How to apply DevSecOps with culture change to safeguard business value
Published Sep 3, 2025 in
Articles
Cloud & Infrastructure
Contributors
Shane Hill
This Australian university wanted to act on opportunities more quickly, with simpler audits and cost-effective cloud operations. These catalysts led it to pursue DevSecOps with culture change. In speaking with their Infrastructure Leader, ADAPT found that making change personal–and focusing on a service mindset–was key to its success.
Three main lessons emerged during execution, these being:
- Certain workloads are neither suitable for the cloud nor for automation. Recognising these diminishing returns helped the respondent to set the right exceptions.
- Separate in-house and cloud teams impacted resources and limited skills growth. By merging these teams, they could focus more on the outcomes rather than the environments.
- Project sponsorship frequently changed, resulting in misunderstandings. With empathy, the Infrastructure Leader developed a shared vocabulary on the rationale for change.
This initiative commenced in early 2021 and was largely complete by Jun 2022. Aside from optimised cost, risk management and flexibility, the university is now able to campaign more effectively and build upon its big data strengths for research.
This Australian university wanted to act on opportunities more quickly, with simpler audits and cost-effective cloud operations. These catalysts led it to pursue DevSecOps with culture change. In speaking with their Infrastructure Leader, ADAPT found that making change personal–and focusing on a service mindset–was key to its success.
Three main lessons emerged during execution, these being:
- Certain workloads are neither suitable for the cloud nor for automation. Recognising these diminishing returns helped the respondent to set the right exceptions.
- Separate in-house and cloud teams impacted resources and limited skills growth. By merging these teams, they could focus more on the outcomes rather than the environments.
- Project sponsorship frequently changed, resulting in misunderstandings. With empathy, the Infrastructure Leader developed a shared vocabulary on the rationale for change.
This initiative commenced in early 2021 and was largely complete by Jun 2022. Aside from optimised cost, risk management and flexibility, the university is now able to campaign more effectively and build upon its big data strengths for research.
