2021 State of DevOps Report: Cultural Issues Still the Biggest Barrier to Success

Pink News Editor | September 1, 2021

Many IT organizations are still struggling with successfully implementing and sustaining DevOps.

As James Turnbull, VP of Engineering at Sotheby’s states, “This year’s State of DevOps Report shows that organizations are making progress towards higher performance, but cultural issues are still obstacles to success. Deeper leadership buy-in is needed to enable practitioners to make the changes they need for that success.”

The 2021 State of DevOps Report notes the focus of this year’s publication was to “explore the blockers keeping mid-evolution firms stuck in the middle of their DevOps evolution, the significance of organizational buy-in and why team identities and interaction models matter, and whether the rise of automation and cloud relate to an organization’s success in its DevOps evolution.”

The 2021 report delves into the current DevOps’ trends and issues, with a focus on team identities and interaction paradigms. As Patrick Debois, the “father” of DevOps, says: “People are really struggling with what DevOps is right now.” (Please scroll to the end of this blog for Pink’s proposed training solutions.)

Let’s briefly review the executive summary of the 2021 State of DevOps Report, which is broken into five sections. We’ve included a brief description of each section and noted one or two statistics for each. In addition, the report provides a glimpse of the possible future of DevOps…

  1. DevOps is not just automation:

Highly evolved firms are far more likely to have implemented extensive and pervasive automation but being good at automation does not make an organization good at DevOps:

  • 90% of respondents with highly evolved DevOps practices report their team has automated most repetitive tasks.
  • 62% of organizations stuck in mid-evolution report high levels of automation.
  1. DevOps is not the cloud:

Almost everyone is using the cloud, but most are using it poorly; however, highly evolved DevOps teams are using it well. Despite using cloud and automation, organizations cannot expect to become highly evolved:

  • While two in three respondents report using public cloud, only one in four are using cloud to its
  • full potential.
  • 65% of mid-evolution organizations report using public cloud, yet only 20% of them are using cloud to its full potential.

While cloud and automation are important, organizations also need to address organizational and team aspects, namely helping teams clarify their mission, primary customers, interfaces, and what makes for healthy interactions with others.

  1. Team identities and clear interaction paradigms matter:

Enterprises are held back from evolving to the highest levels by organizational structure and dynamics. Highly evolved firms use a combination of stream-aligned teams and platform teams as the most effective way to manage team cognitive load at scale, and they have a small number of team types whose role and responsibilities are clearly understood by their adjacent teams:

  • 91% of highly evolved teams report a clear understanding of their responsibilities to other teams compared to only 46% of low-evolution teams.
  • 89% of highly evolved teams report members of their own team have clear roles, plans, and goals for their work, compared to just 46% of low‑evolution teams.
  1. Cultural blockers are keeping mid-evolution firms stuck in the middle:

Challenges related to culture are most acute among low-evolution organizations, but present persistent blockers among mid-evolution firms:

  • 18% of high-evolution respondents report they have no cultural blockers.
  • Among mid-level respondents, a mix of cultural blockers present themselves. 21% report their culture discourages risk and 20% state responsibilities are unclear. 18% report fast flow optimization is not a priority, while 17% cite insufficient feedback loops.
  1. Platform teams are key to success at scale:

The existence of a platform team does not inherently unlock higher evolution DevOps; however, great platform teams scale out the benefits of DevOps initiatives:

  • Platform team adoption differentiates those toward the higher end of mid-level evolution from those toward the lower end, with 65% of those toward the higher end (high-mid) using self-service platforms and only 40% of those toward the lower end (low-mid) saying the same.

The 2021 State of DevOps Report also contains advice for the future…

The Future of DevOps
The report notes that “Predicting the future is a dangerous business, but these three threads are emerging as clear signposts on the path to a modernized, successful enterprise IT:

  • Embrace the future of operations roles in a world where infrastructure is largely run by someone else.
  • Invest in the platform team approach to enable fast flow in your value stream-oriented development teams.
  • Invest in your legacy environments so they are no longer a constant inhibitor of progress.”

Learn More about DevOps
As part of our mission to translate knowledge into results, thought leaders at Pink Elephant have created three critical success factors to help your organization better implement and maintain DevOps. Our Full Stack approach includes three elements – culture, practices, and automation – which were also identified by the 2021 State of DevOps Report as enabling the successful adoption of DevOps. In addition, we provide 15 specific practices that are essential to delivering effective DevOps and a comprehensive DevOps assessment that will provide a starting point for your organization’s action plan for continuous DevOps improvement.

Pink is also pleased to provide you with training options that range from DevOps Essentials to DevOps Leadership, as well as our new role-based certification courses like DevOps Engineer. See our recently expanded DevOps portfolio for details – and take advantage of our special DevOps bundle offer.

Or seize the opportunity to delve into various content-rich DevOps sessions at Pink22 – the 25th Annual International ITSM Conference & Exhibition being held Feb 15-18, 2022, at the Bellagio in Las Vegas – and benefit from the Pink22 Early Bird Offer.

Stay in the Loop
Keep up to date on DevOps – as well as all ITSM news, special offers, and educational articles/webinars – by simply signing up for our e-newsletter.

Like this article? Like

Comments

Post a comment