are precisely that. By looking at how SecOps have established their ROI and built internal champions, DevOps teams can similarly showcase their value, aligning their work with ROI and business goals and advocating for themselves and their team.
Aligning DevOps With Business Objectives
SecOps teams have aligned their reporting metrics with business continuity, and DevOps teams can do the same. By proactively supporting initiatives such as digital transformation, cloud migration, or new product launches, DevOps teams can better demonstrate their ability to adapt quickly to new market needs. For example, integrating DevOps from the ground floor enables organizations to scale digital initiatives or transition to cloud-based systems with minimal disruptions.
As budgets tighten, DevOps teams must prove they’re not a cost center but a strategic investment that drives innovation and security.
DevOps as a Core Business Driver
SecOps and DevOps teams are two sides of the same coin. While cybersecurity teams work to secure digital platforms, DevOps helps build security into products from the ground up. Research from Google’s State of DevOps Report demonstrates the financial impact of DevOps, which delivers savings between $10M and $259M annually through increased efficiencies, reduced downtime, and faster development cycles.
DevOps teams effectively create additional organizational capacity without the need for additional hiring. By integrating DevOps from the start, organizations can save millions in unnecessary rework avoided every year while accelerating time to market for new products.
Showing ROI and Demonstrating Value
To better demonstrate value, DevOps teams should track and share specific metrics that align with business outcomes. Key metrics include mean time to recovery (MTTR) from incidents, reduced downtime, and new feature deployment frequency. Teams should also measure customer satisfaction scores, and cost savings associated with automation.
These metrics should directly tie into business impact and explain how the DevOps team’s efficiency gains, productivity improvements, and overall effects drive revenue for their organizations. For example, improved MTTR correlates with system uptime, which drives increased revenue. Similarly, faster deployment of new features enables quicker reactions to new market opportunities and customer needs. DevOps teams can connect the dots for leadership by aligning DevOps metrics to business metrics. This has been successful in cybersecurity, where teams show how the efficiency of the security program reduces the number of cycles the rest of the company needs to spend on security.
Building DevOps Champions
Champions help bridge the gap between technical execution and business value, expertly translating the team’s achievement to leadership. To develop effective champions, organizations must start identifying team members who can communicate technical concepts in terms that business leaders will understand. These champions should be given opportunities to present their respective art to stakeholders in strategic planning. Organizations should invest in providing champions with leadership skills training while involving them in initiatives where they can demonstrate the broader impact of DevOps.
The most effective DevOps champions will understand how to connect technical metrics to core business KPIs. They can serve as a problem solver for the organization, not just within their technical domain. It’s also essential that this champion has a line of communication with the CEO or CFO. Today, CISOs are more commonly reported to the CEO, CFO, or the board, allowing CISOs to advocate for security teams and secure proper resources. The path to this reporting structure for DevOps teams starts with a champion.
Proving Mission-Critical Role
DevOps isn’t just about writing code faster; it’s about fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Without it, systems would fail, customers would leave, and innovation would stall. DevOps teams must make the case that they are not just operational support but mission-critical to operational excellence and positive business outcomes. Far from being a cost center, DevOps is a key driver of innovation, enhances customer satisfaction, and fuels sustained growth.
To secure their rightful place in budgets in 2025 and beyond, DevOps teams should align their efforts with the broader organizational goals, track and communicate ROI regularly, and build champions who can effectively communicate value to the C-suite.
With the expertise and these tools at their disposal, DevOps teams can position themselves as indispensable drivers of innovation and growth, ensuring continued investment and recognition in the years ahead.
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