Sylwia's post — est. reading time: 11 min

The promise of DevSecOps is compelling: rapid software delivery without compromising security or operational integrity. Yet, the true barrier to success isn’t always technical—it’s cultural.

Too often, development, security, and operations teams operate in silos, guided by their own priorities and metrics. Developers aim to ship quickly. Security teams strive to reduce risk. Operations focus on stability. Without a shared understanding of one another’s goals, even the most advanced tools and pipelines will fall short. The real challenge is not technology—it’s creating a DevSecOps culture where speed, safety, and reliability coexist as shared values.

Culture isn’t built overnight, and it certainly doesn’t emerge automatically from adopting automation tools or shifting responsibilities. A DevSecOps culture requires intentional collaboration, organizational support, and leadership commitment to aligning teams across traditional divides.

Where Cultural Misalignment Begins

At its root, the disconnect between Dev, Sec, and Ops is one of misaligned incentives and limited empathy.

Developers are evaluated on delivery speed, new features, and customer satisfaction.

Security teams are measured by how well they mitigate threats, reduce vulnerabilities, and ensure compliance.

Operations teams focus on system uptime, infrastructure scalability, and performance reliability.

While these objectives are all important, they are often pursued independently—and when they clash, frustration builds. Security is seen as a blocker. Development is seen as careless. Operations are seen as risk-averse. This friction leads to blame, delay, and lost momentum.

A Real-World Example: The Breakdown Before Launch

A multinational tech company spent months developing a flagship product. As the launch date approached, excitement built. But during a late-stage review, the security team flagged several high-severity vulnerabilities—issues that had been raised earlier but weren’t prioritized.

With just days to go, security halted the release. Developers were furious, arguing that the issues could be patched in a future update. The security team stood firm, citing the company’s risk policies.

The result? A delayed launch, internal finger-pointing, and leadership frustration. The core problem wasn’t just the missed vulnerabilities—it was the lack of alignment throughout the development cycle.

Why DevSecOps Culture Matters More Than Tools

Many organizations attempt to “do DevSecOps” by adding scanners to their pipelines or shifting left in testing. These steps help, but they don’t address the real issue: culture.

A DevSecOps culture doesn’t treat security as an afterthought or a gatekeeper. Instead, it integrates security thinking into every phase of the software lifecycle. This kind of culture fosters collaboration, trust, and continuous learning.

The Benefits of a DevSecOps Culture

Faster releases with fewer rollbacks.

Higher developer confidence in code quality.

Improved detection and mitigation of vulnerabilities.

Fewer late-stage blockers or escalations.

Greater resilience during incidents.

Perhaps most importantly, DevSecOps cultures create environments where teams don’t just coexist—they co-own outcomes.

What a Healthy DevSecOps Culture Looks Like

In organizations that have successfully aligned development, security, and operations, several traits emerge consistently:

In traditional models, security bears sole responsibility for managing risk. In DevSecOps, risk becomes a shared concern. Developers understand the impact of their code. Ops teams understand how configuration affects attack surfaces. Security provides guidance but doesn't shoulder the burden alone.

Security is no longer “someone else’s job” that happens at the end. Instead, it’s woven into tools and processes that teams already use—version control, CI/CD, IDEs, issue trackers, and runtime environments.

Teams don’t wait for quarterly reviews to raise issues. Instead, there are continuous conversations through regular standups, shared dashboards, and automated notifications. Everyone can see the current state of security, performance, and release readiness.

Security engineers participate in sprint planning. Developers join threat modeling sessions. Operations teams co-design architecture reviews. These interactions build trust, understanding, and a common vocabulary.

Building the Foundation: Practical Steps to Align Teams

Creating a DevSecOps culture requires intentional steps—not just slogans.

Security can’t be an add-on—it must be present during planning, design, and development. This means involving security engineers in backlog grooming and sprint planning, including security criteria in definition of done, and building secure architecture patterns and design templates into early project phases.

Traditional standups are siloed by role. Break this habit by scheduling weekly or bi-weekly DevSecOps standups, where representatives from each team briefly share updates. These meetings reduce surprises, clarify expectations, and encourage shared problem-solving.

Threat modeling isn’t just for security professionals. Developers and operations engineers should participate to learn how attackers think, where vulnerabilities are likely to emerge, and what controls are most effective.

Each team typically tracks their own KPIs—but shared dashboards reveal the bigger picture. Integrating metrics like unresolved vulnerabilities, MTTR, deployment frequency, and infrastructure compliance helps balance trade-offs and focus on outcomes.

Just as developers review each other’s code, encourage security peer reviews—where developers check for common missteps before security flags them. This promotes awareness, speeds remediation, and builds security into the team’s DNA.

Creating a Culture of Continuous Learning

DevSecOps isn’t just a process—it’s a mindset. Organizations must create space for teams to grow together.

Ideas include monthly security-focused brown bag sessions, gamified CTF challenges with development teams, security champions programs, and postmortems that include security and ops—not just devs.

When learning is prioritized, teams begin to see security as a craft—not a chore.

Leadership’s Role: Driving Cultural Alignment

Culture flows from the top. If leadership views security as a bottleneck, so will teams. If leaders reward fast delivery without accountability, corners will be cut. Executives must play an active role in normalizing collaboration, transparency, and secure thinking.

Responsibilities include tying security metrics to business goals, allocating budget for toolchains, recognizing cross-functional initiatives, setting expectations for shared responsibility, and sponsoring joint training programs.

Most importantly, leaders must frame security not as the absence of risk—but as the presence of trust.

Case Study: Cultural Transformation at a SaaS Provider

A mid-sized SaaS provider faced growing tension between development and security teams. Developers saw security as a blocker. Security felt ignored. Operations was caught in the middle, managing incidents from both sides.

Leadership launched a cultural transformation program. They replaced isolated tooling with shared CI/CD and scanning platforms, appointed a DevSecOps advocate on each product team, built a unified dashboard showing vulnerability trends, and held quarterly security retros to reflect on wins and lessons learned.

They also adjusted performance reviews to include collaborative metrics. Within a year, deployment frequency increased by 40%, critical vulnerabilities dropped by 60%, and employee engagement rose across all three departments.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Even well-meaning cultural efforts can fall short. Watch for the following common pitfalls:

Token collaboration—holding joint meetings without empowering decisions—leads to performative unity without practical change.

Unbalanced metrics—measuring developers on delivery speed, but security on risk reduction—creates incompatible incentives that discourage cooperation.

One-way integration—adding security tools without adapting workflows—can feel like a surveillance mechanism rather than a collaborative safeguard.

Leadership detachment—expecting change without executive modeling or support—undermines the entire initiative.

Culture change isn’t easy, but the cost of misalignment—slower delivery, increased risk, and demotivated teams—is far greater.

Embedding DevSecOps Into Your Organizational DNA

To truly build a DevSecOps culture, organizations must move beyond treating it as a project. It must become a guiding principle for how work is done, how success is measured, and how people collaborate.

This means building security into onboarding and training. It means designing systems with observability and auditability from the start. It means investing in tools that support—not silo—collaboration.

It also means hiring with cultural fit in mind—not just technical prowess. And it means encouraging teams to reflect, adapt, and grow together—not just to deliver faster.

Ultimately, the goal isn’t just to release software faster or reduce vulnerabilities. It’s to build a culture of ownership, alignment, and shared excellence.

A Final Challenge for Leadership and Teams

If your next product launch depended not just on features, but on how well your teams worked together across security, operations, and development—would you be ready?

DevSecOps success isn’t about perfect code or flawless compliance. It’s about people—working together, with purpose, and with clarity.

Build the culture, and the outcomes will follow.