As 2016 begins, you’ve probably set some New Year’s resolutions for yourself, however have you set any resolutions for your IT teams?

By following some or all of the tips below, you can ensure you’ll be able to handle any challenges in the year ahead with ease.

Break Down Siloes

As the name implies, DevOps is a combination of developers and operations professionals. In large companies, IT teams are typically grouped together based on their specialty. While large companies have tried embracing agile principles, the projects often don’t go as planned due to a lack of communication. For projects to be successful, all stakeholders need to discuss the aspects of the program and understand their roles as the project progresses. This shift requires you to adjust the performance review process since you’ll need to evaluate both team performance and individual contributions.

Embracing Extreme Programming principles are helpful since they also focus on rapid product releases in order to ensure the project is meeting customer expectations. Programming in pairs, extensive code review, and unit testing, and adding features only when needed are just a few of the key principles of the technique.

Employ Big Data Concepts

Big data is about taking troves of information and using it to shape the development of an application. For example, if you’re managing a web application, you’ll want to focus on key metrics such as active users, churn levels, and brand sentiment. As a devOps professional, there are two types of information you’ll need to have a handle on. The first type is technical data. Looking resource usage, troubleshooting logs, and response times enables you to determine whether your budget is being spent effectively, and spot where your infrastructure needs improvement.

The second type of data is looking at how the product is being used. By looking at how the product is being used, you’ll be able to gain insights into how customers interact with the product. Do you find certain features are triggering the same errors? Are users staying on the site long enough to fully use it? Are there certain mobile devices or browsers which aren’t rendering properly? These are just a few of the user experience questions you can answer by using the right website monitoring tools.

Change Doesn’t Happen Overnight

Compared to smaller companies, enterprises move much slower when it comes to changing their workflows. This doesn’t mean you can’t improve your processes in the coming year. By breaking these shifts into manageable chunks, you’ll be able to test the waters and make some progress as the year moves on. When planning project next steps, set clear metrics for teams and establish clear project requirements. The best way to get the ball rolling with these shifts is to have create small teams comprised of members from key departments.