State of DevOps: Complete Report Roundup

DevOps has never been more popular than it is today. Since first popularized over 15 years ago by Patrick Debois and Gene Kim, DevOps has become the standard approach for managing IT in all forms: operations, software development and, increasingly, security.  In this article, we’ll look at key trends and data that paint a picture of the State of DevOps today.

(Check out our DevOps introduction, DevOps team roles and DevOps conference and event roundup.) 

Google/DORA's 2023 Accelerate State of DevOps Report

The industry publishes a variety of State of DevOps reports every year. Arguably, the most important to is the DORA/Google State of DevOps Report. From 2014-2017, DORA partnered with Puppet on a joint State of DevOps report. In 2018, Google acquired DORA and the new Google/DORA State of DevOps report became independent from Puppet (and we’ll cover that one below). Today, the DORA team is responsible for DevOps Research and Assessment — hence the acronym.

Published on October 5, 2023, the most recent Google/DORA Accelerate State of DevOps Report has several key findings and five key insights:

1. Establish a health culture. Building technical capabilities, fueling technical excellence, achieving organizational performance objectives, and fostering employee success all hinge on a strong foundation of culture. A robust cultural environment can mitigate burnout, boost productivity, and enhance job satisfaction. Teams characterized by inclusive, cohesive generative cultures exhibit a remarkable 30% higher level of organizational performance compared to those lacking such a culture.
2. Build with users in mind. Rapid and successful deployment by teams is valuable, yet if they neglect the user's perspective, their efforts may prove futile. The research demonstrates that prioritizing a user-centric approach when developing applications and services stands out as a significant indicator of overall organizational effectiveness. Interestingly, considering the user during development seems to catalyze enhancements across all the technical, procedural, and cultural dimensions investigated in the DORA research. Teams that center their efforts around the user experience exhibit a remarkable 40% higher level of organizational performance compared to those that do not.
3. Amplify technical capabilities with quality documentation. The influence of DevOps technical capabilities, such as continuous integration and trunk-based development, on organizational performance is significantly magnified by top-notch documentation. In essence, quality documentation not only facilitates the establishment of these technical capabilities but also ensures their relevance. To illustrate, the effectiveness of SRE practices is estimated to increase by 1.4 times when supported by high-quality documentation, resulting in a more substantial impact on organizational performance. Maintaining high-quality documentation correlates with a 25% increase in team performance compared to scenarios where documentation quality is lacking.
4. Distribute work fairly. Individuals who self-identify as underrepresented, women, or those who opt to specify their gender experience elevated levels of burnout, which likely stem from various systemic and environmental factors. It is not surprising that our findings indicate a strong correlation between increased burnout and individuals who undertake repetitive tasks, with members of underrepresented groups being more inclined to take on such roles. Specifically, underrepresented respondents report a 24% higher incidence of burnout compared to their counterparts who are not underrepresented. Additionally, underrepresented respondents engage in 29% more repetitive work than those not belonging to underrepresented groups. Moreover, women and those who self-identify their gender engage in 40% more repetitive work compared to men.
5. Increase infrastructure flexibility with cloud. To maximize the benefits of cloud computing, teams can harness the inherent features of the cloud, such as rapid scalability and on-demand self-service. These attributes are indicative of a more adaptable infrastructure. For instance, utilizing a public cloud results in a notable 22% boost in infrastructure flexibility compared to not leveraging cloud resources. This enhanced flexibility, in a cascading effect, translates into teams achieving a 30% higher level of organizational performance compared to those operating with less flexible infrastructures.

How Google/DORA Measures Software Delivery Performance

The research highlights a significant correlation between an organization's software delivery performance and its overall performance, team effectiveness, and employee well-being. To gauge the efficiency and reliability of software changes, the researchers employ the following metrics:

• Change lead time: The duration it takes for a code change to progress from commitment to deployment.
• Deployment frequency: The frequency at which changes are pushed into production.
• Change failure rate: The frequency with which a software deployment introduces a failure that necessitates immediate intervention.
• Failed deployment recovery time: The time required to recover from a failed deployment.

The analysis has unveiled four distinct performance tiers, with the reemergence of the Elite performance tier, which was not observed in last year's cohort. Elite performers, located globally, exhibit an exceptional ability to achieve both high throughput and stability in their software delivery processes.

In this video, Michelle Irvine (Technical Writer/DORA Research, Google) discusses the findings of the new 2023 State of DevOps Report

State of DevOps in search today

One of the best indicators of the popularity — both growth and decline — of a topic is to carefully examine search trends. Google Trends and Google Ads Keyword Planner are perhaps the two best tools for understanding how topics are doing in search.

Looking first at Google Trends, we can see that there has been continued growth over the years for the topic. We also note that the topic has never been more popular than as recently as February 2023. Google Trends displays relative search interest, with a value of 100 representing peak popularity. Thus, no matter the dates selected there will always be a data point at the highest value.

Google Ads Keyword Planner provides a more nuanced look at search trends, although with a more limited date range. While Google Trends can go back all the way to 2004, Keyword Planner can show only a couple of years’ worth of data.

With this tool, we can see a clear and significant growth in worldwide searches for the phrase “devops” between 2019 and 2023, with total monthly search volume approaching 600k monthly searches before levling off. This makes “devops” one of the top searched for phrases in the entire IT industry.

While some pundits have claimed “DevOps is Dead”, the truth is that the practice is more engrained than ever before and continues to grow in popularity. Based on past trends, we should expect continued growth in searches for DevOps and related concepts in the coming years.

Puppet’s 2023 State of DevOps pivots to Platform Engineering

Puppet has been publishing an annual State of DevOps report for more than a decade, with their first survey launched in 2012. If you were looking for more on DevOps from Puppet in 2023, though, you might be surprised: they pivoted to focusing on Platform Engineering. Why the change? Puppet sees that platform engineering is the so-called “DevOps Differentiator”. As they put it:

"...we’ve reported on DevOps as it has emerged from a grassroots, practitioner-led trend into a massive movement of adopters, experts, vendors, and consultants. In our 11th edition of the State of DevOps Report, we’re excited to share our findings that link organizations making strong progress within DevOps to their platform engineering approach."

In previous years, Puppet highlighted common DevOps blockers, like maturing in time, using cloud and automation intentionally and how various teams support the overall acceptance of DevOps. In this 2023 report, Puppet says clearly that platform engineering is “a proven approach” for unlocking and scaling DevOps success. So it makes sense that they pivoted  —  most organizations still struggle to make DevOps a success. 

Here are some findings from the report:

• How and why platform engineering is on the up + up
• The DevOps/platform engineering relationship, including that 94% of respondents agree that platform engineering helps organizations realize DevOps benefits, with almost half of those folks agreeing it is a “big step in the right direction”.
• Organizations are not investing sufficiently in product management skills, especially on platform teams

Defining platform engineering

So, exactly what does Puppet mean by platform engineering? They define it as the discipline of building self-service capabilities in order to minimize developers’ cognitive load and enable quicker software delivery. The output of platform teams is a shared infrastructure platform for internal users — one that relies on a product mindset.

We do like that inside the 2023 report, Puppet clearly defines their outlook: “Platform Engineering Not New and DevOps is Not Dead”. In their view, DevOps has improved many, many areas of how enterprises look at software development, delivery and maintenance. Like DevOps pulls from movements including Agile, Lean and Kaizen (The Toyota Way), we can also add platform engineering as a supporting methodology. As DevOps co-founder Patrick Debois has said,

“DevOps is whatever you do to bridge friction created by silos, and all the rest is engineering.”

The DevOps Institute’s Upskilling IT Report

For several years running, the DevOps Institute has been releasing an annual report focused on Enterprise DevOps Skills. In the latest iteration of this report, titled Upskilling IT, the DevOps Institute surveyed more than 2400 professionals from 120 countries creating not just one report, but four reports (!!), covering the global outlook plus deep-dives into the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions.

We’ll let you dive into the report that is most relevant to your team, but overall, here are some takeaways:

• No matter your location, you’re probably working with insufficient IT resources and skills.
• You can’t address technical debt without acknowledging the talent debt. (Our hunch is this means a lot more hands-on education and experience is necessary.)
• Both organizations and individuals alike see upskilling as a must, not as an added bonus.

Now see how much this compares with the results from the single 2021 report:

• Significant growth in the number of organizations that have a formal upskilling (training) program, with more than half of participants now reporting that their organization has such a program.
• Lack of necessary IT resources skills is a major challenge globally. Nearly half of respondents indicated that the resource and skill shortage is one of their top 3 challenges.
• Talent Debt must be addressed while dealing with technical debt. Technology fixes without human skills doesn’t advance innovation and transformation.
• Continuous learning for leaders and individual contributors is necessary  for organizations to remain competitive.
• DevOps and Agile are the two most important processes and frameworks for IT organizations, followed by ITSM/ITIL, Design Thinking, and Value Stream Management.

57% of survey participants indicated that IT process and framework skills are the most valuable capabilities for individuals. DevOps/DevSecOps are thought to be both the most important framework skills for today and for the future. Among technical skills, the most important are, in order:

1. Security
2. Cloud platforms
3. Container orchestration
4. Architecture
5. Application technologies

Ultimately, for both individual contributes and team leaders, its most important that all employees continue to learn and grow through their careers in leadership skills like diplomacy and trust-building, as well as technical skills.

Wrapping up DevOps

DevOps is here to stay. While adopting technologies like cloud, containers, and automation can be critical to success, surveys show that DevOps success is most dependent on:

• Breaking down organizational silos
• Continuous improvement, both in processes and skills/training
• Positive, inclusive teams