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Tag: DORA

  • Google DORA Report Shows Modest DevOps Gains

    Google DORA Report Shows Modest DevOps Gains

    Google today published the annual Accelerate State of DevOps Report created by its DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) team that finds 26% of DevOps teams surveyed can now be classified as elite performers. That compares to 20% the last time the study was conducted in 2019.

    DevOps teams, made up of a total of 32,000 IT professionals from around the globe, were evaluated based on their ability to frequently deploy, code, lead time for changes, time to restore service, change failure rates and operational performance. An elite team is expected to be able to restore service in the event of an outage in less than an hour.

    Dr. Dustin Smith, a user experience researcher for Google, said the increased rate suggests steady gains in DevOps maturity continue to be made despite all the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic presented. A full 96% of respondents said that prior to the pandemic they had not worked from home on a regular basis.

    The DORA report finds high and elite performers make up two-thirds of respondents. Elite performers were able to collectively decrease their lead time for changes when compared to previous studies. It’s also worth noting only elite performers have minimized their change failure rate. In previous years, medium and high performers were able to do the same.

    Overall, more than half of respondents (52%) report they have adopted site reliability engineering (SRE) best practices to some degree.

    Elite performers deploy code 973 times more frequently than low performers, who reported deploying less than once every six months. The normalized annual deployment numbers range from 1,460 deploys per year for the highest performers to 1.5 deploys per year for low performers. Not surprisingly, for elite performers, the lead times from commit to deploy are 6,570 times faster than low performers.

    Security practices have also improved with 60% conducting security reviews, with 58% reporting that the reviews include testing. Nearly two-thirds (63%) said they work closely with information security teams. The report finds teams with high-quality documentation were 3.8 times more likely to integrate security throughout their development process.

    Reliance on cloud platforms has also increased, with 56% of respondents indicating they employ a public cloud, a 5% increase from 2019. Only 21% of respondents reported deploying to multiple public clouds. Over a quarter (26%) of respondents did so to leverage the unique benefits of each cloud provider, followed closely by 22% that cited availability.

    Just over a third (34%) report they are using a hybrid cloud, while 29% have a private cloud. A total of 21% still don’t use a public cloud.

    The report also finds elite performers were 3.5 times more likely to have met all essential cloud characteristics defined by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Those characteristics are defined as on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity or expansion and measured service. Only 32% of respondents who said they were using cloud infrastructure agreed or strongly agreed that they met all five of the essential characteristics of cloud computing defined by NIST, an increase of 3% from 2019. Overall, usage of those characteristics of cloud computing have increased by 14% to 19%, with rapid elasticity showing the largest gain.

    The DORA report makes it clear there is still a long way to go before DevOps nirvana is more widely achieved. On the plus side, however, the number of organizations that have embraced DevOps to some degree continues to steadily increase.

  • Accelerate State of DevOps Report: The Move to Multi-Cloud

    Accelerate State of DevOps Report: The Move to Multi-Cloud

    Analysis of the 2021 Accelerate State of DevOps Report (SODR) data shows an increasing number of organizations are choosing multi-cloud and hybrid cloud solutions. In our survey, respondents were asked where their primary service or application was hosted, and the results showed that public cloud use is on the rise.

    Of the 1,200 survey respondents this year, 55% indicated they’re using a public cloud, a 5% increase from 2019. Of those approximately 660 people, 21% indicate they use multiple cloud providers and 34% indicate using a hybrid cloud strategy. For clarification, multi-cloud refers to the use of two or more public cloud providers and hybrid cloud refers to the use of an on-premises data center and/or private cloud in combination with one or more public clouds.

    multi-cloud adoption

    Our data indicated that the No. 1 reason for using multiple providers is to leverage the unique benefits that each provider brings to the market. Every cloud provider provides basic compute and storage services, but building a best-in-class business can be best achieved by taking advantage of best-in-class cloud computing features and not being locked into a specific vendor. In fact, 26% of our respondents indicated this was their primary reason for their multi-cloud or hybrid cloud approach.multi-cloud reasons

    The second most-reported reason, at 22%, was availability. Companies around the world are increasingly identifying as software companies and relying on software to be their primary business driver. Software allows companies to deliver value to their customers, outperform their competition, respond to market events and bring innovation to the market. Availability of this core product is not a “nice to have”, it is essential. The truth is, however, that computers and networks are fragile—they fail. If we accept this fact, we can design and build systems that are prepared for this eventuality. Companies are addressing these risks with strategies that decrease the blast radius of changes and allow systems to continue operating even in the face of failure.

    Speaking of worst-case scenarios, disaster recovery (DR) is the third most-reported reason for adopting multiple cloud providers. In fact, the cloud and the global proliferation of data centers has allowed companies to rethink what disaster recovery actually means. Gone are the days of systems going down and operators scrambling to rebuild systems and restore from tape backups—the cloud is the backup. The adoption of cloud plus fully automated pipelines creates a paradigm shift around DR that allows companies to design their disaster recovery strategy around zero downtime.

    In addition to hybrid and multi-cloud strategies increasing, we also saw a rise in the use of the five essential characteristics of cloud computing. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines the five essential characteristics as:

    These five characteristics must be embraced and used to realize the value of the cloud. A company that adopts cloud but does not employ these characteristics simply shifts their operating environment from one place to another but doesn’t gain anything. In fact, the unfamiliarity of a new environment, new pricing models and lack of optimization from years of running on-premises often leads to disappointment. Successful companies embrace these five characteristics.

    We know from previous reports that these characteristics are essential for delivering software at a high or elite performance level. We see adoption rates between 73% and 78% across the five characteristics with the lowest being on-demand self-service (73%) and the highest being measured service (78%). There is no doubt that this increased adoption is a key driver for the jaw-dropping performance we saw this year from our elite performers.

    Elite performers can now deploy 973x times more frequently, have a 6,570x faster lead time to deploy, have a 3x lower change failure rate and a whopping 6,570x faster time to recover from incidents when failure does happen. Go back and read that again—no, those are not typos nor an error in the data! An elite-performing company can bring a new feature to market 6,570x faster than a low-performing company. This is one of the reasons we see a direct link between software delivery performance and overall business performance.

    We encourage you to read the entire 2021 Accelerate State of DevOps report. There’s lots of great information in the report including the addition of a fifth key metric—that’s right; the ‘Four Keys’ are now the ‘Five Keys.’ “What is the new metric?” you ask? Well, I guess you will have to read the report and find out. 🙂

  • DORA Report: DevOps Maturity Levels Rise

    DORA Report: DevOps Maturity Levels Rise

    The annual DORA report on DevOps shows a marked increase among Elite performers compared to last year

    The DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) arm of Google Cloud today published the results of an annual survey that suggests there have been marked gains in the level of DevOps maturity.

    The “2019 Accelerate State of DevOps Report,” an annual global survey of 31,000 IT professionals, finds 20% of the respondents now consider their organizations to be “Elite” DevOps performers, up from a comparatively paltry 7% a year ago.

    The Elite group reported their organizations routinely make multiple code deployments per day. By comparison, low performers reported deploying code somewhere between once per month and once per six months. The normalized annual deployment numbers range from 1,460 deploys per 365 days for the highest performers to seven deploys per year for low performers. Effectively, Elite performers deploy code 208 times more frequently than low performers, according to the DORA report.

    The report also finds Elite performers need less than a day of lead time to make a change to an application, compared to 2,555 hours for low performers, and Elite performers reported a change failure rate of 0% to 15%, compared to 46% to 60% for low performers. Finally, elite performers are able to recover from an incident 2,604 times faster than low performers.

    Nicole Forsgren, DORA Lead, Research and Strategy at Google Cloud, said the study makes it clear DevOps best practices are now crossing the proverbial chasm in IT. Organizations that are furthest along in making that transition tend to set up “communities of practice” within their organizations through which DevOps best practices are shared across teams, she noted. The DORA report also makes it clear elite performers automate and integrate tools more frequently into their toolchains on almost all dimensions.

    Forsgren said the study also makes it clear that the practice of slowing down the rate at which code is developed to achieve higher-quality application deployments is not nearly as effective as employing lighter-weight change processes to lower the amount of code getting deployed at any one time. Slowing down the rate at which code is developed and deployed is not a good strategy, she said, because as the amount of code that needs to get deployed at any time increases, reliance on heavyweight processes to deploy that code usually results in more errors being made. A lighter-weight approach provides the added benefit of reducing the amount of technical debt any organization is likely to incur at any stage of the DevOps process.

    The increased rate at which organizations are embracing best DevOps practices naturally coincides with the rise of more complex cloud-native applications. Most of those applications are being built using microservices that create a lot of dependencies within that application environment, with different development teams often working in isolation on specific microservices. The only way to manage that level of complexityeffectively is to embrace DevOps processes, noted Forsgren.

    In fact, the DORA report finds Elite performers are 24 times more likely to have met all cloud characteristics as defined by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) than low performers. Organizations that meet all essential cloud characteristics are 2.6 times more likely to be able to estimate the cost to operate software accurately. They also are twice as likely to be able to identify their most operationally expensive applications easily, and 1.65 times as likely to stay under their software operation budget, the study finds.

    Clearly, best DevOps practices is one of those rare IT gifts that simply keeps on giving.

    — Mike Vizard

  • DORA Again Adds to ‘State of DevOps Report’ Slate

    DORA Again Adds to ‘State of DevOps Report’ Slate

    I’m thrilled to announce that Dustin Smith has joined DORA as an author on this year’s “Accelerate State of DevOps Report.” I met Dustin last year, when he joined me in a brainstorming session to discuss research ideas and design considerations. (If you peek back at the 2018 report, you’ll see him in the acknowledgments!) This year, his research and statistics background made a huge impact to the rigor of the report, in addition to his insights as a top-notch researcher. I can’t wait for you to see it. Stay tuned—the report comes out late August! ~Nicole

    It’s a pleasure to introduce myself to the community! After contributing to the research design of last year’s report as a subject matter expert, it’s exciting to join forces with the DORA team and be a co-author of this year’s “Accelerate State of DevOps Report”! I’m a huge supporter of DORA’s data-driven approach and focus on factors such as culture, organizational policy and well-being, as opposed to metrics such as number of PRs and lines of code changed, which easily can be misunderstood or taken out of context.

    During my tenure at Google I’ve studied developer workflows and experiences to help inform product and design teams. My background is in psychology with an emphasis on considering the systematic factors that influence an individual’s or team’s judgment and decision-making. I believe that people are influenced by their environmental constraints, and to help them be most effective, we need to understand those constraints.

    This year’s report is packed with trends and new exciting findings. Be sure to check out the section on “What Really Works in Scaling Transformations” — it’s one of my favorites this year, and I led that analysis. It presents patterns we see among the highest performers, allowing teams and organizations to take an evidence-based approach to building and scaling their own DevOps transformation.

    I look forward to sharing the results with you all soon!

    — Dr. Dustin Smith

  • DORA Adds to DevOps Brain Trust

    DORA Adds to DevOps Brain Trust

    I am super excited to announce that Jessie Frazelle is joining the DORA team this year as an author on the “Accelerate State of DevOps Report.” I am a big fan of hers and we are all thrilled to be working with her. For those of you not familiar with her work in containers and security, she wrote a blog post to introduce herself. ~Nicole

     

    Hello! 👋

    I am thrilled to join as a co-author of this year’s “Accelerate State of DevOps Report.” For those who might not know me: I have worked as an engineer on container technologies and ran containers in production since Docker was at version 0.4. Before that I worked at a bunch of different startups as an engineer. I have been a long-time reader of the State of DevOps Report and jumped at the chance to get to work on it this year. It’s an amazing team of people!

    Each year I have admired the report for its insight and intuition backed by data. This year, I am excited to add my experience in open source and perspectives from working at various companies both large and small. Open source is very near and dear to my heart and I think a lot of the insight gained from the report can also be applied to open source projects to make contributors more productive. Through various jobs over the years, I have seen a lot of different DevOps practices at many different scales and I am looking forward to applying my perspective from those experiences as well.

    As someone who has been an engineer for more than a decade, I find the study of high performers in organizations fascinating. Personally, when I put my full-effort into something I am building, it comes from a place of caring. The link from culture and a strong mission to outcomes, as seen in past reports, falls in line with a lot of my experience. I can see myself using this year’s report a lot in future conversations to show something I know is true and is also backed by data—I can’t wait to share what we’re finding!

    Lastly, I love how the State of DevOps Report focuses on outcomes, not whatever is the latest hype or argument between thought leaders on the internet. Getting companies to a place where they can make changes and ship features faster, safer and more securely is a noble mission! I can’t wait for you to get your hands on this year’s report!

    Best,

    Jessie

    — Jessie Frazelle

  • Culture, Not Changing Much in DevOps

    Culture, Not Changing Much in DevOps

    One of the things that has bemused me from day one of the DevOps movement is how culture is viewed with an odd dichotomy. It is simultaneously DevOps’ greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

    Of course, there is a simple and reasonable explanation for this phenomenon. DevOps wants to change culture. Cultures that are resistant to change are typified as “bad” and those that are not are typified as “good.” It is never that simple, but that’s how the portrayal goes.

    After a decade, you would think we’d have massive IT culture change supporting DevOps initiatives at one level or another (somewhere on a scale from pilot project to corporate standard) pretty much everywhere.

    But data seems to indicate that this is not the case. Disclaimer here: I fall more on the “automation” side of the “What is DevOps, really?” question. I don’t think that matters here, since I’m pointing at data from the DORA “State of DevOps Research Report,” which is 1,900 of you all speaking, not me.

    Image Credit: DORA State of DevOps Report

    Most of the coverage on this report is by people who have bet their entire career on DevOps—a solid bet, but one that can lead to stilted coverage, which takes all the positives and hoists them high. And there is a lot of positive to be found. But I’ve noticed a trend of not looking at the data with a critical eye. The bit that I’d like to focus on today is what DORA labels “Firmographics”—a breakdown of respondents by title.

    Only 27 percent of those who responded were on a DevOps team. Presumably because Google is a sponsor of DORA, it included Site Reliability Engineering with DevOps teams, and that’s a fair inclusion, since SREs by definition are doing DevOps.

    Consider that data point representing “culture change” in a world where the respondents are, by self-identification, doing DevOps. Some will argue this is the wrong way to look at it, but one of the issues that culture people bring up constantly is breaking down silos and organizing around product or product portfolio instead of development and operations. But it seems more as though organizations are knocking holes in silos and communicating through them—which means we should pay more attention to that style of DevOps and quit harping on organizational change. Again, this fits well with my world view, which has always been “That specialist in a shared bit of hardware is not moving to a DevOps team.” The EMC specialist (for example) adds value to the entire org because of their domain-specific knowledge, not because of their deep understanding of the entire DevOps toolset. Once you’ve carved out exceptions for storage, networking and platform specialists, moving everyone to a DevOps team is pretty moot.

    I won’t conjecture why only 27 percent are moved into dedicated teams, nor why that number did not go up from 2017. I have a predilection toward “because it’s not necessary,” but likely there will be two camps when this discussion gains steam because more reports show a low rate of change—Group A will be, “Because those people are resisting change,” while Group B will be, “Because those people don’t feel they need change.” Guess what? That will be the same group of people, and that angle of discussion will be irrelevant. The important bit will be, “Are you completing everything you need to get done, and what is your structure?” That’s where the meat of the discussion will need to occur. Because by deduction, 73 percent of people participating in the DORA survey are doing DevOps while not being on a dedicated (eg: reorged) team.

    And that’s perfectly okay, as long as they’re achieving the goals, that’s what matters. The how is useful when deciding to move in a certain direction, but delivering is the thing IT should—and generally is these days—be gauged on.

    — Don Macvittie

  • DevOps Chat: Jez Humble Discusses 2018 ‘State of DevOps Report’

    DevOps Chat: Jez Humble Discusses 2018 ‘State of DevOps Report’

    DORA’s annual “State of DevOps Report” is something I look forward to every year. There is no other report out there that gives us a view and insight into the industry the way this one does. And I know I’m not alone in my beliefs. That’s why it’s always a treat to speak with one of the folks from DORA—DevOps Research and Assessment—about the “State of DevOps Report” and get some real takeaways.

    In this DevOps Chat, Jez Humble, CTO and co-founder of DORA, and I talk about some of the findings in this year’s “Accelerate the State of DevOps Report”—a new name, but the same valuable information.

    As usual, the streaming audio is immediately below, followed by the transcript of our conversation.

    Alan Shimel: Hey, everyone. It’s Alan Shimel, devopsy.kinsta.cloud, and you’re listening to another DevOps Chat. Today’s DevOps Chat is one I look forward to every year and that’s the one where we speak about the latest “State of DevOps Report.” Helping me, or actually our guest and star for this year’s “State of DevOps Report” review, is none other than Jez Humble, co-founder, CTO for DORA, DevOps Research and Assessment and just all-around DevOps dude and great guy to talk to. Jez, welcome to DevOps Chat.

    Jez Humble: Thanks so much for having me, Alan. Always a pleasure.

    Shimel: Thank you. And Jez, you know, you guys, Nicole and you and Gene and the rest of the team have done another bang up job this year in the “State of DevOps Report.” It has a little bit of a different nomenclature this year. It’s actually – if I mess it up, correct me –”Accelerate the State of DevOps Report”?

    Humble: Yeah, that’s right. It’s the “Accelerate State of DevOps Report” this year but continuing the same rigorous research as previous years and extending it with some exciting new findings this time.

    Shimel: Yeah. And another thing I will mention, right, let’s get it out of the way early on, is that this year’s report diamond sponsor is Google Cloud, correct?

    Humble: Yep, that’s right. We have 15 gold sponsors as well, but our main collaboration this year is with Google Cloud. That’s correct, thank you.

    Shimel: Fantastic. All right, now that we’ve got the commercial out of the way, Jez, let’s dive in. So this is what, the fifth or sixth year you guys have worked on State of DevOps Report?

    Humble: Yeah, so this is the fifth year that DORA has been involved in or been leading the research for this State of DevOps Report. That’s correct.

    Shimel: And so, you know, when we look at it from that point of view, you know, with hindsight, it really is a massive amount of data there to dig into, but let’s concentrate on this year’s report, Jez. Let’s start with what do you think for our listeners, what do you think the biggest takeaway for them is?

    Humble: So yes, as you say, this is the biggest research program of its kind looking into DevOps, what DevOps means, why it’s important, the factors that predict your ability to deliver with speed and stability. You’d think, you know, this is the fifth year that we’re doing this that we’d run out of things to talk about. That’s absolutely not the case. This is the biggest and most comprehensive one yet. I think a few big takeaways.

    No. 1, again, we found that our measure of software delivery performance is still valid. That’s looking at speed and stability. We find again that the high performers are not trading off one against the other. They’re actually increasing both the speed and stability of the delivery process. We’ve extended that measure out also to look at availability as well. So availability is availability in production. It’s a measure of operational performance. Because we’re also looking at that, we now talk about software delivery and operational performance. So we’re covering the whole delivery life cycle from development right through to operations in production. Again, we find the high performers are not making trade-offs there. They’re achieving high levels of throughput and stability and availability as well.

    We’ve also looked at the key technical practices that drive high performance, and we’ve expanded that this year to also look at monitoring and observability to look at the impacts of continuous testing, to look at database change management, and to look at shifting network security. We’ve also looked in more depth at culture. We’ve looked at the management practices that shape culture to improve performance outcomes. This year we’ve also looked at the role of leaders on influencing culture through giving their teams autonomy and building trust. We find that promoting a culture learning fostered through retrospectives learning reviews has an impact on culture. The highest performers are 1.5 times more likely to consistently hold retrospectives and use them to improve their work which is critical.

    We also looked at cloud infrastructure. A lot of people are moving to the cloud. That’s very hot, and it’s seen huge adoption across many different industries, but what we found is that how you do it matters. Now the National Institute of Science and Technology has a definition of cloud infrastructure and they talk about five essential capabilities that you have to implement – things like on demand self-service whereby customers can unilaterally provision cloud resources. We find that high performers are 23 times more likely to be using those five essential characteristics that NIST talks about. So there’s lots of people who are using cloud but don’t actually have those capabilities implemented. That’s a problem. How you do this stuff matters. Just putting your stuff in the cloud and pretending it’s a data center doesn’t actually work. You need to actually use the capabilities the cloud provides as well.

    We found that using open source software improves performance. And finally, again, we’ve shown that industry doesn’t matter. We find high performers among all different market groups, all different industries whether that’s financial services, health care, other highly regulated groups, as well as, you know, startups and small companies in the low performing groups. So anyone can do this stuff.

    Shimel: Absolutely. [clears throat] You know, Jez, I find it not comforting but we hear you talk and you talk about, well, companies that are moving in the cloud and stuff. You know, I guess was it around maybe 2005 where all of a sudden the cloud really started kind of bursting on the scene and here we are 13 going on maybe 15 years and, you know, it’s almost like, well, when will we really see – are we in the midst of like the – it’s mainstream certainly, but have we seen – where are we in cloud migration and how this is impacting us? Like has the bulk of it already taken place or is the bulk of it in front of us?

    Humble: Yeah. I mean that’s a great question, and I think we see the same trend with DevOps and with, you know, continuous delivery as well. People say they’re doing and the question is are they really doing it because everyone wants to do it and then say they’re done and what’s the next big thing? I mean if we look at our data, what we see is 17 percent of respondents are not using cloud at all and the rest which is 83 percent are using cloud including 40 percent using multiple cloud providers. But if we look at who’s actually doing it right, only a very small proportion of people who actually say they’re doing it in fact are. Twenty-two percent of our respondents said they met all those essential characteristics. So I would say that there’s some way to go. I mean it’s literally the Pareto principle, right? Eighty percent of people are doing it; only twenty-two percent are doing it right.

    So I think there’s a long tail with all this stuff. Whether it’s DevOps adoption, whether it’s cloud adoption, we’re all learning as we go along. Change takes time. It’s hard. To do this stuff right you need – and this again is common across tech and DevOps – you need to change the way you do things. You need to change your practices. You need to change your processes. That’s hard and that’s the bit that takes the time. It’s complicated. People are very keen to adopt new technologies, you know, Kubernetes, Docker, Cloudstaff, and they adopt it; but changing their processes and practices, that’s the hard work; but it’s also the important work. We see that very clearly in our research.

    Shimel: Yeah, yeah. And you’re right. I mean I’ve often thought that, you know, there’s a chicken and egg relationship between DevOps and many of the megatrends that we’ve seen pop up over the last decade including the cloud and ubiquitous connectivity and the move to mobile, you know, and application driven sort of IT world. I don’t know, you know, if any one of those things happens without any of the other things including DevOps, frankly, which makes this so important. So Jez, when we look at this year’s findings in historical perspective to previous years, any kind of anomalies, anything that jumps out that says, boy, this seems different than years before, this seems kind of not to be moving along that same track that we’ve seen in years before?

    Humble: Yeah, great question. So a few things. Firstly, we’ve got a new high performance group, the elite performers. So in previous years, our cluster analysis has shown us that there’s three groups – high performers, medium performers, low performers. So when we did the cluster analysis this year, we found a couple of interesting trends. So firstly, we’ve got an elite performance group which shows that the industry continues to improve its software development and delivery practices.

    And our high-performance group has grown in terms of the percentage of respondents which shows that high performance is attainable for many teams in the industry, not just reserved for an exclusive group of teams with unique characteristics. So high performers continue to deliver and operate software at the highest levels, but the bar for excellence has continued to evolve across the industry and this fourth group of performers, elite performers is still optimizing and getting better. That’s what we see in general. The best organizations are the ones that keep trying to get better and are never satisfied.

    The other interesting trend we saw with the cluster analysis was we found that a small group, about 7 percent that we’ve called the misguided performers. So the misguided performers is interesting as well. So this is a group that’s basically optimizing for going slowly. They’re making safe choices but they pay a really expensive price. So they’re taking this very cautious approach, and they want to release infrequently, and they see that as an effective strategy and that extra time between deployments for testing and quality checks, but they report really long times to restore service when there’s outage like months and months of time to restore service which is a huge problem.

    So our research shows that making large batch, infrequent changes introduces risk to the deployment process; failure is inevitable in complex systems; and when large failures do occur, these big batch changes can contribute additional complexity when attempting to both understand failures or when dealing with catastrophic or cascading failures through the system. Sorry, 5 percent of teams that are doing exactly this and seeing the consequences. So those are kind of some interesting things that we saw in this year’s data.

    Shimel: Absolutely. So you know, Jez, certainly since the founding, the creation, the launch of DORA, the survey has taken on not a greater mission but it’s so intertwined with what DORA itself does, right, to a large degree. And I don’t know if our audience – I think they’ve all been reading this survey for years. They may have had heard of DORA. They know Nicole. They know you. They certainly know Gene. But lay it out. Connect the dots for us. How does the survey go sort of arm in arm or hand in hand, whatever the case may be, with DORA and its mission.

    Humble: Yes. So our mission, as DORA, DevOps Research and Assessment, our mission is to help the industry create excellence in software delivery. We really want to help organizations get better. We have a product. Our product is an assessment tool that can help you see how you’re doing and see what the constraints are in terms of your ability to get better. There’s a bunch of assessment products out there. We really wanted to take a scientific approach to this. So four years of doing this previously with Puppet and now doing it with Google led by Nicole – Nicole was an academic. She was a tenure track professor. She has a long background in research from an academic point of view. She really has found a way to work out what matters in an academically rigorous way that’s scientific.

    All this research we’ve been doing actually allows us to say, here’s how you measure performance, here’s how we can show it has an impact on the organizational outcomes you care about, here are the things that predict your ability to lever with speed and stability and that’s a combination of technical and cultural and process based capabilities. So we can say these things actually matter. So here are the things that matter. Here’s how you measure them. Here’s how they impact your software delivery performance, and here’s how that predicts the organizational performance. So it’s really about taking a scientific approach to measuring these things and improving them.

    Actually this year we came out with a book, “Accelerate,” which talks about that research program and the results we found over the last four years of doing that program. So it’s all about taking a scientific research based approach to improving technical capabilities around delivering software.

    Shimel: Absolutely. Absolutely. And Jez, believe it or not, we’re almost out of time already. As I mentioned, it does go quickly. But I want to do a little bit more on DORA for people who don’t get it. I know you’ve worked publically – I think it’s announced DORA’s worked with Capital One among other enterprises. Give our audience, you know, again, a little bit more about DORA’s mission and how you’re helping companies there.

    Humble: Yeah. Well, I mean thanks very much for the opportunity to talk about this. We have a solid number of companies who are our customers from all kinds of industries including very large, highly regulated industries including finance and government who are interested in finding out how to get better. We basically apply our research that we’ve gathered over the last several years and help them understand what’s holding them beck, what their constraints are, and then how to actually improve that in a research databased way.

    So it’s something that applies everywhere. It’s something that applies – and this is one of the great things about this research is that it shows that anyone can do this stuff. So this applies anywhere. You know, I’ve often heard people say, “You know, well, we can’t do that. This won’t work here. DevOps, whatever cloud, continuous delivery, it sounds great, won’t work here.” And we can really come in and say, “Well, actually, you know, that’s really not the case. Anybody can get better, and here’s how the data shows that people in all kinds of different industries of all different sizes can improve.” And again, we’ve been able to help companies actually find out where they are and find out their constraints and understand how to improve.

    It’s been very helpful from that perspective, not just – and this is a great think about working at DORA that I love is that not only is it scientific and research based, it’s also pragmatic and practical and it has real impact on the ground with companies looking to improve their software and development capabilities. So it’s really a total pleasure and great fun being able to not just do the research but also apply it in practice. That’s a real privilege for me being in that position to be able to apply this in this way.

    Shimel: Absolutely. Well, Jez, you know, continued success with DORA and I’m looking forward to – oh my god, I forgot to mention, Jez, if people want to download the report, where can they go get it?

    Humble: Yes, thank you so much. That’s an excellent question to ask. So you can go to our website. DevOps-research.com. If you go to the research, it’s on the front page. It’s on our research page. The link to download the report from Google Cloud. You can also go to bit.ly/2018-devops-report. That will take you straight to the registration page so you can download the report. Also a reminder that we’ve discussed the last four years of our research and our research program in Accelerate, the book that we came out with earlier this year. But yeah, please go and look at the report. Obviously, we’ve only been able to touch the tip of the iceberg in this discussion. There’s loads of, if I say so myself, very interesting stuff there. So encourage you to go and download it and check it out.

    Shimel: Absolutely. All right, Jez Humble, always a pleasure, my friend, to have you on our show. Thank you very much for doing the report. Continued success. Say hello to Dr. Nicole and Gene and the rest of the gang and we’ll have you back again soon on DevOps Chat.

    Humble: Thanks so much, Alan. Always a pleasure. Thank you.

    Shimel: My pleasure. This is Alan Shimel for devopsy.kinsta.cloud, DevOps Chat. You’ve just listened to another chat. Have a great day everyone.

    — Alan Shimel

  • New Accelerate State of DevOps Report Reveals the Database is Now Key to DevOps

    Cambridge UK, Wednesday 29 August 2018 – The 2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Report, published today, includes database development as a key technical practice which can drive high performance in DevOps. This matches similar findings in research from Redgate Software, which sponsored the report and provided input.

    The longest-running research of its kind, the Accelerate report from DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) has consistently shown that higher software delivery performance delivers powerful business outcomes.

    Interestingly, a new theme in this year’s report was to identify the technical practices that drive higher performance and unlock competitive advantage. They include monitoring and observability, continuous testing, ‘shifting left’ on security and, importantly, database change management.

    In terms of DevOps itself, the report shows that the highest performing organizations which adopt DevOps release changes 46 times more frequently, have a change failure rate that is 7 times lower, and are able to recover from breaking changes 2,604 times faster.

    Crucially, the lead time from committing changes to being able to deploy them is less than one hour in the highest performing organizations – and between one and six months in low performers. Between 46% and 60% of changes deployed by low performers also require some form of hotfix, rollback, or patch.

    Database development has entered the picture because deploying changes to the database is often the bottleneck in software development and slows down releases. To address this, the report investigated which database-related practices help when implementing continuous delivery to improve software delivery performance and availability.

    The results revealed that teams which do continuous delivery well use version control for database changes and manage them in the same way as changes to the application. It also showed that integrating database development into software delivery positively contributes to performance, with changes to the database no longer slowing processes down or causing problems during deployments.

    The starting block is communication, cross-team collaboration and visibility, which echoes Redgate’s own 2018 State of Database DevOps Survey earlier in the year. This showed that 76% of developers are now responsible for both application and database development, and 58% reported their development teams and DBAs work on projects together.

    As Stephanie Herr, Database DevOps Product Manager at Redgate, comments, “DevOps has become widely accepted in application development and it’s increasingly being recognized that database development can’t be left behind. Tools are now available that integrate with and plug into the same version control, continuous integration and release management tools used for applications. More importantly, the business case for adopting DevOps for the database has now also been demonstrated.”

    The 2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Report can be downloaded online from DORA at https://cloudplatformonline.com/2018-state-of-devops.html

     

  • DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) Announces the ‘2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Survey’

    In collaboration with Google Cloud, the survey gathers data to supply the world’s foremost investigation into what drives software delivery and organizational performance

    San Francisco — May 10, 2018 — DevOps Research and Assessment, leaders in helping high performing organizations move faster, and build more secure and resilient systems, today announced it has launched the “2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Survey” in collaboration with Google Cloud (https://bit.ly/2w6xOEP). This data will supply research into understanding what issues matter most to technical professionals and unlock new findings to provide guidance for improving resource management, productivity and quality of IT teams.

    “Our goal is to help organizations understand how they can be high performers,” said Dr. Nicole Forsgren, founder and CEO of DORA. “We are at the state of work that drives technology transformations and changes the world. This year’s survey builds on the last four years of work to give us the most comprehensive view of IT impacts on the industry yet.”

    This year’s survey will dive further into:

    • IaaS and PaaS: understanding how cloud computing is shaping work for software delivery
    • Monitoring and observability: understanding how people are “seeing” their systems
    • Databases: understanding how they are impacting our work
    • Testing: understanding how it is evolving to meet increasing demands for fast feedback and quality
    • Workflow: understanding how to review change approvals to improve work
    • Culture: understanding what leadership behaviors impact feelings of trust and voice
    • Security: understanding how we are integrating security and its impacts
    • Reliability: understanding how we think about system dependability
    • And so much more!

    Additional sponsors of the “2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Report” include: Amazon Web Services, CA Technologies, CloudBees, Datical, Deloitte, Electric Cloud, IT Revolution, Microsoft, Redgate, Sumo Logic and XebiaLabs.

    To participate in the “2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Survey,” please visit: (https://bit.ly/2w6xOEP). Survey respondents who complete the survey will be entered for a chance to win:

    • One of two $500 gift cards (VISA)
    • One iPad Pro
    • One ticket to DevOps Enterprise Summit (London or Las Vegas)
    • One of five IT Revolution Press book bundles

    Additional resources:

    (https://devops-research.com/2018/03/dora-google-cloud-collaboration/)

    About DORA

    DevOps Research and Assessment, founded by Jez Humble, Gene Kim, and Dr. Nicole Forsgren, conducts research into understanding high performance in the context of software development and the factors that predict it. DORA’s research over four years and more than 25,000 data points serves as the basis for a set of evidence-based tools for evaluating and benchmarking technology organizations. Learn more at devops-research.com.

    Media Contact:

    Jeremy Douglas

    Catapult PR-IR

    303-581-7760

    jdouglas@catapultpr-ir.com

     

  • DevOps Chat: DevOps Virtual Summit Preview w/ Dr. Nicole Forsgren, DORA

    DevOps Chat: DevOps Virtual Summit Preview w/ Dr. Nicole Forsgren, DORA

    In this DevOps Chat episode our guest is DORA co-founder, Dr. Nicole Forsgren. Dr. Nicole talks to us about her upcoming appearance at the DevOps Virtual Summit on Tuesday, March 7th at 12:30PM EST.

    Additionally, Dr. Forsgren gives us some news on upcoming activities and releases coming from the DORA team. It is always a pleasure speaking with Nicole and I am sure you will find this conversation useful and a good reason to hear her and Gene Kim at the DevOps Virtual Summit, along with several other former DevOps Chat guests!

    In the meantime here is the streaming audio of our conversation. The written transcript will be available shortly.

    Alan Shimel:                Hey, everyone, this is Alan Shimel, devopsy.kinsta.cloud, here for another DevOps Chat. Today’s guest is a special guest for our DevOps Chat, it’s Dr. Nicole Forsgren of DORA. Dr. Nicole, welcome to DevOps Chat.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Thank you, and thanks so much for having me.

    Alan Shimel:                Thank you. Nicole, we’re gonna talk a little bit about a Virtual Summit that you’re a part of, but before we do, I wanted to give our audience a little background on DORA. No, we’re not talking about the explorer, but it is—

    Nicole Forsgren:         [Laughter] We do some exploring, though.

    Alan Shimel:                – yes, you do, you do. But seriously, for people in our—and you know, we have kind of a worldwide audience, only 38 percent of our listeners are in the U.S., and there may be people out here who aren’t familiar with DORA. So why don’t you give them a quick background?

    Nicole Forsgren:         Okay, sounds good. So, D ORA is a company that is myself, Nicole Forsgren, and Gene Kim, author of the famed Phoenix Project, and co-author of The Visible Ops Handbook and The DevOps Handbook, along with Jez Humble, co-author of The DevOps Handbook and Continuous Delivery and Lean Enterprise. And together, we are also the lead investigators and primary authors of the State of DevOps Reports going back a few years now—several years now.

    So we have spent several years researching and understanding the key factors that drive excellence in software development and delivery across the industry, whether that’s, you know, the famed unicorns, but also enterprises. And so what DORA does is, we take everything that we’ve learned and everything that we know across our—you know, a decade each, really, so decades of understanding, and we help companies measure and assess and understand and drive improvement in their own technology transformations.

    Alan Shimel:                Great. And, you know, so when I always hear the DORA story, Nicole, I am—I’m a child of the ’80s and the ‘70s before that, and I think of sort of a rock super band like Asia or something.

    Nicole Forsgren:         [Laughter]

    Alan Shimel:                You know? Where we’ve got all of these great kind of musicians coming together to make great music, and that is somewhat what DORA is, where we have three great—you know, three leaders of the DevOps community kinda joining heads. But it wasn’t just as you mentioned, it’s not just with the formation of DORA that you guys are doing this. I mean, there’s—I think it’s six years of the DevOps Survey kind of, or maybe this is the sixth year now, in the [Cross talk].

    Nicole Forsgren:         Oh, so it’s—yeah, well, it’s four years since I’ve been involved, and then I think, like, rubbing science on things, right?

    Alan Shimel:                Mm-hmm.

    Nicole Forsgren:         And it’s been academically rigorous since that time. You know, it’s, the years of study have appeared in peer review, right? So we’ve got some fantastic data behind us. Gene and Jez have been involved, I think, five years, and then it goes back another year or two before that, right?

    Alan Shimel:                Yeah.

    Nicole Forsgren:         And then Gene and Jez have been studying the space, I think, going back a decade, right? And then I’ve been doing academic research in this space since ’07, so yeah, we’re going on at least a decade, each.

    Alan Shimel:                Wow. That’s a lot of time kind of studying the subject matter and a lot of expertise in there. And I think that’s why, you know, personally, why I get excited to see what comes out of this, right, and what insights come out of the survey, of course. But DORA is more than just about conducting the survey, making sure it’s academically rigorous, making sure the numbers are, you know, bear witness to what they are, that they are, in fact, reliable and show things.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Right.

    Alan Shimel:                You’re actually taking that data and helping organizations as a result of the analysis of the data. So it’s not just analysis for analysis’ sake, it’s, how do you make your organization better by taking what we’ve learned?

    Nicole Forsgren:         Right. Exactly. So we do have, you know, The State of DevOps Report that comes out every year, and we make that publicly available, we make that free. We partner up with the team at Puppet, right, and we do have a report that comes out free every year, and we’ve got an ROI white paper that’s gonna be coming out in the next few weeks. So we do everything we can to discover new information and make that free every year. But what DORA also does is, we have a product now that helps organizations measure where they are, benchmark where they are against the industry, understand what they should do, what levers they should turn to drive performance improvements and then prioritize those improvements and those capabilities so that they can really drive improvement most efficiently, and then track those improvements, so they can really see the value come out of that improvement.

    I love it. It’s super exciting, it’s super fascinating, because like I said, we do this because we love it, and because we wanna make things better. You know, we wanna have an impact on the industry. We wanna see our peers, you know, get better. Who was it, I always forget who said this, but you know, survival isn’t mandatory. [Laughter]

    Alan Shimel:                Yeah.

    Nicole Forsgren:         You know what I mean? Companies—like, you don’t have to do this. You can die, right? You can fail. Companies can fail, but that’s not what we wanna see. It’s so enthralling and it’s so exciting to go to conferences like Velocity and DevOps Enterprise Summit and hear these amazing transformation stories and see what is possible. And to be able to help provide these insights—and really, that’s the genesis behind DORA. You know, we were sitting down—Jez and I, and Gene—we were sitting down and saying, “Every year, someone comes up to us, and dozens of people come up and they say, ‘Help me understand. The report’s come out, and we want to understand how to measure and how to benchmark, but what should I do? Help me understand what I should do next.’”

    And it’s just, it’s so difficult to be able to say, “Well, the measures are out there,” but providing companies and organizations and teams with tooling that’s just going to be simple and easy and straightforward to use so that they can measure, they can benchmark, and then so they can prioritize and understand which levers they should be using to really optimize and maximize their investments and their improvements is really exciting, and really kind of fulfilling, honestly.

    Alan Shimel:                Got it. Absolutely. So, Nicole, let us kind of pivot into talking about this Virtual Summit you guys have coming up. I think it’s next week.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Yes! I’m so excited. It’s so fun

    Alan Shimel:                So, go ahead. Tell our audience—I love it when you’re excited. Tell our audience about it.

    Nicole Forsgren:         [Gasps] I nerd out so hard. I’ve got the best job.

    Alan Shimel:                Uh huh.

    Nicole Forsgren:         [Laughter]

    Alan Shimel:                So this is, I wanna say it’s UVM, or maybe it’s not, I forget which—I know CA is a sponsor of it, but tell our audience about this Virtual Summit.

    Nicole Forsgren:         So, you know what? I’m super excited about this. I think the Virtual Summit is fun because I know so many people that are like, “Ugh, I wanna go to these conferences, and I just, either I don’t have the budget” or most of the time, now, people just don’t have time, right? Going to conferences is tough because the travel is hard, taking a day off of work is hard. This Virtual Summit is fantastic, because you can log in, you can listen in, and you can hear from so many amazing, fantastic people, and you don’t have to leave, right? Even if you have budget, getting on a plane and leaving—like, it’s hard.

    And the Virtual Summit is great, because CA has been able to line up so many fantastic people. Aruna did such a great job. I’m super excited. I’m excited, because I get to meet so many more people and hear all these fantastic transformation journeys.

    Alan Shimel:                Yeah. I mean—

    Nicole Forsgren:         I’m so excited.

    Alan Shimel:                – that’s kinda what makes a lot of what we do, you know, the world go around, when we hear more and more companies—

    Nicole Forsgren:         Yeah! This is why my job is the best! [Laughter]

    Alan Shimel:                Yeah, I hear ya. I’m gonna bring up another thing, though, to you, Dr. Nicole, and that is this whole idea of kind of virtual summits, right? We saw it with the All Day DevOps event that a bunch of people put on last year.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Uh huh.

    Alan Shimel:                We’re seeing it now in this virtual thing. You know, for a long time—I don’t wanna be negative, but these virtual conferences just didn’t do it for me. But I think the technology’s gotten a lot better. I think the, you know, bandwidth and mobility and cloud and all of the things that help drive DevOps as well have led us to have better experiences in things like a virtual summit where you really can meet people, right? Even though you may not be in the room with them, it’s virtual.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Right.

    Alan Shimel:                But it’s really a great experience.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Well, do you know what? I think it’s a combination of things. I think some of it’s the technology. Do you know what else I think it is? I think it’s also, like, the special magic sauce behind the DevOps community. It didn’t always work for me before, because the other communities just have a different underlying culture. DevOps is just a little bit different, right? I’ve been around tech forever, right? Before my Ph.D. I worked in hardware performance, where I, like, I’ve got a hardware patent, I—I worked in hardcore tech for a really long time. And those communities are, they just have a little bit different DNA.

    DevOps is very, very different. And so for anyone who’s gonna tune into this summit—participate, pay attention, reach out. Add me on LinkedIn, right? Everybody say hi, wave—love you all. Add me on LinkedIn, add me on Twitter, follow me, send me a message. The thing I love about the DevOps community is that everyone is in it for the community. Everyone will reach out. So many people legitimately, honestly want to help everyone else get better. And it’s something that I just haven’t seen in very many other communities. It’s just so different.

    Alan Shimel:                You know, I was—

    Nicole Forsgren:         And I think that’s what makes so many of these virtual summits work so well.

    Alan Shimel:                I agree with you. Nicole, I just saw you, I guess it was two weeks ago now or last week—no, it was two weeks ago at the RSA event—

    Nicole Forsgren:         Oh, yeah, uh huh.

    Alan Shimel:                – where we did our, you know, we did our Dev SecOps show there. And what was funny is, I got an e-mail from RSA—do you know there were 43,000 people at RSA this week?

    Alan Shimel:                We—yeah.

    Nicole Forsgren:         My word.

    Alan Shimel:                We—that’s crazy.

    Nicole Forsgren:         And I didn’t get sick—it’s amazing. [Laughter]

    Alan Shimel:                Yeah! Well, I did, but—you know, we had about 900 people at the Dev SecOps event throughout the day on Monday, and then the cocktail party and all that. But what you said about the DevOps community so rang true for me. Even in this see of 43,000 lives out there, right, the DevOps people kinda gel. They were very into being together and sharing and talking. And it’s contagious to my security community friends, who, you know, they—I can’t tell you how, and I’ve been in security for 15 years—how many came over and they loved the vibe that we have in the DevOps team.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Oh, yeah!

    Alan Shimel:                And they wanna be part of it, and that’s very different, Nicole, than three to four years ago when I first started doing that at RSA conference, and it was very much a butting of heads, right?

    So yeah, it is a testament. It’s a testament to, you know, we talk about culture all the time and a lot of people think we’re crazy, but it is a testament to that whole culture and vibe around the DevOps community.

    So I’ve said my piece. I’ll step back off my soap box.

    Nicole Forsgren:         [Laughter]

    Alan Shimel:                So, Nicole, for people listening in on the Virtual Summit next week, I mean, Gene’s talking, obviously, I’m sure it’ll be interesting and he’ll give us some insight into some, maybe, new transformations he’s been studying and analysis. What do you—any previews of what you’re gonna talk about for our audience?

    Nicole Forsgren:         So I’m gonna be talking about some of the trends that we see, some of the promising things that are coming up. Some of the big—the levers that you can turn that I think are exciting, I’ll be speaking to some of the things that Ops teams, you know, can really contribute that are important.

    Alan Shimel:                Mm-hmm. Very cool.

    Nicole Forsgren:         And honestly, I’m also—you know, I’m super excited to hear from some of the other speakers. I’m really excited to hear from Sylvia at United, Kelly at Jewelers Mutual, John at CNN—super excited for that.

    Alan Shimel:                Yeah.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Right? They’ve got such a great slate.

    Alan Shimel:                They do, they have a nice slate and, you know, like you mentioned, Aruna from CA—I mean, CA has a great customer bench there.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Oh, God. I tell you what, man, Aruna has so many fantastic insights. Anything she comes up with, I just love—super excited to hear what she has to say.

    Alan Shimel:                She’s actually been a guest on our DevOps Chat regarding her book. So here’s—

    Nicole Forsgren:         Yeah! So great.

    Alan Shimel:                – between you and me, I always have a crush on Aruna, because I just, I really—I mean, she’s got it goin’ on, you know? She’s written her book, she’s an engineer, she’s done the business side, she’s full of energy, and I—you know, I just, I tell her all the time, man, if I had a daughter, I’d want her to grow up and be like her. Because she—

    Nicole Forsgren:         I know. I have a serious intellectual crush on her. She is a mover and a shaker, man. She is doin’ some good stuff.

    Alan Shimel:                Yeah, that’s good stuff. I’m really, really proud to call her a friend. Anyway—I’m really proud to call you a friend, though, too, because you’ve met my son, and I say, “You need to go talk to her. You wanna do statistics? There’s someone to grow up like.” But anyway.

    Nicole Forsgren:         That’s right.

    Alan Shimel:                Dr. Nicole, I’ll be listening, obviously. I hope our audience will be. We are all watching what DORA is doing, and I guess the new report—well, the survey’s closed now, right, so the new report is [Cross talk]?

    Nicole Forsgren:         Yep. So stay tuned, the report will be coming out early June.

    Alan Shimel:                Very cool. We’ll be looking forward to that. That’ll probably be around when DevOps Enterprise Summit is in London.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Close. DOSE—oh yeah, DOSE London is June 5th and 6th. Also, DORA’s coming out with an ROI white paper and then summer, fall, me and the guys, Gene and Jez, are coming out with a book, summarizing all of the research that we’ve done.

    Alan Shimel:                Ooh! You heard it here first.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Including—yes—including things that did not fit in the book, surprises, and more on the science [Cross talk].

    Alan Shimel:                Very cool. I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be an exciting summer.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Thank you.

    Alan Shimel:                I think we might be doing some book giveaways here. [Laughter] But until then—hey, check out Gene, Nicole, Aruna Ravichandran from CA and a bunch of other great practitioners at the DevOps Virtual Summit coming up. In the article on this, we’ll probably have links to the registration and so forth.

    Dr. Nicole, it was so great speaking with you, and continued success with DORA and all of your endeavors. We wish you lots of success, and we’ll be watching it closely, and maybe we’ll have you back on.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Thank you so much.

    Alan Shimel:                Thank you. We’ll have you on to discuss some of this stuff again shortly.

    Nicole Forsgren:         Sounds good.

    Alan Shimel:                Alright. Dr. Nicole Forsgren, co-founder of DORA and guest on the DevOps Virtual Summit coming up just next week. Thank you for appearing.

    This is Alan Shimel for devopsy.kinsta.cloud, and we’ll see you soon on another DevOps Chat.

    — Alan Shimel