A maturing DevSecOps landscape

For the fourth year in a row, we asked DevOps teams to tell the truth about their practices and processes, their challenges and their careers. With a global pandemic swirling, we were surprised when nearly 4,300 people took time to do just that this past February.

We were even more surprised by the results. This year, for the first time ever, DevOps became serious. It’s somber. It’s grown up. It’s happening. We didn’t ask a single question about Covid, but the answers seem shaped by that lingering experience. It’s as if, in the face of calamity, teams everywhere decided to focus on what mattered most, whether that was automation, or testing, or embracing cutting-edge technologies.

In 2021, teams are poised to step out of the DevOps “culture” battle and into the real work of technology implementation and (surprisingly) upbeat results.

60% of developers are releasing code 2x faster than before, thanks to DevOps – up 25% from (pre-pandemic) 2021.

72% of security pros rated their organizations’ security efforts as “good” or “strong” – up 13% over 2021.

56% of ops teams members said they are “fully” or mostly automated – up 10% from 2021.

Almost 25% of respondents claimed to have full test automation – up 13% from 2021.

75% of teams are either using AI/ML or bots for test/code review, or they’re planning to – up 41% from 2021.

Last year dev, sec, and ops said they needed better communication and collaboration skills for their future careers. This year, after an intense period of enforced soft skills, their priorities have shifted dramatically to AI/ML (devs), subject matter expertise (sec),and advanced programming (ops).

Anecdotally, we heard about the hard work that went into these results: mindset shifts, tough discussions, and detailed analysis. DevOps isn’t easy (even for us) but it seems a focus on outcomes using real data can help teams of all sizes in all countries move forward.

As always, we’ll remind you this is our survey, so don’t be surprised if respondents mention us or use our products (roughly 50% of survey takers are GitLab customers). Also, 43% of our survey takers have been “doing” DevOps for between three years and five years or more, so they’re seasoned practitioners with what are often aspirational results. Your results may be different, and that’s ok.

Let’s get started.