DEVOPSdigest

Test teams feel the need to adopt DevOps, but that migration is not always seamless, according to a new survey by LogiGear. That may be because 25 percent of respondents said their Ops/IT team is always helpful to the test team and its needs; 37 percent said Ops teams regularly help bring about good test environments; 27 percent said Ops can be "slow or difficult."

The goal of this second survey in a series of four is to understand testing professionals' strategies, attitudes and pain points with regard to DevOps or what can be called Continuous Delivery. The term DevOps brings with it something that can be uncomfortable … change. Culture change, increased collaboration, a new set of tools. Continuous Delivery is a less intimidating term and it is what software teams really need. And so DevOps is referred to in this blog post about this survey’s results as DevOps/Continuous Delivery as it conveys more fully the approach test teams are in search of today.

Most respondents of this second survey know what is ahead in DevOps/Continuous Delivery, even if they have not adopted the practices yet. For instance, 60 percent of respondents that are utilizing DevOps/Continuous Delivery noted "a lot" of pressure to automate. Of those that are not actively employing DevOps/Continuous Delivery, 46 percent also said that there is "a lot more" pressure to automate.

Other notable findings of the survey include, nearly half of the respondents practicing DevOps/Continuous Delivery agreed that they have "a lot" of environment or test data problems. The group not doing DevOps/Continuous Delivery revealed fewer problems in this area. The group practicing DevOps/Continuous Delivery has more and this was an unexpected survey result. Only 1/3 of respondents that aren’t doing DevOps say their Agile and Scrum practices are in good shape – 67 percent of respondents said sometimes or no.

DevOps/Continuous Delivery is also bringing about positive change according to the survey. Since adopting DevOps/Continuous Delivery, over 60 percent of respondents are executing more tests and 32 percent of developers are conducting "a lot more tests."

And the effort required to get customer or production issues fixed and services restored is about the same for DevOps/Continuous Delivery and non-DevOps/Continuous Delivery teams. There are twice as many respondents saying it is "simple, no extra effort" for DevOps/Continuous Delivery teams.

These findings suggest that as more teams practice DevOps/Continuous Delivery, communication between teams, information sharing, collaboration and training will continue to improve. And automation appears to be a success path for the sharing of data and other information as teams with DevOps/Continuous Deliver and without both shared positive opinions.