The Ongoing Challenges of DevSecOps Transformation and Improving Developer Experience
Oct 11, 2024
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Adam Kentosh, Field CTO at Digital AI, shares his vast experience in DevOps transformations and large-scale data systems. He discusses the ongoing challenges of DevSecOps, emphasizing the historical context and obstacles to full adoption. The conversation touches on balancing autonomy with standardization, the cognitive load on developers, and the importance of a product-centric approach. Kentosh also explores shifting the focus from speed to customer outcomes, highlighting the role of data unification and AI in improving development efficiency.
Many organizations struggle with scaling DevOps practices across complex systems despite individual team successes and evolving technologies.
The shift left movement increases developers' cognitive load, prompting a focus on improving the developer experience to enhance productivity.
Deep dives
The Ongoing Challenge of DevOps Transformation
Many organizations continue to struggle with their DevOps transformations, with roughly 80% of companies still classified as mid-transformation according to recent reports. Despite discussions about DevOps beginning over a decade ago, enterprises have faced numerous hurdles in fully implementing these changes at an organizational level. While individual teams have experienced success, scaling DevOps practices across larger, more complex organizations remains elusive. The rapid evolution of technology and the rise of new tools have both empowered teams but have also complicated standardization efforts, making it difficult to establish uniform practices that enhance collaboration and efficiency.
The Effects of Shift Left on Developer Experience
The shift left movement, which encourages earlier integration of testing and security in the development process, has led to increased cognitive load on developers. Reports indicate that a significant portion of developers’ time is now consumed by tasks beyond writing code, including conducting tests and managing security measures. As a result, there is a growing focus on improving the developer experience, with some companies even appointing dedicated roles to oversee it. This emphasis on a better developer experience aims to alleviate the pressure faced by software teams while still maintaining productivity and ensuring high-quality outputs.
Data Unification as a Key to Enhanced Efficiency
The lack of a cohesive approach to data management in software development hinders organizations from gaining clear insights into team performance and project risks. To address this, a unified data lake is proposed to centralize information generated from various development processes, enabling better tracking of incidents and making it easier to analyze the impact of releases. This streamlined data approach could lead to more informed decision-making and foster the adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning within organizations. Ultimately, the goal is to create a comprehensive framework that links data points, resulting in a more efficient and responsive software development lifecycle.
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences.
In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Adam Kentosh about the ongoing challenges organisations face in their DevOps DevSecOps and digital transformation journeys.
Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3zSd3OW
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