‘Doing Digital’ with DevOps | DevOps Onramp 2023

here Hi everybody. It's Andy man here from sageable. Very exciting day here with tech strong today.

I'm talking about doing digital with devops. The alliteration is all part of the program. It's gonna be interesting session.

I did all to research into what the impact of devops is on various digital transformation Technologies and approaches. I'm gonna dig into that with you today. So I'm gonna start out.

Look. What am I talking about? I'm talking about devops.

I'm talking about digital transformation. Now, these are all things to all people right both of them. They're they're shoe polish.

They're dessert topping their floor cleaner. They're everything you want. Yeah, I use canonical definitions.

So they canonical definition of devops. I use is about fostering collaboration communication and integration between Dev and Ops teams to deliver better software fast. Some people would add secure software as well.

So it's canonical look it's not about technology. It's not about the automation. It's not about cicd.

It's not about pipelines. It's a cultural change fundamental. And it involves methods of collaborating communicating.

So we talked about that all day today digital transformation is where I'm going to dive into look that is again all things to all people bottom line. If you're using a computer to do something you used to do with a pencil you're doing digital transformation. So it's all Computing digital transformation perhaps but I look at it as this idea of adopting computer technology that replace or meant traditional human manual physical products services or operations, you know processes.

So now I don't need to go to agree with me on any of these definitions I do need you to know what I'm talking about when I say the words. So moving away from definitions because they don't really help. What do I know about this?

Well, look, I've been a technology leader and I trusted advisor to Executives all around the world where 025 working on all sorts of transformation programs virtualization automation cloud computing devops cyber security a whole bunch of other things as well. My own roles in it Ops systems program your automation project management product development sales marketing strategy. I'm a polyglot who has seen transformation from multiple angles selling software implementing software telling people have to do it better.

Most recently I was CTO at Kumar. So I was doing transformation there. I was also at Splunk.

I've been at CIB and see I was a trusted advisor for many years at Enterprise Management Associates. I've written a couple of books. I was a key author on the state of devops reports.

I'll touch on some of that data in a moment. I've written in CIO Forbes New York Times a whole bunch of others today. I am the global Studio founder at sageable.

So I'm doing primary research and original research so I can advise and consult with my part on digital transformation. So that's a lot of where I know but it's not just opinion. I'm gonna bring data today and we'll go through it together.

Now I want to get you understanding what I've done with this research before I dive into. charts and graphs and numbers So firstly sageable's digital transformation research. We conducted this in q1 of 2023.

So it's pretty fresh respondents were asked to score 20 different digital transformation Technologies and approaches. So things like cloud or metaverse or even just Innovation program or refactoring old code, you know some techniques and Technologies on a scale from one to 100 pretty simple style the demographics of the respondent crew. Look we paid for a bunch of respondents paid less spanner ads all this sort of stuff.

We also earned by targeting specific social media groups a lot of respondents as well. All of these groups were collected separately analyzed for statistical validity and then managed together as a result. We ended up with a pretty good balance of for-profit and non-profit including government education.

We ended up with a pretty good balance of tech workers versus line of business workers, and I think we ended up with Really good insight into what leaders are thinking we did survey individual contributors as well. But we actually looked at the differences between line of business technology executive a team leader scrum lead, for example We also pulled in some other data, which we knew was going to be confounding and wrong so that we could do comparisons look. Samples surveys are always questionable.

We've done all weekend to make this data as valid as possible. You need to make your own decisions about what this data means on. So anyway, let's move on devops is a digital transformation best practice.

That's a pretty big statement. Right? But in the research that we did and you can see it on screen.

Now, we have clearly shown that devot's bubbles up to the top. Look we've got top five. You devops really straightforward right?

Just a couple of notes on this for your edification cyber security always comes out. Number one. I'll show you a couple other charts in a moment.

So definitely cyber security Cloud says and pears. I've managed them together in later points, but you can see that that's a really strong correlation with digital transformation priorities, by the way middle verse lowest. We'll talk about that in second as well.

But key here. Devops is top five. It's just no doubt in my mind.

The numbers are there not by a huge. Margin. It's all pretty close.

But devops is clearly top five. So yeah, right. Maybe let's take into some more data here.

So this is a the same research of course, and this is looking at the raw scores only from executive leaders both line of Business and Technology executives. What's the most important technology or approach in digital transformation to you? Is the results interesting slightly different so cyber security still there?

Right cyber security is always there. We'll see that some more analytics bubbles up to number one, but only by little margin right these are not statistically significant differences. You're saying one point.

He one point there on 100 point scale not super significant. So DeVos bubbles out into the top six amongst executively, so that's sort of interesting by the way. but that as little as possible, so We can see that it's a top six technology.

Okay, so maybe not top five. How about amongst individual contributors my goodness. All of you devs and Ops you are a cynical mind.

I get it. Every single score is lower across the board, but But you can see devops actually bubbles up pretty well. So now we're getting devops up here middle of the pack top three.

Technology for digital transformation by ranking by individual contributors. So the people who use the devops the people who actually do the devops see that it makes a big difference. That's a really important takeaway.

I reckon so if we keep looking here slightly different cohorts, let's have a look at what did people rank as their number one relative priority. Now, this is an interesting metric because for some people 95 at 100 is a number one priority for some people 45 out of a hundred is a number one priority. So absolute scores could be pretty deceptive.

How about rankings? Well, you can see it bubbles out of in fact you top six because we've got an equal number of top five. You can see actually the top equal five so devotes bubbles out of there and with a pretty big gap there right from 28 to 21 that's actually statistically significant in we talk about number one ranking.

In 220 odd different respondents. That's a that's a percentage gap, which is significant. And by the way, finally When we look at the most rankings in the top five as opposed to the number one.

We also get devops bubbling out of that equation. And so yeah, this this makes a fundamental difference to how we look at. What we're talking about here right number six and again from 61 to 57.

Not that bigger difference, but from 71 to 57, that's the statistically significant difference. So Devopsies of top five priority for digital transformation is it it will look at more about that. But let's have a look what it means.

When you do something well in digital transformation, you can say it's a priority, but if you're not doing very well at your digital transformation program. Then maybe I don't want to have a listen to you and maybe I'll listen to someone else. So when we think about program progress and success again, I asked respondents to rank on a scale of zero to 100.

Where are you in terms of progress and your digital transformation program. Where are you with your success? So it's a score.

It's not a percentage, but I'll keep using percentage numbers because it's out of 100. So you can see here on the chart. We're showing now that so overall average is about 71% right or 70 Brewing or overall progress.

It varies depending on what respondents right so leaders overall including lines of includes a technically just including scrum leaders executive leaders senior managers, I've seen directors all leaders ranking a little bit higher all is including line of business rank could even a little bit higher you can see that Executives rank it a little bit higher than average even one of Business Leaders alone ranking it. So what makes it down? It's the cynical Hands-On people.

Yes, you and me. Both look devops is so often hyped. It is the answer to all problems.

There's so much management. My magazine today's sessions a text strong are gonna give you so much more information about what you actually need to do and how you can actually make a difference but look I get it. There's a lot of hyper and devops or individual contributors who just see, you know, sometimes this stuff rolls down a pike.

It's not up to them. But I think the real takeaway here, is that for all leaders? Devops actually ranks higher than average.

Okay, so devopsy is a top five. Oh man. I'm getting Whiplash from this data.

Don't blame me. It's just the data. So That success.

Sure, you're so far. a lot program but are you doing it? Well, look at that thing so you can see here that same sort of result is progress.

And by the way, that's definitely a function of some of the sample. It's a function of the methodology, but it is also a functional the responses themselves and you can see here again across the board. It's a marginal uptick when we're talking about leaders.

Executives storm team leaders Etc Contributors individual Hands-On people are bringing it down a little bit. By the way. We also surveyed non-technical people as you say as you saw there was a small percentage less than 30% who are line of business people.

They probably don't even know what devops is again. The data is the data. We have to interpret what this means.

I still think it's technology. Let's have a look at where it's good because you know doing digital with devops is not always better. That's the headline.

I just gave you. Doesn't sound that awesome does it? Let's get more granular on what this all means.

So let's start with what happens when you prioritize devops. So when devops are remember the the pink and and yellow bars progress is in pink success is in yellow. These are the standard numbers across the board from previous slides.

Okay, I'm gonna repeat those on multiple slides just as a reference. You can see the lines pink line yellow line showing you how people compared to the average overall. So if devops is a top five, oh, it's actually down.

That's a problem. That's in terms of progress. I make less progress when devops is top five.

I don't know what that means really we'll dig into it. I if jealous is a top priority number one. And I make better progress.

That's interesting. So devops if I focus on what I make better progress, okay, I can I can deal with that. What about success?

Am I actually successful in my digital program? Well, same not really if I have devops as a top five. 76 to 75 not statistically significant plus all minus five is about the error marginal.

And possibly a little bit lower because of the sample size is targeting specifically executive leaders, which is a much smaller population, you know, you will see that success goes up when devops is a number one priority. Uh, so I'm confused. Is it good?

Is it not this is the problem with data. Sometimes it's confounding depending on how you look at it. So let's look a little bit deeper again.

Now, I'm gonna look at a number of individual technologies that are common within digital transformation and our in fact amongst the top Technologies of digital transformation based on sageables Research. So let's look at public Cloud as I said before. I've managed together a couple of different sets of data here.

I actually surveyed I actually surveyed Cloud as multiple different things infrastructure platform software and functions as a service manage those all together and called public Cloud all the sake of this data. So look now you can see a slightly different story. So what you're seeing here is the average progress.

This is the same number you saw slide before you keep seeing it on subsequent slides same with the average success. This is a cross all respondents. All Technologies.

All rolls. So but when we prioritize public Cloud as a top five digital transformation priority. If devops is not accounted for then all of a sudden you do better than the average.

So just by saying I'm gonna focus on public Cloud as a priority you do better than the average. But if you say I'm going to focus on public clouds my top five priority, but devopsies number one. It's a really significant benefit.

Your your ability to progress goes up significantly your ability to drive success goes up significantly. Now if they're both top five. Then it's marginal.

Still an improvement in both progress and success. But at this point we're talking marginal improve. and looking at conf Data, if devops is in the bottom five priority.

Oh my goodness. You do almost as well as a devops is number one. So what am I taking away from that?

well devops absolutely enabled public Cloud. I think that's logical. It has agility flexibility.

It's based in automation. It's about atomization and continuous improvements self-service so much of this is very simpatically cloud computing in the public sector and public environment. If you focus on using devops and public Cloud together, you drive better progress.

You drive better success than average. I'm good with that as well. But any sort of devops affect that we're seeing is probably marginal and it's probably quite easily confounded by a lack of focus.

If you split your focus and things come down if devops is not in the picture if you're just focused on public Cloud your ability to progress and have success goes up. So Maybe this is not where devops are doing the best work. How about private cloud?

Fascinatingly we see very similar kind of numbers when you look at it. You can see for example, these numbers are very similar. This was a if I call it was an 80 or not 92.

This was 80 something not 91. This was closest was 84. I believe same pattern.

if you focus on private Cloud as a top five digital transformation technology, then you do pretty well if you wishy washy around your top five then you maybe not. Focus is everything. And so Dallas doesn't really help here similar results, right but for similar reasons, even though private Cloud doesn't have that real on demand infrastructure.

It's simulates in such an effective way. If you do it right, by the way this book he will help you you get fast agile on demand automated scalable Services just like you do in public cloud. So logically, you're gonna get the same results here.

But again prioritization and focus is important. When you priorities public private Cloud at correlates with actually slightly better progress your control over the environment. You're not learning new environment new skills you capabilities.

Some of this makes sense prioritizing private Cloud appears to drive significant outcomes alone. Okay, let's look at another one see ICD automation SRE kind of Technology. It's again, I surveyed multiple inputs for this ci/cd.

If your automation SRE they're not all the same called them all automation for purposes of this chart. And today we can see that there are similar kinds of results as we've seen before with private cloud with public Cloud same right? We're looking at a slight uptick if we have a focus on the automation as a top five and devops is number one.

Actually that's sort of makes sense because if you focus on devops is number one automation flows through as a top five anyways, but if they're both top five again, we lose progress. We lose success still marginally better. Don't get me wrong.

We're not hurting yourself here. But again, if we don't even bother focusing on devops, we don't need severely have that negative impact we might expect it. So automation.

Look it's the gift that always keeps giving it typically makes every other technology better. It's auditable. It's repeated best practices.

It's faster all of these sorts of things. Right? But automation is so core to devops.

It's so hard to tell where does devops end and automation begin. So again devil says a minimal impact if it's not a top priority, but I'll tell you mostly other digital transformation Technologies are higher priority anyway, so that sort of works. And the last Negative Nancy I'll talk about is cyber security.

So, you know, look cyber security is everyone's job number one, but I think we all know cyber security is just really hard. And so if you focus on cybersecurity Honestly, everything else suffers at least in the short term while you get that sorted out so you can see there's such series top five. You actually don't do that.

Well in terms of your digital transformation progress even yeah even even at all so you can see that the difference Is almost zero statistically zero if your Social Security is a top five indulances. Number one again devops just seems to help you do other things better. If you prioritize devops other things just get better, but if you're defocused and everything's all over the place, then you know, you're not necessarily going to do better in terms of success same sort of patterns with so maybe you don't do devops to make cybersecurity better.

But bottom line look we all know it saves hard. It takes Focus away. It's sometimes it's a roadblock doesn't need to be it shouldn't be intended that way but you've got to stop people doing bad things.

So sometimes it is a roadblock and that means sometimes it's a robot to translate. All of these numbers actually more about Focus versus being distracted by all of them and you sure of cyber security or difficulty of it look again when devops is number one priority you get progress and success. so That's not the awesomeness of devops is it we've been learning so much today and throughout the time on how good devops is in so many different ways.

So let me tell you how it is good for digital transformation. Look I want to give you a very pragmatic view on this Cloud native systems management gets really much better when you focus on devops, whether it's top one top five priority. So again, you can see here these numbers look very different.

So we're getting for example an uptick. Just if you focus on cloud system management and here by the way, I'm talking about containerization from Red kubernetes. I'm talking about observability practices of continuous delivery.

I'm talking about all of those practices that are Cloud native to managing Cloud systems. And so when you focus on cloud native system management, wow, you get really good positive results from an average of 73% progress to an average of 89% progress. Wow, that's actually really statistically significant.

Actually. You probably tell I'm pretty excited about it. Even if you are marginally defocused and you're focusing on both Pro and top five priorities.

You actually still do better even if devops is not a priority you do a little bit better, but not at a levels that are indicating of a confounding variable this to me says if you focus on devops, you do better with cloud system management. That's pretty useful. Um same with success right you can see the numbers aligned pretty similarly in the same sort of pattern.

So what's it saying? Look Cloud native operations Drive success. There's not a lot of doubt in my mind.

It's not itself a particularly good indicator for digital transformation. But taken together really see statistically significant benefits Cloud native. It also is predicated on the adoption of cloud.

So it makes sense that if you focus on managing Cloud as a cloud native environment rather than using your traditional Legacy tools you're going to be able to do better devops uses Cloud as a new location. We all talk about how you should refactor not just lift and shift. So if you're doing new things in new ways in the cloud, you're doing it with devops, you're doing it with Cloud native system management and your digital transformation progress and success will get better.

Yeah happy with that. So what other Technologies are good analytics remember this was number one with Executives. So if you're talking your leadership about what you can do better if they're focused on analytics and most of your leaders will be based on my data talk to their how devops will help Drive New improvements in Innovations or the analytics program because you can see here again.

These are statistically significant numbers. If analytics is a top five if you then make devops number one. A magnificent 15 Point Improvement in your average ability to move your program forward.

And what's that a 14 point difference in your success rating? Can you imagine if you're taking a test and you get a 76 and then just by focusing on one subject you could end up getting a 90? So if you focus on devops as a number one priority other things sort of fall in line, and that makes sense.

Even again if you're defocused. You can see and here by the way, this is particularly interesting progress on your digital transformation program. When you have no focus on devops when you do have folks on devops and analytics are the same.

So DeVos is absolutely not hurting. But if you can focus it's doing much better. This is I I find this to be really interesting data.

It's a more balanced correlation right between the progress and the success for analytics versus a lot of those other Technologies your develops does. Definitely a pet. ER drop so you can just digital transformation benefits when it's a top prior.

Yes. So again Focus matters Advanced Analytics appears to be slightly harder as a digital technology to adopt even when devops does help that actually makes sense because it's novel it's continually evolving. It's a very complicated technical topic and so being good at analytics takes a lot of other work as well.

So again, this makes sense to me. Low code and no code. So that's another sort of technical area and in other Advanced Innovation area, which again seems to do a lot better if you are.

Focused on devops again. Look at these numbers if you're focused on devops so much better than it even if it's top five, right so from if you have a top five focus on low code or no code Technologies using devops for those matters. So this is particularly interesting to me because devops are not about code right devops is not a programming language.

It's not even an automation tool. It is an approach as a culture. It's about collaboration communication integration.

Remember Low code no code means you're not developing code anymore. But you can still collaborate communicate and integrate with multiple teams. So this delivers results super outcome.

Very exciting. Same with the success rating by the way. Look at this.

This is almost the highest possible success rating score. We got yeah a couple of people rated a hundred. We did actually do some scaling on zeros and hundreds because yeah that tells me people aren't paying attention to the survey but a 94 over 220 respondents most of them technology executives.

That tells me that they said this matters. This makes a difference low code no code as a top five priority with devops as number one priority. You're gonna do a better result at your digital transformation.

and one of only two technologies, by the way in this analysis that does worse when devops is not a priority. So that's sort of interesting in itself. The last technology I'll look at is AR VR and metaverse.

Now. Look I don't want to over rotate on this because this was the technology that was chosen last in priority by products. Every respondent line of Business Leaders Tech leaders Tech execs individual contributors by raw score by scaled ranking.

This was last on every list of 20, so I'm not going to overrotate but everything goes up. This is sort of interesting to me and I'll tell you why. adoption metaverse Technologies appears to benefit the most from devops approaches I think this is not surprising.

I believe this is about the ability of devops to help Drive Innovation. We've done other research on that sageables don't I've done it with the state of Dallas reports another When you do the devops when you focus on devops when you prioritize these collaborative techniques. You get better.

You can do more Innovation you fail faster, you drive Innovation with new techniques like agile. I'm currently collaborative development use devops related techniques, like continuous delivery to cycle through new iterations and try new things fail forward fails fast. Fail small right fail cheap.

So overall for irvr members, you know, it's dead last for most respondents, but it correlates really highly with successful. I think it's because devops delivers ability to do innovation. And irvr universe is still very much a cutting the edge technology.

So that's why I think Innovation rank so high when we start to look at devops so you can see here. Look these are some of the best results we get. If you have an innovation program as part of your digital transformation program and you use devops as a top priority, you do really well.

This is actually one of the most interesting parts of this data to me if you prioritize devops you do much worse at innovation. Again, can you trying to do waterfall development for a big innovation project is no longer how it works you've got to do this devops agile rapid iteration. So I think it's about devops doing Innovation more than it is about devops doing transformation.

There's this strong positive correlation, but I really success numbers too strong power correlation between the success numbers regardless of where your priorities are. Even if devops is number zero, you still do a little bit better, but when it's a top priority look at these numbers fantastic because it correlates with Innovation. It's notably inelastic when an innovation is a priority without Devops progress and success drops.

This makes sense because devops enables innovation. so What does all this mean in one slide look my analysis devops is definitely a top five technology for digital Transit. especially amongst individual contributors, who as we've seen other most cynical of all my respondents that tells me something because they're the people actually doing devops to it's not universally prioritized look line of Business Leaders who probably don't even understand what it means actually prioritize it really low.

It's bottom five for line of Business Leaders. but It doesn't appear by itself to drive digital program progress or success but it correlates pretty highly with program progress and success when other digital Technologies are in the mix. So using as a number one priority helps you drive progress progress and success big I think because it gives you the tools and the approaches that let you approach Innovative Technologies in new ways.

This Devil's affects. The quantifies appears to Wayne slightly when devops is only top five. So again, it's about Focus but the positive impact is still there.

It's still mostly significant depending on the technology. It appears to enable better results for all Technologies rather than just being an end in itself and that also makes sense. So what do we recommend look adopt devops approaches when you're doing digital transformation, it works.

It's important. It has measurable outcomes prioritize those digital Technologies. Especially those novel and Innovative Technologies and use devops techniques and approaches to enable that work don't over rotate devops is an enabler in this case, right?

It's not a silver bullet Focus matters. Keep Focus those top five matter. Take it all with a lot of grains of salt right take it with a big Salt Lick if you will, this is survey data.

So those are all flawed margins between statistical significance is Slim and we're never forget correlation is not causation. And finally, I wouldn't be here if I didn't ask you all for a Shameless plug. If you do need to know more you can always ask us about how you can progress and be successful with your digital transformation program.

So with that I want to say thank you. I will be around for the Q&A session. com.

Come and email us come follow us on Twitter for now though. I will just say thank you very much for listening and enjoy the rest of this amazing.