A global study from CA Technologies reveals that 83 percent of UK organisations agree that agile methodologies and DevOps practices are critical to successful digital transformation. The study, Accelerating Velocity and Customer Value with Agile and DevOps, polled 1,770 senior business and IT executives, including 695 in EMEA, about their attitudes toward agile and DevOps practices and the impact they see it having on their business. It shows that 67 percent of UK organisations using an agile methodology experience an improvement in customer experience, while firms using DevOps practices report a 38 percent increase in business growth from new revenue sources.
“In the application economy brands are defined by the unique, and constantly evolving, digital experiences offered to customers. To succeed, UK organisations need to be ‘built to change’—putting software at the centre of everything they do, and changing the way they plan, develop and release applications and products,” says Ritu Mahandru, VP Solution Sales, CA Technologies. “Agile methodologies add the voice of the customer to the development cycle early and often, and enable ongoing product iterations based on continuous feedback. DevOps practices promote collaboration between development and operations, to improve the speed and quality of application and product delivery. As this study shows, DevOps and agile are a powerful combination for better business outcomes.”
Agile and DevOps bring benefits to the entire organisation
Respondents use a range of key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the business impact of both agile and DevOps across their organisation, ranging from efficiency and employee productivity, to speed to market and business growth. For UK organisations:
- Agile reduces the time needed to act on new opportunities by 31 percent (from 13.69 weeks to 9.49 weeks);
- Agile cuts the time to develop and launch new apps by 20 percent (from 16.83 to 13.40 weeks);
- DevOps lowers the time to develop and launch new apps by 26 percent (from 10.69 to 7.91 weeks);
- Agile increases employee productivity by 42 percent; DevOps by 51 percent (second only to the Netherlands);
- Agile increases operational efficiency by 35 percent; DevOps also by 35 percent.
UK firms lag behind EMEA in their agile/DevOps maturity
The study also includes a maturity model to assess the level of agile and DevOps adoption, with respondents categorised as non-users, basic users, or advanced users of agile and DevOps. UK organisations are less advanced/mature in their approach to agile methodologies, compared with their EMEA counterparts: 29 percent are at an advanced stage, versus 36 percent in Italy, and 33 percent in Germany, Spain, and France. In terms of DevOps, 32 percent are at an advanced/mature phase, compared with 40 percent in Germany, 39 percent in France, and 33 percent in Sweden.
The UK also lags EMEA in terms of scaling agile beyond development: Only 29 percent have achieved this, compared with 36 percent in Italy, and 33 percent in France and Germany.
The study reveals significant benefits to mature adoption for organisations across EMEA (not specifically the UK):
- Advanced agile users experience a 64 percent improvement in the time to act on new opportunities (from 19.7 to 7.1 weeks), compared to 26 percent for basic users;
- Advanced DevOps users see a 38 percent improvement in speed to market (from 12.4 to 7.7 weeks), compared to 24 percent for basic users;
- 83 percent of both advanced agile and advanced DevOps users see an improvement in customer experience.
Across EMEA, DevOps enhances and accelerates benefits of agile
The research also highlights that, for organisations across EMEA (not specifically the UK), adding DevOps practices to an agile working environment improves new business growth by 38 percent more than using agile alone and also increases operational efficiency by an additional 23 percent. Some 73 percent of those using agile and DevOps report an improvement in customer experience, versus 60 percent for agile-only users.
“Besides making a strong business case for using agile and DevOps, the research highlights the steps UK organisations need to take to leverage both practices and achieve a successful digital transformation programme. This includes measuring the success of agile and DevOps using factors such as customer satisfaction, customer experience, and business growth. It also highlights the need to eliminate DevOps silos and address the skills gap as early as possible,” says Mahandru.
