2014 State Of DevOps Report

The 2014 State of DevOps Report by Puppet Labs, IT Revolution Press and ThoughtWorks is an analysis of more than 9,200 survey responses from technical professionals around the world, making this the largest and most comprehensive DevOps study to date.

As the first scientific study of the relationship between organizational performance, IT performance and DevOps practices, the report reveals:
• Strong IT performance is a competitive advantage. Firms with high-performing IT organizations were twice as likely to exceed their profitability, market share and productivity goals.
• DevOps practices improve IT performance. IT performance strongly correlates with well-known DevOps practices such as use of version control and continuous delivery. The longer an organization has implemented — and continues to improve upon — DevOps practices, the better it performs. And better IT performance correlates to higher performance for the entire organization.
• Organizational culture matters. Organizational culture is one of the strongest predictors of both IT performance and overall performance of the organization. High-trust organizations encourage good information flow, cross-functional collaboration, shared responsibilities, learning from failures and new ideas; they are also the most likely to perform at a high level. These cultural practices and norms found in high-trust organizations are also at the heart of DevOps, which helps explain why DevOps practices correlate so strongly with high organizational performance.
• Job satisfaction is the No. 1 predictor of organizational performance. We all know how job satisfaction feels: It’s about doing work that’s challenging and meaningful, and being empowered to exercise our skills and judgment. We also know that where there’s job satisfaction, employees bring the best of themselves to work: their engagement, their creativity and their strongest thinking. That makes for more innovation in any area of the business, including IT.