Abstract In the context of Information Technology (IT), organizations integrate DevOps to facilitate rapid software delivery; however, mapping the dynamic interrelationship of capabilities, metrics, and processes in practice remains a persistent academic challenge. The current research investigates the relational mechanisms driving successful DevOps adoption. The researchers designed an elaborate single-case study to examine how high-level strategic initiatives influence the complex interplay among technical capabilities, performance metrics, and lifecycle processes. The empirical design applies a qualitative approach grounded in hybrid (abductive) thematic analysis. Established deductive frameworks provided essential baseline constructs, while inductive coding captured emergent organizational phenomena, mitigating the risk of circular reasoning (i.e., confirming a priori assumptions). The researchers employed methodological triangulation by synthesizing 28 semi-structured interviews with longitudinal internal archival documents (DORA metrics), subsequently validating the emergent constructs through an expert focus group to establish a continuous chain of evidence. The synthesized empirical analysis reveals that three specific strategic initiatives functioned as associative enablers during the organizational transformation: (1) a mandated, standardized Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, (2) a centralized internal service catalog, and (3) a unified cloud-native platform. Archival metrics and interview transcripts mutually indicate these initiatives mitigated the core sociotechnical tension existing between velocity (driven by technical automation) and visibility (demanded by social governance). Grounded explicitly in Sociotechnical Systems (STS) Theory, a revised conceptual framework illuminates how technical tooling and organizational culture do not function in isolation; rather, they operate within a joint-optimization feedback loop. This theoretical model suggests a systemic mechanism for enterprise managers to balance competing sociotechnical priorities during large-scale DevOps transformations.

This study analyzed the factors to consider for updating business simulation systems within the context of digital transformation driven by emerging technologies. To achieve this, a qualitative research approach was adopted, focusing on the Business Practices and Entrepreneurship System (SPEE), the leading business simulator in Mozambique, to identify critical factors for its modernization. The investigation, conducted as a single case study, incorporated a literature review, document analysis, and interviews, which revealed five key dimensions: realism, multidisciplinary approach, communication and interaction, ease of use and support, and accessibility and scalability. The research concluded that the most significant factors include the complexity of the local market, automation and operational efficiency, the level of digital literacy and technological infrastructure, the anticipation of future scenarios, and the enhancement of user experience. These findings suggest that integrating emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, and Virtual Reality (VR) could enhance realism, adaptability, and user engagement. Additionally, hybrid solutions combining online and offline accessibility were recommended to address technological infrastructure limitations in developing countries. The study provides practical guidelines for aligning SPEE with contemporary educational and market demands, reinforcing its relevance in higher education.

Context: Many IT organizations are looking towards DevOps to make their software development and delivery processes faster and more reliable, while DevOps revolutionized the industry by emphasizing collaboration between development and operations teams. Nonetheless, there still exist challenges in harmonizing cultural, technical, measurement and process capabilities for its successful adoption. Objective: To research improving DevOps adoption, this study explores DevOps Capabilities relevant to the Life Cycle Processes (LCPs) of the IEEE 2675-2021 DevOps standard. Aiming to provide valuable information on increasing efficiency and outcomes by mapping DevOps Capabilities in each phase of the LCPs. Whereas previous research identified and classified 37 DevOps Capabilities, this study aims to determine which capabilities can enhance each of the 30 phases of the LCPs. Methods: Out of 102 documents identified in the Systematic Literature Review (SLR), relations among DevOps Capabilities and LCPs have been synthesized and organized. An in-depth analysis of data was conducted over the connections across various categories. The mapping revealed how they relate in terms of their application and impact. Results: The SLR shows technical DevOps Capabilities and technical LCPs strongly correlated. DevOps measurement capabilities have a significant impact on agreement processes. Using an impact scale classification, the study identifies eight capabilities that have exceptional impact on LCPs and eleven capabilities that have a very high impact on the supply process, requirements definition, integration process, and validation process. Conclusion: The study demonstrates how DevOps Capabilities together with LCPs can improve software delivery, quality, and reliability. It presents a structured approach for improving processes, as well as evidence of DevOps integration in software development and maintenance. The findings help to assess DevOps Capabilities and LCP relations, which is expected to improve successful adoption. Future research should focus on researching practical cases of DevOps integration into LCPs, while overcoming adoption challenges.

Context.To meet the demands of customers and market, Information Technology (IT) organizations are seeking to implement DevOps. While many succeed in DevOps adoption, others lack the knowledge on how to incorporate DevOps culture, process, measurements, and techniques in their business. Thus, successful adoption is still inconsistent, highlighting the need to provide management with relevant information to support the development of DevOps Capabilities effectively. But what are these Capabilities? Unfortunately, there is still a lack of clarity about DevOps Capabilities and their relationships to DevOps Practices and Outcomes among researchers and practitioners.Objective.This research aims to gather community consensus on the relationship between Capabilities and Practices, so a better DevOps implementation can be mapped. Seeking to define DevOps Capabilities and Practices concepts and to identify, organize and summarize Capabilities as they relate to Practices.Method.A Multivocal Literature Review (MLR) is conducted, with 93 documents gathered and thoroughly examined from throughout the community, including books, scientific articles, white papers, and conferences, among others.Results.This survey contributes a list of 37 organized Capabilities, their mentions in literature, and their definitions. The concepts of Practices and Capabilities were mapped and categorized in an ordered taxonomy. It is concluded that industry research has much outweighed scientific research on this topic, with Capabilities evolving dynamically over time, reinforcingteam collaboration and communicationas the most crucial one. The study's Outcomes will assist researchers and practitioners understand how Capabilities and Practices are related at different levels and how to better implement them.

Abstract Among current IT work cultures, DevOps stands out as one of the most adopted worldwide. The focus of this culture is on bridging the gap between development and operations teams, enabling collaborative effort toward quickly producing software, without sacrificing its quality and support. DevOps is used to tackle a variety of issues; as such, there are differing benefits reported by authors when performing their analysis. For this research, we aim to reach consensus on the DevOps benefits reported in existing literature. To accomplish this objective, two systematic literature reviews. The first intends to find all benefits reported in the literature, while the second review will be used to map the benefits found in the first one with DevOps implementation case studies, providing empirical evidences of each benefit. To strengthen the results, the concept‐centric approach is used. During this research it was possible to observe that the most reported benefits are aligned with the DevOps premises of better collaboration between developers and operators, delivering software and products quicker. Based on DevOps implementation case studies, most reported benefits include a faster time to market as well as improvements in synergy and automation. Less reported benefits include a reduction in failed changes and security issues.

Nowadays, organisations use and rely on Information Technology (IT) solutions. However, despite their benefits, IT solutions induct risks. Consequently, organisations implement Risk Management (RM), more specifically Information Technology Risk Management (IT RM), in order to maximize the effectiveness of IT usage while dealing with IT risks. Nevertheless, IT RM's implementation is not easy, since numerous standards and frameworks propose multiple RM processes to deal with IT risks. Moreover, these processes are composed of different activities causing confusion. In the end, organisations are not capable of managing risks successfully due to IT RM's complexity. To overcome IT RM diversity, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted. The goal is to identify which are the most essential IT RM activities. The SLR results were then integrated with ISO 31000 and PMBOK standards in the form of an ontology using Design and Engineering Methodology Ontology (DEMO). The contributions of this study are: the aggregate analysis of IT RM activities through the SLR; the identification of reasons and benefits of using DEMO; a description of an IT RM's essential model designed as an ontology; and a critical view of the benefits of the ontological model proposed.

COBIT 5 is a widely-used framework for implementing sound governance of enterprise IT (GEIT). Despite the existence of official guidance, there are still several challenges that we can encounter. Currently, the ISACA's official implementation solution follows a sequentially ordered process corresponding to a traditional approach, however, organizations are increasingly embracing more agile ones for managing projects where the solution is not clear from the beginning. Using the Design Science Research Methodology, the authors analyse the current state of art and provide a Scrum based methodology for managing at team level a COBIT 5 programme. With a hybrid agile-traditional approach, the authors aim to eliminate some known challenges of COBIT 5, such as lack of support from top management and misaligned scopes and solutions. Additionally, in this paper, the authors present the results obtained from applying the designed methodology in a COBIT 5 programme in the Portuguese Finance Ministry, as well as inspect two series of interviews: 10 performed with experts from both Scrum and COBIT 5 areas to evaluate the solution, and 6 others with the team involved in the demonstration programme, to understand if the objectives where achieved. The article ends with lessons learned, limitations and future work.

ITG has been recognized as a CIO top-10 issue for more than five years and has risen in priority between 2007 and 2009. Several Frameworks exist to help organizations in ITG implementation but lack scientific viewpoint, are complex, and also overlap each other. In this paper we make a literature review to leverage the ITG Contingency factors, ITG general guidelines and main ITG and ITM areas in order to provide a scientific viewpoint validation. Such artefacts are used to build an integrated ITG and ITM framework. We also evaluate our artefacts with expert's interviews in order to provide practitioner viewpoint validation. Finally, we conclude our research with main contributions and future work.

Information Technology Infra-structure Library (ITIL) is the most popular “best practices” framework for managing Information Technology (IT) services. However, implementing ITIL not only is very difficult but there also are no best practices for implementing ITIL. As a result, ITIL implementations are usually long, expensive, and risky. In this paper, we propose a maturity model to assess an ITIL implementation and provide a roadmap for improvement based on priorities, dependencies, and guidelines. We then demonstrate a practical application of the proposed model with a questionnaire to assess the ITIL Incident Management process that was evaluated in two real-world organizations.