How shouldn't you do DevOps?

1. Introduce a DevOps Silo. 
2. Ignore the cultural aspect
3. Focus on tools
4. Leaf security out 
5. Leaf quality assurance out 
6. Do not measure
7. Do not continuously improve
8. Automate every existing process

Without providing a self-service processes/tools to dev teams but focusing on a ticket based system to serve dev team needs

You shouldn't do devOps without a well thought out strategy that includes support of corporate strategy for sustainability, digital transformation or I40.

Don't allow dev ops to be siloed. Ensure knowledge is shared and is part of your projects rather than an afterthought. Too many times I'll see product teams focus solely on functional requirements and ignore all the issues of scale, performance, security etc in favour of their narrow view of the UI. If dev ops are not included in the process then you'll be constantly putting out fires because there is no plan.

Some of the worst DevOps enablements I have seen were nothing more than "lipstick on a pig". E.g. no fundamental change in operations, but simply a renaming of roles and the removal of steps in a legacy staging process without making the upstream changes in the development process that delivery the acceleration benefits of tearing down walls.

This usually goes hand-in-hand with the sacking of testing, quality assurance, change management and infrastructure specialists.

But the worst thing I have seen organisations do is outsourcing the Dev and Ops part. Some organisations outsource the Dev and keeps the Ops. Or, conversely, outsource the Ops to a cloud service provider and keep the Dev. OR outsource both to different providers.

I've yet to see that strategy deliver successful outcomes to the consumers of these outsourced relationship; although the financial controllers are generally happy with the cost savings such arrangements achieve.

In summary: DevOps and outsourcing (seldom) go hand-in-hand - certainly not as a first step in transitioning from a legacy environment to a more modern one.