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Tag: research

  • DevOps Leaders vs. Laggards: Continuous Testing is a Key Differentiator

    DevOps Leaders vs. Laggards: Continuous Testing is a Key Differentiator

    New Forrester research, “The Definitive Software Quality Metrics for Agile + DevOps,” reveals what software quality metrics and practices differentiate DevOps/Agile leaders from DevOps/Agile laggards. The study was commissioned by Tricentis and led by Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Diego Lo Giudice.

    The study found that companies with the most successful Agile and DevOps initiatives do a number of things differently than their peers:

    • They are transforming software testing into continuous testing by adopting five core practices, such as automating end-to-end functional testing and integrating testers into cross-functional teams.
    • They are almost twice as likely to consider automating the software quality process to be a “critical business differentiator.”
    • They are significantly more likely to have high levels of automation for key testing and QA processes (test case design, functional test automation, test data management, etc.).

    However, only 26 percent of firms with active DevOps adoptions are currently practicing the five core continuous testing practices shown to separate leaders from laggards. And, as the infographic below highlights, many CXOs have a severely inflated sense of their firms’ DevOps and continuous testing maturity.

    Different DevOps Quality Metrics

    The study also identified the 20 most important Agile and DevOps quality metrics that separate DevOps/Agile experts from their less advanced peers. Forrester examined 94 quality metrics that were classified into four categories. Key findings include:

    • Understanding of business risk is the most important determining factor of DevOps and Agile maturity.
    • Experts focus primarily on contextual metrics (e.g., requirements coverage) while others focus on “counting” metrics (e.g., number of tests).
    • Experts are more likely to measure the user experience across an end-to-end transaction while others rely on application-specific or team-specific metrics.

    To determine the “most important” metrics, the research surveyed 603 global enterprise participants responsible for their firms’ Agile and/or DevOps strategies. Participants were first asked a variety of questions to assess the maturity of their Agile/DevOps practices. Next, they were asked what quality metrics they actually used, then asked to rank the value of each metric they regularly measured. Results from the Agile/DevOps experts were later separated from, and compared to, those of the “other” respondents. The most important metrics were determined by analyzing the experts’ value rankings for the metrics that they actually used.

    The Risk ‘Blind Spot’

    Risk was a prevalent thread throughout the various parts of the report. Although risk-related metrics did not rank high in overall popularity, Agile and DevOps experts measure them significantly more frequently than the non-experts did. In fact, Agile and DevOps experts consistently ranked risk-related metrics among their top three most valuable metrics in different phases and categories.

    Interestingly, most firms (80 percent) believe they deliver within acceptable business risk, but fewer than a quarter state that their QA and testing processes completely cover business risk. Only 15 percent of respondents say that their test suites reliably provide a good indication of business risk.

    From Tricentis’ analysis of Global 2000 companies’ test case portfolios, we’ve found that most test suites actually cover about 40 percent of the organization’s business risks. However, these test suites have a 67 percent level of redundancy on average—meaning that over two-thirds of the tests don’t actually increase their business risk coverage. This might be one cause of the disconnect: people assume that more tests means more business risk coverage, but that’s often not the case.

    Another likely cause is that most test results focus on pass/fail status, which doesn’t provide the required insight into whether the release has an acceptable level of risk. As companies move towards continuous delivery and automated release processes, real-time insight into business risk becomes critical for promoting acceptable releases as rapidly as possible while stopping potentially-damaging ones from proceeding down the release pipeline.

    Details and Additional Findings

    If you want to learn more about how Forrester arrived at these findings—and see how the 94 quality metrics ranked—you can read the complete “Definitive Software Quality Metrics for Agile+DevOps” on the Tricentis website.

     

    — Wayne Ariola

  • The State of the Kotlin Programming Language in 2018

    The State of the Kotlin Programming Language in 2018

    Pusher, the communications and collaboration API provider, recently released the findings of its “State of Kotlin 2018” research report. Over the past 24 months, adoption and use of the Kotlin programming language among developers has seen tremendous growth. Pusher has seen this growth firsthand, with more developers using Kotlin while building applications with the company’s products.

    Earlier this year, Pusher surveyed more than 2,500 developers to get a better understanding of the ecosystem, specifically around usage, features and demographics.

    Key report findings:

    Kotlin is used both in work and personal projects, as confirmed by 60 percent of respondents. Kotlin is even more prominent in side projects, as they tend to be smaller, easier to convert and more experimental.

    Android is hugely popular across the board, used by professional developers and students alike. However, when it comes to backend applications, Kotlin’s users tend to be more experienced developers.

    Most Kotlin developers come from a Java background, or also work with Java. More than 87 percent of respondents have migrated existing Java code to Kotlin. However, more than a quarter of respondents who migrated Java to Kotlin needed to revert back due to both technical and organizational reasons. Tools that use reflection or generate code were mentioned most often as technical reasons to revert to Java.

    Null safety is the favorite feature for 80 percent of respondents, whereas co-routines and multi-platform support are the least important.

    The report concluded that Kotlin is overwhelmingly popular in the Android circles. This raises the question, Will Kotlin break into communities outside Android?

    “We expect to see new generations of developers taking their first steps into programming with Kotlin,” said Pusher Developer Evangelist Zan Markan in an email. “It’s a modern, versatile, cross-platform language that can cross between OO, functional, scripting, and declarative paradigms with ease. This could mean that Kotlin will affect the wider programming language landscape by becoming a benchmark for what a programming language should be able to do.”

    Read the full report here.

    — Malia Powers

  • Continuous Testing Insights from 2018 DevTest Research

    Continuous Testing Insights from 2018 DevTest Research

    The year is far from over, but there already several interesting DevTest surveys worth your attention. These studies don’t just quantify the obvious; they actually report some unexpected findings regarding how far and how fast we’re advancing, and offer some very specific advice on what’s needed to improve.

    We strongly recommend that you spend some time reading all three of these surveys in their entirety. However, in case you’re short on time (or impatient … or both), we wanted to highlight the findings that are most pertinent for readers practicing or researching Continuous Testing.

    Sauce Labs – Testing Trends for 2018: A Survey of Development and Testing Professionals

    [Read the complete report]

    2018 marks the fourth annual “Testing Trends” report, which is based on a global survey of more than 1,000 technology professionals responsible for developing and testing web and mobile applications.

    Key findings in terms of testing include:

    • 87 percent report that management supports test automation initiatives.
    • 45 percent expect to increase spending on test automation in 2018 (55 percent at large companies).
    • The number of respondents with high levels of test automation dropped to 28 percent in 2018 from 32 percent in 2017 .
    • The release cadence is actually slowing, with hourly deployments dropping to 5 percent from 14 percent and daily deployments dropping to 27 percent from 34 percent.

    In other words, everyone recognizes the value of test automation and most companies are willing to invest in it. However, test automation rates are actually decreasing, while Agile and DevOps adoption are steadily increasing. In the 2017 report, test automation rates increased slightly, and delivery speed also increased slightly. The 2018 reported a similar correlation: Test automation rates decreased, and the release cadence slowed down.

    GitLab – 2018 Global Developer Report

    [Read the complete report]

    This expansive survey polled 5,296 software professionals from around the world. The majority of respondents were software developers or engineers who worked for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMB) in the hardware, services and SaaS industries.

    Testing wasn’t a common topic in this development-focused research, but it did earn a prominent spot in the report. Testing was the No. 1 response to the question, “Where in the development process do you encounter the most delays?” A dubious honor—but not a surprising one. Last year’s DevOps Review polled an entirely different audience and came up with the exact same finding.

    VersionOne – 12th Annual State of Agile Report

    [Read the complete report]

    The 12th edition of the world’s longest-running Agile study found that while 97 percent of the 1,492 respondents’ organizations are practicing Agile, 84 percent report that their Agile adoption is not yet mature.

    Respondents feel strongly that two testing-related items would help them increase process maturity across both Agile and DevOps:

    • 83 percent want end-to-end traceability from business initiative through development, test and deployment.
    • 82 percent want better identification and measurement of risk prior to deployment.

    Respondents also reported a relatively high level of adoption of development testing and “shift left” testing techniques. Adoption levels were reported at:

    • Unit testing – 75 percent.
    • Coding standards – 64 percent.
    • Pair programming – 36 percent.
    • TDD – 35 percent.
    • BDD – 17 percent.

    Testers might also be interested in the survey’s feedback on Agile management tools. Usage rates were reported at:

    • Atlassian Jira – 58 percent.
    • VersionOne – 20 percent.
    • Microsoft TFS – 21 percent.
    • HP (now Micro Focus) Quality Center / ALM – 14 percent.

    The most highly recommended tools were VersionOne, Jira and CA Agile Central. HP Agile Manager, Hansoft and HP Quality Center /ALM were the least likely to be recommended.

    — Cynthia Dunlop

  • Puppet Report Sees Long DevOps Journey Ahead

    Puppet Report Sees Long DevOps Journey Ahead

    A recent report published by Puppet suggests the level of DevOps maturity within most organizations is still relatively slight. In fact, most of the respondents reported high levels of manual work still occurring across configuration management, deployment, testing and change approval processes.

    Alanna Brown, director of product marketing for Puppet, said the “State of DevOps: Market Segmentation Report” makes it clear that DevOps is being embraced to solve specific pain points with specific IT departments. As a result, silos of DevOps processes are springing up across the enterprise. That next challenge IT organizations will face is trying to unify all the DevOps processes, she said.

    The survey finds deployment automation, version control, continuous integration and infrastructure automation were the most common starting points for DevOps. Less-common starting points were lean practices, visualization of key quality and productivity metrics and setting limits on work in progress.

    Brown said the one surprising thing that study found is there is little correlation between the size of the companies surveyed and their relative DevOps maturity. Reliance on DevOps process may have more to do with needs arising from satisfying customer demand than anything else, noted Brown. The survey finds that media and entertainment and retail industry have the lowest percentage of low IT performers, while financial services, insurance and manufacturing companies had the highest proportion of low performers.

    Not surprisingly, given the relative amount of DevOps immaturity, the survey also finds that reliance on IT automation frameworks is not yet especially widespread.

    The Markets Segmentation report is based on the 2017 “State of DevOps” survey of 3,200 IT professionals that Puppet previously published. While it’s possible many companies may have advanced further down the DevOps journey since then, the report makes it clear that for both technical and cultural reasons fully embracing DevOps is an extended process. In fact, Brown said the report shows DevOps is still mainly being driven by the bottom of the organization up rather than by senior IT leaders. It’s only when DevOps success becomes visibly demonstrated that organizations attempt to replicate that success elsewhere in the organization. At the same time, widespread usage of DevOps processes suggests that DevOps itself is now much more than a grassroots movement, she said.

    Change obviously comes hard to enterprise IT organizations. Many DevOps concepts were initially pioneered by web-scale companies that have the luxury of not having to support legacy applications and processes. Traditional enterprise IT organizations now typically are trying to support DevOps processes alongside process based on Waterfall and ITIL methodologies. Not every application being supported requires that number of release updates that many modern applications require.

    Nevertheless, it’s also clear that as the number of applications being built, tested, deployed and supported continues to grow, the average IT organization is increasingly short-handed. Finding IT professionals with DevOps skill sets is a major challenge. But as more companies come to realize they are really a software company that happens to be selling a specific thing, the higher priority DevOps becomes.

    — Mike Vizard

  • OECD Report Shows U.S. Leads in IoT, Lags in Robotics

    OECD Report Shows U.S. Leads in IoT, Lags in Robotics

    A newly published report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reveals the state of digital technology adoption, development and related research when it comes to digital transformation, manufacturing automation and providing skill sets for workers that will help carry them in the future.

    The “OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2017” found that when it comes to the internet of things (IoT), the United States leads other G20 countries. It also garners the largest share of the top 10 percent most-cited scientific publications in the world. But that’s where the very good news ends. According to the OECD, that share of the top scientific publications is dwindling as more and higher-quality research is increasingly coming from China. The United States is also below average when it comes to the adoption of robots in manufacturing.

    The top five economies when it comes to developing digital technologies? China, Chinese Taipei, Japan, Korea and the United States. According to the report, India and eastern Europe are becoming more substantially involved in innovation and science.

    Key findings in the 2017 Scoreboard include:

    • China, Chinese Taipei, Japan, Korea and the United States accounted for 70 percent to 100 percent of the 20 fastest growing new information and communications technologies (such as payment protocols or interactive TV) between 2012 and 2015, as measured by inventions patented in the five top intellectual property (IP) offices.
    • Korea and Japan are the leaders in robot intensity, which is measured as the number of robots used in a sector divided by the overall value created by that sector, giving a sense of the pace of automation relative to industry size. Robot intensity is rising in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovak Republic and Slovenia and in the BRICS—most notably in China, which is fast catching up to U.S. levels.
    • IoT, or machine-to-machine communication via internet-connected devices such as vehicles, sensors or home appliances, is growing fast. China had the most SIM cards in machines in 2017 at 228 million subscriptions, accounting for 44 percent of global M2M connections and three times the U.S. share. In terms of M2M cards per person, the United States is in the lead among G20 countries, but ranks sixth globally behind Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands and Finland.
    • The number of artificial intelligence technologies patented in the five top IP offices rose by 6 percent a year on average over 2010-2015, led by Japan. Japan, Korea and the United States. Together those countries accounted for over 62 percent of AI-related IP5 patent applications, down from 70 percent in 2000-2005, as filings rose from China and Chinese Taipei. EU countries contributed to 12 percent of the top AI inventions, down from 19 percent in the previous decade.
    • The United States has the biggest share of the world’s top 10 percent most-cited scientific publications, and China has overtaken the UK for second place after tripling its high-impact output in a decade. The U.S. share of top-cited research fell to 26 percent in 2016 from 38 percent in 2005, the UK slipped to 6 percent from 8 percent and China increased its share to 14 percent from 4 percent.

    — George V. Hulme

  • IT Leadership Still Struggles to Satisfy the Business, Deliver Innovation

    IT Leadership Still Struggles to Satisfy the Business, Deliver Innovation

    If a recently published report by Salesforce is to be believed, the rest of IT leadership is starting to catch up with what IT leaders have long known: Business technology needs to be customer experience-driven. This year’s report, Salesforce’s second annual broad look at the state of enterprise IT found that the line continues to blur between business leadership and IT leadership, driving innovation is the imperative, and IT is focused more than ever on providing business value.

    According to the “2017 State of IT Research” report, based on a survey of about 2,200 technology leaders worldwide, 71 percent of organizations reported they are shifting efforts from technology being a cost center to becoming a “value-based service brokerage over the next 12 to 18 months.”

    “Instead of being viewed as a cost center, IT is emerging as a value-based service brokerage,” the report states. “The old model of IT as a maintainer of the status quo infrastructure is giving way to a new mindset, in which IT adds innovative capabilities that bring a competitive edge to the business. Seventy-four percent of IT leaders say the business teams they partner with believe IT is the biggest driver of business success.”

    How are IT teams gauging their success? They’re measuring success based on satisfaction scores. A sizable 74 percent of IT leaders said that such business satisfaction scores are a leading key performance indicator, IT teams are only delivering on 56 percent of their customer-facing initiatives. With such less-than-flattering results, it’s no surprise that 67 percent of IT teams said that improving their collaboration with other lines of business is a high priority—second only to improving security policies and practices in priorities.

    This inability of some enterprises to execute on business initiatives couldn’t come at a worse time, as every company is tasked with becoming as agile and competitive as possible during a time of critical business disruption. According to the survey, Top IT teams are three and a half times more likely than underperforming teams to say it’s a critical priority to innovate for industry disruption.

    It’s important to note that Salesforce didn’t quantify the performance of the enterprise teams surveyed; instead, the respondents self-identified as underperformers, moderate performers or high performers against their competition.

    One of the biggest challenges IT has when it comes to innovating is the sheer amount of time they must spend keeping up on the basics, such as infrastructure. “Even with all the talk of prioritizing innovation, IT leaders still spend more time on tasks that keep the lights on (54 percent of their time, on average). A majority of IT leaders are moving to automate routine tasks so their teams have more time to innovate,” Salesforce wrote.

    According to the survey, about half, 52 percent, said that legacy technologies are a challenge to meeting strategic objectives.

    Finally, moving at speed remains a challenge as well. “Sixty-seven percent of IT leaders say improving the speed of development cycles is a high priority. And while speed is an important success metric, it’s also a top challenge. To improve, IT leaders are exploring options such as low-code solutions and citizen development. Some concerns—namely, security and insufficient governance or training—still hold IT teams back from putting business users into the driver’s seat,” Salesforce wrote.

    Where do they stand now? Just under half, at 47 percent, can deploy an app in under a month. Based on my reporting that’s quite an improvement in deployment time from just a year ago, and I think what we are seeing here are the fruits from agile, DevOps, continuous delivery, and low-code development platforms. And the half of enterprises that can’t deliver at speed are going to find themselves deeper and deeper down a competitive hole.

    — George V. Hulme

  • Predictable Progress: Tracking DevOps Maturity Metrics

    Predictable Progress: Tracking DevOps Maturity Metrics

    As DevOps methodologies continue to evolve, we’re naturally seeing an increased emphasis on the cultivation of related maturity metrics.

    For instance, in the 2016 State of DevOps Report, researchers with DORA took an initial stab at creating relevant ROI measurements.

    Similarly, a new report issued by researchers Coleman Parkes, sponsored by CA Technologies, offers additional evidence that as agile and DevOps processes continue to expand, today’s practitioners are increasingly employing metrics to optimize their efforts.

    The report, titled, “Accelerating Velocity and Customer Value with Agile and DevOps,” finds some form of adoption among nearly every enterprise, with 87 percent having adopted agile to some degree and 73 percent leveraging DevOps.

    Related to the overall maturity of these practices, those organizations that are moving to embrace the techniques most broadly are predictably seeing greater returns. Yet, despite the widespread adoption, only a third have deployed either practice widely, according to the research.

    Percentage of Advanced Adopters Reporting Improvements in Customer Experience

     

    Based on a survey of 1,770 senior business and IT executives, the study also closely investigates the specific KPIs that organizations are using to gauge how agile and DevOps initiatives are translating into customer interactions.

    Most notably, “advanced” agile and DevOps adopters have observed more than an 87 percent improvement in overall customer experience, compared to “basic” adopters.

    In terms of how those efforts are affecting business drivers, Coleman Parkes finds:

    • Advanced agile practitioners are experiencing a 40 percent improvement in time-to-decision, compared to 33 percent for basic users.
    • Advanced DevOps adopters have noted a 42 percent improvement in speed-to-market, compared to only 24 percent for basic practitioners.

    Key Performance-Invoking Indicators

    To that end, the research highlights specific KPIs that organizations are using to measure the impact the agile and DevOps practices are having on customers. In fact, the study finds that between two thirds and three quarters of all the organizations surveyed have established such measurements.

    At least half of these focus on business or customer-related metrics, reflecting how “critical software has become to businesses’ ability to achieve their core mission,” Coleman Parkes researchers note.

    Among the mostly widely invoked metrics, include:

    • Business growth (specifically revenue): over 73 percent
    • Operational or process efficiency: over 73 percent
    • Employee productivity: over 73 percent
    • Customer experience: over 71 percent
    • IT-related costs: over 71 percent
    • Speed-to-market: over 71 percent
    • Customer satisfaction (via NPS): over 70 percent
    • Time-to-decision: over 70 percent
    • Quality of development: over 70 percent
    • Employee retention: over 64 percent

    If increasing applications delivery speed and overall organizational velocity are, in fact, the primary goals of engaging agile and DevOps, the research bears out that the techniques are having the desired effect. After all, the survey finds that time-to-decision and speed-to-market are being accelerated among approximately a third of the organizations studied.

    Related to other notable KPIs, Coleman Parkes highlights that a full three-quarters of adopters have moved the needle on overall customer experience, along with employee recruitment and retention, a significant benefit that was also highlighted in the State of DevOps Report.

    Along with positively impacting customers, the reality is clearly that agile and DevOps are also making a big difference in allowing companies to improve the atmosphere for their workers—a huge benefit when you consider the shortage of talent in IT today, and how much it typically costs to attract new employees, just as DORA’s researchers noted.

    Other key findings by Coleman Parkes include “before and after” metrics that many organizations are observing related to their continued adoption and advancement of the involved methodologies themselves.

    I encourage you to download the entire report, and leverage it to measure how far you’ve come with Agile and DevOps transformation—and where you may need to re-examine your efforts.

    — Aruna Ravichandran

  • Compuware Survey Connects Mainframes, DevOps

    Compuware Survey Connects Mainframes, DevOps

    Mainframes are still necessary; integrating them with modern hardware and software is tricky; and DevOps is the answer. Those are the takeaways from a survey out this week that was commissioned by Compuware.

    The survey, which was released Dec. 14, was conducted by Forrester. It asked professionals how often their organizations rely on mainframe systems and what they do to overcome the challenges associated with using legacy mainframes within modern computing environments.

    The survey suggests that mainframes are not going anywhere soon: 57 percent of respondents said new business initiatives “always” involve the mainframe, according to Compuware. Even though mainframe systems are now decades old, they still have a place in modern IT.

    But bridging the gap between mainframes and more modern infrastructure and software delivery practices is tough, according to the survey. This is due not only to what Compuware calls “organizational bureaucracy” and “insufficient funding,” but also the difficulty of integrating mainframes with other types of technology that were designed in a different era.

    The survey shows that most professionals take one of three approaches to solving that challenge:

    • Move applications off of mainframes. The downside to this strategy is that mainframe applications may not run as fast or as securely on other hardware.
    • Avoid using the mainframe at all. This, too, is not always ideal, according to Compuware, because the mainframe is better at handling some types of workloads.
    • “Modernize” mainframes, which entails a lot of investment and effort.

    According to Forrester’s conclusion in the study, a better approach is to apply DevOps techniques to mainframe development. That means that the mainframe technology itself does not have to change or be hybridized; only the approach to mainframe app delivery changes. “Those companies embracing DevOps deliver faster and at a higher quality, all while fostering collaboration,” Forrester concluded.

    These are all things that a Compuware-sponsored study is likely to say, of course. Compuware specializes in DevOps solutions for the mainframe.

    Still, the survey is a good reminder that mainframe is alive and well—and DevOps teams should not leave it out of the picture.

    — Chris Tozzi

  • Digital Disrupters – Building a DevOps Leadership Profile

    Digital Disrupters – Building a DevOps Leadership Profile

    While the advancement of DevOps methodology remains fairly nascent for many organizations, an ever-expanding class of leading practitioners are evolving a wide range of related best practices.

    Beyond the well-worn concept of “unicorns” – the scant few organizations that stand as mythical examples of DevOps nirvana – this broader set of early adopters have begun to pull back the curtain on their efforts, lending further detail to the strategies that have bred this current model for success.

    Last week, industry analysts Freeform Dynamics published valuable research that highlights the ongoing work of such DevOps innovators, dubbed as “Digital Disrupters” for their accomplishments in pursuing larger digital transformation. The report “Exploiting the Software Advantage” – sponsored by CA Technologies, outlines a critical set of initiatives crucial to navigating the DevOps landscape.

    What are the specific hallmarks of those organizations leading the charge? Where are others struggling to catch-up? Many of the Freeform Dynamics survey results, based on 1442 respondents, reaffirm widespread DevOps observations, while other findings serve to shed new light, including:

    • Everyone builds software: Perception is, in fact, reality and to deeply engrain digital transformation, Digital Disruptors are increasingly identifying with this mantra. While 95% of leaders have committed to becoming more app-centric, only 51% of mainstream organizations have adopted this persona. Similarly, 84% of Disruptors directly identify as “software companies”, regardless of industry, compared to 40% among the masses.
    • Transformation is required: This point may seem obvious, but it certainly bears repeating. A whopping 92% of leaders have actively moved to break down traditional silos between Dev and Ops, with 51% of those organizations having already completed this work. By comparison, only 18% of mainstream organizations claim to have done the same, supported by 59% who at least share this more collaborative DevOps vision.
    • Commitment is critical: This may also seem like a no-brainer, but the numbers bear out this requirement. Some 77% of Disruptors have agile development methodologies in place, with 70% having “broadly” implemented DevOps activities. For mainstream organizations, these metrics rate at only 31% and 21%, respectively; leaders are going all-in and appreciating the benefits, and those that follow will need to do the same.
    • Experimentation is omnipresent: To garner the benefits of continuous delivery, embracing trial and error is a must. Among Disruptors, 93% recognized the need to “experiment and fail quickly on the road to success”, compared to only 58% of mainstream organizations. Some 95% of leaders have already shifted from fixed product cycles to continuous innovation, while only 56% of the mainstream have made this leap.
    • APIs are everywhere: Ubiquitous integration, both in-house and in connecting to third parties, has only increased emphasis on the API. Disruptors are resoundingly focused on API management, with 68% using APIs to integrate third party services into their applications, and 66% to offer external access to systems and data. Mainstream peers compare at only 26% and 24%, respectively, denoting a sizable API management gap.

    These are only a handful of the most dramatic and obvious areas where DevOps advocates have clearly re-architected their approach, separating themselves from those organizations that have yet to go all-in; it doesn’t stop there.

    As highlighted in the research, other areas of differentiation and dichotomy include cross-functional alignment, emphasis on digital channels, use of digital to drive core business efficiency, and even funding of digital investments.

    Beyond these key philosophical milestones that litter the pathway to DevOps success, the survey also highlights the vast array of strategic goals that these organizations have sought to accomplish. The results spotlight the massive range of significant business benefits that practitioners believe DevOps can deliver.

    Leading use cases include:

    • Improved customer satisfaction (49%)
    • Better workforce productivity (44%)
    • Improved customer experience (41%)
    • Improved competitive differentiation (38%)
    • Better agility / speed-to-market (37%)
    • Opening up of new markets (35%)
    • Creation of new business models (30%)
    • Creation of new routes to market (26%)

    If one were to take those outcomes out of context, unrelated to the impact of DevOps, it’s fair to say that they read like a generic list of leading business initiatives – further underlining the movement’s overall relevance.

    That’s not to say this is all accomplished easily. Report respondents detail hard won victories that required significant time and investment to achieve all this DevOps-driven advancement. After all, the notion of “disruption” doesn’t exactly evoke images of ease or comfort.

    Click here to read the report for yourself – there’s a lot more to be considered. Namely, how well your organization measures up in affecting digital transformation in its own right, and where it can take steps to move forward.