Many companies lack a comprehensive DevOps culture
Companies are wasting potential in software development: Less than half have a comprehensive DevOps culture. This is shown by the State of Developer Experience Survey 2022 from LeanIX. According to this study, most respondents apply the methods characteristic of DevOps only sporadically and complain more frequently that obstacles become a challenge in their daily work. Considering the [...]
Potential of DevOps is not exploited in daily work
The study participants were asked about the use of five characteristic working methods for DevOps - with sobering results:
Nearly 60 percent of the respondents state that they can react flexibly to changing customer requirements and that they have CI/CD pipelines. However, flexibility with regard to the customer and the ability to execute and test changes to the code automatically via CI/CD pipelines is central to DevOps initiatives. It is therefore notable that for more than 40 percent of teams, this basic requirement is only partially met or not met at all. The picture is even worse when it comes to the "build-ship-own your code" principle typical of DevOps, team organization based on team topologies or the free choice of tech stack. In summary, DevOps initiatives can be expanded in international companies.DevOps maturity level influences perception of obstacles at work
If we look at the five working methods queried, we see that the majority of developer teams (53 percent) use only up to three of these methods. This low DevOps maturity level has an influence on the assessment of obstacles in daily work. Respondents from such teams consistently rate these as a greater challenge:
Reducing manual effort due to lack of automation - this is at the top of the list of obstacles described as a "major challenge" for all respondents. However, teams with a lower DevOps maturity level perceive this significantly more strongly, at 41 percent versus 25 percent. Whether breaking down silos or the difficulty of focusing on one's tasks due to frequent changes in context, whether uncovering bottlenecks, the challenge of prioritizing projects or allocating resources efficiently: in theory, agile ways of working lead to the elimination or significant reduction of these obstacles. The fact that the majority of respondents describe these issues as challenging is another indication that DevOps teams are still on a journey. This is where those responsible can start to further improve and accelerate software development in the company.There is a lack of a common language between IT and business
Successful DevOps initiatives require collaboration with all stakeholders in the company - as the analysts at Gartner point out. They note that many initiatives also fail because the expectations associated with them are not clearly defined within the company. In order to manage these expectations, IT and business should agree on common goals and metrics - and thus on a common language, according to the experts. However, it is precisely this common language that is lacking in companies: Only 42 percent of respondents in this study say that IT and business understand each other. If you look at which metrics are actually recorded and examined in detail, the lack of a basis for understanding becomes obvious.Little insight into customer value and software development efficiency
About 70 percent of developer teams look at two metrics in relation to the customer and their work: open support tickets and monthly active users - easily accessible metrics that hold the most potential for frustration and don't directly relate to the software delivered and its value to the customer:
Whether feature adoption, churn rate, return on investment or net promoter score as an expression of satisfaction: each of these metrics is considered by less than half of software development teams. Most teams therefore have little insight into the actual success and customer benefit of their specific work performance - and are unable to share this with the business. The possibility of measuring the performance of software development using the four recognized DORA metrics (Deployment Frequency, Failure Rate, Lead Time for Changes, Mean Time to Recovery) is also not perceived comprehensively. A quarter of respondents do not even consider one of these key figures. However, measuring performance in this way would also contribute to a common language that makes mutual appreciation possible in the first place.Different data sources complicate the overview
The information required for relevant customer key figures or DORA metrics is often distributed across various sources. Collecting them often involves a great deal of manual effort - and in almost 40 percent of cases even Excel spreadsheets. Modern value stream management platforms could help. However, only 20 percent of respondents already use them to automatically link data streams with each other and establish a direct link to business results.Expand agile ways of working despite predominantly positive developer experience
No comprehensive DevOps implementation, hurdles in daily work, little insight into the direct customer benefit of the developed software - despite this situation in the developer teams, the slight majority of respondents generally rate the developer experience rather positively:
What sounds good at first, however, a closer look also shows that almost half of the respondents cannot decide on a positive assessment. Against the backdrop of a massive shortage of skilled IT staff and the increasing importance of software as a differentiator on the market, companies should do everything in their power to retain their software development teams.This article originally appeared on m-q.ch - https://www.m-q.ch/de/vielen-unternehmen-fehlt-umfassende-devops-kultur/
