Many organisations have adopted the DevOps principles by becoming Agile development shops or more closely aligning development, QA, and operations functions. Is DevOps for everyone? I would argue that it probably isn't, but there are two aspects of preparing for DevOps from which every organisation can benefit.  

The purpose of adopting this philosophy is to bridge the gap between the business drivers for the development and operations teams. The development group is driven by implementing change; the operations group is driven by providing stability. And when you break these down into more specific issues and challenges, you'll tend to mostly come back to two root causes: different motivations and poor communications.  

So much work today around preparing your organisation for DevOps focuses on process alignment, tools, training, and documentation. But how much time is being invested in cross-portfolio team building, foundational individual and team communications skills, and aligning corporate business drivers uniformly across all IT teams?  

My advice would be to place the initial emphasis on those three areas first in order to maximise your return on investment in process alignment, tools, and process/technical training. Even if it turns out that DevOps isn't "for you" or your organisation's business model, in the end, you will see significant long-term returns on any investment in building a stronger and more cohesive culture across IT portfolios.   As the current HP Discover Performance Tour moves across North America this fall, and if you are considering attending Vivit or HP Software events anywhere in the world, go with this mind-set and see how you can increase IT productivity.