Looking at the DevOps Divide from Both Sides: It’s by No Means a Linear Equation

by Dennis Drogseth, VP of Research, IT Megatrends, Analytics, and CMDB Systems

EMA analyst Steve Hendrick and I teamed up to explore DevOps realities from multiple dimensions. Some of the questions we delved into included what’s true beyond the hype in terms of how DevOps initiatives succeed or fail; who’s really involved and why; what activities, best practices, toolsets, and technologies are most likely to bring success; and what are the impacts of trends such as cloud, microservices, digital, and transformation?

Based on a global respondent pool of 400, with a balance of company sizes skewed to larger enterprises since 63% had more than 10,000 employees, this new research provides a breadth and depth across many DevOps topics. Steve and I will share highlights with you during our webinar on June 6 but I wanted to share a few observations with you now.

When we asked what’s driving DevOps initiatives:

  • Coping with/optimizing cloud opportunities led the list
  • Speed in updating existing applications came in second place, significantly ahead of speed in delivering new applications
  • Improving OpEx efficiencies across IT also tied with updating existing applications for second place

The mixture of cloud, speed in delivery, and higher levels of efficiency reflected the broader picture of drivers, needs, and trends, along with improved customer satisfaction—both external and internal.

When it came to what’s going on in terms of DevOps activities:

  • CI/CD and requirements assessments led in awareness for lifecycle application activities
  • User acceptance testing and performance testing led in terms of defined activities in the DevOps pipeline

When we looked at best practices as applied to DevOps, the top three were Six Sigma, Scrum, and ITIL. Yes, ITIL still plays a significant role, especially in helping to unify development and operations teams, as do IT service management (ITSM) teams—especially those evolved enough to reach significantly beyond the service desk.

When we looked at road blocks from two perspectives: toolsets and teams. Toolset roadblocks reflected a tie between:

  • Failures to support hybrid team environments
  • Communicating the business impact of IT services to the LOB

Whereas project backlogs in operations was the clear winner when it came to where DevOps teams were least effective.

Perhaps the biggest news was that there really is consistency, once again, as we saw earlier in our “Reinventing ITSM” research, a definite winner’s circle. This was true when we asked about it in terms of:

  • Success in performance, relevance, and value
  • Seamless versus confrontational interactions between development and operations
  • Progressive versus minimal levels of automation and AI/analytics adoptions
  • More automated and agile operations versus the opposite

What was this winner’s circle like?

Well, you may get a few hints from just these four bullets. To really find out, along with learning many more dimensions behind these and other findings, join our webinar on June 6.