Category: Features

By James Turnbull (@kartar), VP of Technology Operations, Puppet Labs Inc.

A sysadmin’s time is too valuable to waste resolving conflicts between operations and development teams, working through problems that stronger collaboration would solve, or performing routine tasks that can – and should – be automated. Working more collaboratively and freed from repetitive tasks, IT can – and will – play a strategic role in any business.

At Puppet Labs, we believe DevOps is the right approach for solving some of the cultural and operational challenges many IT organizations face. But without empirical data, a lot of the evidence for DevOps success has been anecdotal.

To find out whether DevOps-attuned organizations really do get better results, Puppet Labs partnered with IT Revolution Press IT Revolution Press to survey a broad spectrum of IT operations people, software developers and QA engineers.

The data gathered in the 2013 State of DevOps Report proves that DevOps concepts can make companies of any size more agile and more effective. We also found that the longer a team has embraced DevOps, the better the results. That success – along with growing awareness of DevOps – is driving faster adoption of DevOps concepts.

DevOps is everywhere

Our survey tapped just over 4,000 people living in approximately 90 countries. They work for a wide variety of organizations: startups, small to medium-sized companies, and huge corporations.

Most of our survey respondents – about 80 percent – are hands-on: sysadmins, developers or engineers. Break this down further, and we see more than 70 percent of these hands-on folks are actually in IT Ops, with the other 30 percent in development and engineering.

DevOps orgs ship faster, with fewer failures

DevOps ideas enable IT and engineering to move much faster than teams working in more traditional ways. Survey results showed:

• More frequent and faster deployments. High-performing organizations deploy code 30 times faster than their peers. Rather than deploying every week or month, these organizations deploy multiple times per day. Change lead time is much shorter, too. Rather than requiring lead time of weeks or months, teams that embrace DevOps can go from change order to deploy in just a few minutes. That means deployments can be completed up to 8,000 times faster.
• Far fewer outages. Change failure drops by 50 percent, and service is restored 12 times faster.

Organizations that have been working with DevOps the longest report the most frequent deployments, with the highest success rates. To cite just a few high-profile examples, Google, Amazon, Twitter and Etsy are all known for deploying frequently, without disrupting service to their customers.

Version control + automated code deployment = higher productivity, lower costs & quicker wins

Survey respondents who reported the highest levels of performance rely on version control and automation:

• 89 percent use version control systems for infrastructure management
• 82 percent automate their code deployments

Version control allows you to quickly pinpoint the cause of failures and resolve issues fast. Automating your code deployment eliminates configuration drift as you change environments. You save time and reduce errors by replacing manual workflows with a consistent and repeatable process. Management can rely on that consistency, and you free your technical teams to work on the innovations that give your company its competitive edge.

What are DevOps skills?

More recruiters are including the term DevOps in job descriptions. We found a 75 percent uptick in the 12-month period from January 2012 to January 2013. Mentions of DevOps as a job skill increased 50 percent during the same period.

In order of importance, here are the skills associated with DevOps:

• Coding & scripting. Demonstrates the increasing importance of traditional developer skills to IT operations.
• People skills. Acknowledges the importance of communication and collaboration in DevOps environments.
• Process re-engineering skills. Reflects the holistic view of IT and development as a single system, rather than as two different functions.

Interestingly, experience with specific tools was the lowest priority when seeking people for DevOps teams. This makes sense to us: It’s easier for people to learn new tools than to acquire the other skills.

It makes sense on a business level, too. After all, the tools a business needs will change as technology, markets and the business itself shift and evolve. What doesn’t change, however, is the need for agility, collaboration and creativity in the face of new business challenges.

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About the author:

A former IT executive in the banking industry and author of five technology books, James has been involved in IT Operations for 20 years and is an advocate of open source technology. He joined Puppet Labs in March 2010.

This is a guest post by Krishnan Badrinarayanan (@bkrishz), ZeroTurnaround

The word “DevOps” has been thrown around quite a lot lately. Job boards are awash with requisitions for “DevOps Engineers” with varying descriptions. What is DevOps, really?

In order to better under what the fuss is all about, we surveyed 620 engineers to examine what they do to keep everything running like clockwork – from day-to-day activities, key processes, tools and challenges they face. The survey asked for feedback on how much time is spent improving infrastructure and setting up automation for repetitive tasks; how much time is typically spent fighting fires and communicating; and what it takes to keep the lights on. We then compared responses belonging to those from traditional IT and DevOps teams. Here are the results, in time spent each week carrying out key activities:

Conclusions we can draw from the results

DevOps oriented teams spend slightly more time automating tasks

Writing scripts and automating processes have been a part of the Ops playbook for decades now. The likes of shell scripts, Python and PERL, are often used to automate repetitive configuration tasks but with the newer tools like Chef and Puppet, Ops folk perform more sophisticated kinds of automation such as spinning up virtual machines and tailoring them to the app’s needs using Chef or Puppet recipes.

Both Traditional IT and DevOps oriented teams communicate actively

Respondents belonging to a DevOps oriented team spend 2 fewer hours communicating each week, possibly because DevOps fosters better collaboration and keeps Dev and Ops teams in sync with each other. However, Dev and Ops folk in Traditional IT teams spend over 7 hours each week communicating. This active dialogue helps them better understand challenges, set expectations and triage issues. How much of this communication can be deemed inefficient is subjective, but it is necessary to get both teams to onboard. Today, shared tooling, instant messaging, task managers and social tools also help bring everyone closer together in real-time.

DevOps oriented teams fight fires less frequently

A key tenet of the DevOps methodology is to embrace the possibility of failures, and be prepared for it. With alerts, continuous testing, monitoring and feedback loops that expose vulnerabilities and key metrics, teams are enabled to act quickly and proactively. Programmable infrastructure and automated deployments provide a quick recovery while minimizing user impact.

DevOps oriented teams spend less time on administrative support

This could be a result of better communication, higher level of automation and the availability of self-service tools and scripts for most support tasks. If there’s a high level of provisioning and automation, there’s no reason why admin support shouldn’t dwindle down to a very small time drain. It could also mean that members of DevOps oriented teams help themselves more often than expecting to be supported by the system administrator.

DevOps oriented teams work fewer days after-hours

We asked our survey takers how many days per week they work outside of normal business hours. Here’s what we learned:

Days worked after hours	Traditional IT	DevOps Oriented
Average	2.3	1.5
Standard Deviation	1.7	1.7

According to these results, DevOps team members lead a more balanced life, spend more time on automation and infrastructure improvement, spend less time fighting fires, and work less hours (especially outside of normal business hours).

DevOps-related initiatives came up on top in 2012 and 2013, according to our survey. There’s a strong need for agility to respond to ever-changing and expanding market needs. Software teams are under pressure to help meet them and the chart above validates its benefits.

Rosy Stats, but hard to adopt

How we got here

IT Organizational structures – typically Dev, QA, and Ops – have come to exist for a reason. The dev team focuses on innovating and creating apps. The QA team ensures that the app behaves as intended. The operations team keeps the infrastructure running – from the apps, network, servers, shared resources to third party services. Each team requires a special set of skills in order to deliver a superior experience in a timely manner.

The challenge

Today’s users increasingly rely on software and expect it to meet their constantly evolving needs 24/7, whether they’re at their desks or on their mobile devices. As a result, IT teams need to respond to change and release app updates quickly and efficiently without compromising on quality. Fail to do so, and they risk driving users to competitors or other alternatives.

However, releasing apps quickly comes with its own drawbacks. It strains functionally siloed teams and often results in software defects, delays and stress. Infrequent communication across teams further exacerbates the issue, leading to a snowball effect of finger-pointing and bad vibes.

Spurring cultural change

Both Dev and Ops teams bring a unique set of skills and experience to software development and delivery. DevOps is simply a culture that brings development and operations teams together so that through understanding each others’ perspectives and concerns, they can build and deliver resilient software products that are production ready, in a timely manner. DevOps is not NoOps. Nor is it akin to putting a Dev in Ops clothing. DevOps is synergistic, rather than cannibalistic.

DevOps is a journey

Instilling a DevOps oriented culture within your organization is not something that you embark on and chalk off as success at the end. Adopting DevOps takes discipline and initiative to bring development and operations teams together. Read up on how other organizations approach adopting DevOps as a culture and learn from their successes and failures. Put to practice what makes sense within your group. Develop a maturity model that can guide you through your journey.

The goal is to make sure that dev and ops are on the same page, working together on everything, toward a common goal: continuous delivery of working software without handoffs, hand-washing, or finger-pointing.

Support the community and the cause

Dev and Ops need to look introspectively to understand their strengths and challenges, and look for ways to contribute towards breaking down silos. Together, they should seek to educate each other, culturally evolve roles, relationships, incentives, and processes and put end user experience first.

The DevOps community is small but burgeoning, and it’s easy to find ways to get involved, like with the community-driven explosion of DevOpsDays conferences that occur around the world.

Set small goals to be awesome

Teams should collaborate to set achievable goals and milestones that can get them on the path to embracing a DevOps culture. Celebrate small successes and focus on continuous improvement. Before you know it, you will surely but gradually reap the benefits of bringing in a DevOps approach to application development and delivery.

Start here

For deeper insights into IT Ops and DevOps Productivity with a focus on people, methodologies and tools, download a 35-page report filled with stats and charts.