What’s the future of DevOps? You tell us. Take the 2023 Accelerate State of DevOps survey

For the past eight years, Google Cloud's DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) team has published the Accelerate State of DevOps Report. With input from over 33,000 professionals worldwide, the annual report provides an independent view into the practices and capabilities that organizations, irrespective of their size, industry, and region, can employ to drive better performance of their DevOps practices, and is the largest and longest running research of its kind. 

Today, the DORA team is inviting you to participate in the 2023 Accelerate State of DevOps survey, which we’ll use to produce our next report. Like with previous reports, our goal is to perform detailed analysis to help teams benchmark their performance against the industry and provide strategies that they can use to improve their performance. And like always, we’re depending on you to take the survey, because the more respondents and vantage points are incorporated into the data, the more valid, robust, precise and useful the findings will be.

But first, let’s quickly recap what we learned last year and some of the themes that we’re exploring this year. 

2022 findings 

The 2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report took a deep dive into security. One notable finding was that the biggest predictor of an organization's software security practices is cultural, not technical. More specifically, high-trust, low-blame cultures — as defined by Westrum — focused on performance were significantly more likely to adopt emerging security practices.  

But perhaps the most surprising finding was that organizations' overall DevOps capabilities dropped off substantially. Every year, we evaluate teams against four key software delivery metrics: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, time-to-restore, and change fail rate. The results tend to cluster into four groups: Low, Medium, High and Elite performers. But in the 2022 report, there was no “Elite” cluster in the data. Why? We plan to conduct further research that will help us better understand this shift, but for now, our hypothesis is that the pandemic may have hampered teams' ability to share knowledge, collaborate, and innovate, contributing to a decrease in the number of High performers, and an increase in the number of Low performers.

2022 was also the first time that we produced the report in multiple languages, responding to feedback from the DORA community. The 2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report is available for download in 11 different languages. Simply select your preferred language from the drop-down on the top right corner of the page, complete the form, and check your email for a localized version of the report.

Looking ahead

We are also excited to explore other questions in this year’s report:

• Building on existing findings. DORA is committed to continuous improvement. We don't just publish our findings and move on, but rather, continually test our hypotheses and reexamine our data. We're excited to revisit some of the surprises from last year's report and continue to expand our understanding of the role of operational performance.

• AI. This is the hot topic on nearly everyone’s mind nowadays, and given how pervasive this subject has become in our community, we want to understand how teams are leveraging AI and what impacts this has on key outcomes.

• Expanding our outcomes. We are expanding the set of outcomes we are interested in from just software delivery performance and organizational performance, to outcomes that capture the wellbeing of individuals and the performance of a team.

• Exploring interdependencies. Process, culture, individuals, structure, and tools all interact in complex ways to produce various outcomes. We are structuring our analyses to capture these meaningful nuances.

Because we follow the data in a hypothesis-driven manner (i.e., we are not just reporting on ad hoc analyses), we’re always in a position for surprises or unanticipated, yet promising themes to emerge. 

The 2023 Accelerate State of DevOps survey

Achieving high DevOps performance is a team endeavor and diverse, inclusive teams drive the best performance. The research program benefits from the participation of a variety of people. Please help us encourage more voices by taking this survey yourself, and sharing it with your network — especially with your colleagues who are underrepresented in our industry. 

Ultimately though, this survey is for everyone, no matter where you are on your DevOps journey, the size of your organization, your organization's industry, or how you identify. There are no right or wrong answers; in fact, we often hear feedback that questions in the survey prompt ideas for improvement. The survey takes just about 15 minutes to complete and will remain open until midnight PDT on June 30, 2023.

Let us know what you think about the survey and stay up to date with all things DORA by joining the DORA community, which provides opportunities to learn, discuss, and collaborate on software delivery and operational performance with fellow colleagues. We look forward to hearing from you and your teams!