These days, application delivery—especially in large organizations with a mix of new and heritage systems—is a bit … chaotic. Organizations are adopting DevOps practices and tools in an effort to speed up the delivery of applications to customers. But the transition hasn’t been smooth. Culture, tools, team structures, individual roles, and skill requirements are all in flux.

In an age in which apps (and the data that fuels them) have become key drivers of business value, nearly every organization is undergoing some form of digital transformation. The stakes for getting this right are high—the continued viability of the organization itself.

Luckily, there are lessons from other major economic transitions, as well as core engineering principles, that provide useful models for enterprise organizations with complex heritage systems that run key business processes.