GitLab announced the general availability of GitLab Duo with Amazon Q.
DevOps Institute recently released its Upskilling 2021: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report(link is external). In its third year, the data in the report is drawn from a global community survey of approximately 2,100 respondents. The Upskilling report focuses on the human elements of digital transformation by defining which skills are considered "must-have," "nice to have," and "not as important."
As you can imagine, the 2021 findings reflect the challenges of the past year. The DevOps journey is still considered difficult across the people, process and automation landscapes. There was a shift in the ranking of key skills domains putting automation at the top of essential skills followed closely by human and technical skills. As stated in the report, "This is not a surprise as COVID-19 creates a strong incentive to minimize the risk inherent to manual tasks and processes by automating them."
The demand for DevOps talent has grown, with recruiting now or in the future a top priority. It was heartening to see that 49 percent of respondents first look internally for hiring with 25 percent preferring to hire and train internal staff. Upskilling is a great opportunity for IT professionals to advance their careers inside their organization now and in the future. Even better, 70 percent of respondents said that their top DevOps way of working is building a learning culture with the safety culture second. However, there was little growth in the acceleration of organizational upskilling programs. Continuous learning is considered fundamental but not necessarily the basis of a formal program.
DevOps teams either stayed the same or expanded, but teams are becoming more multi-skilled and self-regulating. The question is "which skills?"
The Upskilling report segments skills into five key domains:
Automation Skills
This is the most important skill domain in 2021. The report examines specific automation tool categories and also found that more than half of respondents believe specific automation tool knowledge is a must have.
Human Skills
A focus on human skills helps improve DevOps culture. This report reveals that the top human skills include collaboration and cooperation, problem-solving, sharing and knowledge transfer.
Technical Skills
Leverage technical skills to unlock new potentials for innovations. The report identifies seven top technology trends and priorities. It also highlights the likely growth of investments in cybersecurity, communication and collaboration tools, and customer experience transformation.
Functional Skills
Functional skills and knowledge, when most effectively leveraged, will generate and empower a multi-disciplined team. A multi-disciplinary way of working appropriately utilizes knowledge, skills and best practices from multiple disciplines and functional boundaries.
Process and Frameworks Skills
2021 is the time to rewire for value alignment and continuous process improvements. The process and frameworks skills domain is the fifth most important domain according to 55 percent of respondents.
Whether you are a developer, security practitioner, or operations professional, the depth and breadth of the skills needed for today and in the future can be daunting. While automation and technical skills gained in priority, the importance of human skills was once again emphasized in the 2021 report. The top 15 DevOps skills crossed all five skill domains and is a strong recipe for the hybrid DevOps human of the new decade.
Upskilling is a human endeavor and a key contributor to personal and career growth. This past year was like no other. As we progress through the "next normal" of this decade, one thing is certain — digital transformation relies on human skills transformation.
This article is just a taste of the data contained in the 2021 Upskilling Report from DevOps Institute. I encourage you to download and process the full report here(link is external).
Industry News
Perforce Software and Liquibase announced a strategic partnership to enhance secure and compliant database change management for DevOps teams.
Spacelift announced the launch of Saturnhead AI — an enterprise-grade AI assistant that slashes DevOps troubleshooting time by transforming complex infrastructure logs into clear, actionable explanations.
CodeSecure and FOSSA announced a strategic partnership and native product integration that enables organizations to eliminate security blindspots associated with both third party and open source code.
Bauplan, a Python-first serverless data platform that transforms complex infrastructure processes into a few lines of code over data lakes, announced its launch with $7.5 million in seed funding.
Perforce Software announced the launch of the Kafka Service Bundle, a new offering that provides enterprises with managed open source Apache Kafka at a fraction of the cost of traditional managed providers.
LambdaTest announced the launch of the HyperExecute MCP Server, an enhancement to its AI-native test orchestration platform, HyperExecute.
Cloudflare announced Workers VPC and Workers VPC Private Link, new solutions that enable developers to build secure, global cross-cloud applications on Cloudflare Workers.
Nutrient announced a significant expansion of its cloud-based services, as well as a series of updates to its SDK products, aimed at enhancing the developer experience by allowing developers to build, scale, and innovate with less friction.
Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd.(link is external) announced that its Infinity Platform has been named the top-ranked AI-powered cyber security platform in the 2025 Miercom Assessment.
Orca Security announced the Orca Bitbucket App, a cloud-native seamless integration for scanning Bitbucket Repositories.
The Live API for Gemini models is now in Preview, enabling developers to start building and testing more robust, scalable applications with significantly higher rate limits.
Backslash Security(link is external) announced significant adoption of the Backslash App Graph, the industry’s first dynamic digital twin for application code.
SmartBear launched API Hub for Test, a new capability within the company’s API Hub, powered by Swagger.
Akamai Technologies introduced App & API Protector Hybrid.