Adopting DevOps practices: an enhanced unified theory of acceptance and use of technology framework

Abstract

DevOps software development approach is widely used in the software engineering discipline. DevOps eliminates the development and operations department barriers. The paper aims to develop a conceptual model for adopting DevOps practices in software development organizations by extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). The research also aims to determine the influencing factors of DevOps practices’ acceptance and adoption in software organizations, determine gaps in the software development literature, and introduce a clear picture of current technology acceptance and adoption research in the software industry. A comprehensive literature review clarifies how users accept and adopt new technologies and what leads to adopting DevOps practices in the software industry as the starting point for developing a conceptual framework for adopting DevOps in software organizations. The literature results have formulated the conceptual framework for adopting DevOps practices. The resulting model is expected to improve understanding of software organizations’ acceptance and adoption of DevOps practices. The research hypotheses must be tested to validate the model. Future work will include surveys and expert interviews for model enhancement and validation. This research fulfills the necessity to study how software organizations accept and adopt DevOps practices by enhancing UTAUT.