Key Findings from the 2019 DevTestOps Landscape Report

Key Findings from the 2019 DevTestOps Landscape Report Lisa Crispin May 29, 2019

June 13, 2026 · 5 min read · Testing Guide

Key Findings from the 2019 DevTestOps Landscape Report

Lisa Crispin
May 29, 2019

Key findings from the 2019 DevTestOps Landscape & nbsp; Report

The first DevTestOps Landscape Survey is establish on responses from a relatively small routine within the software community. Respondents be probable to be citizenry who are active in the software essay community, attending conferences, reading blog posts, explore the latest test automation tools. Most indicated that they were on teams transitioning away from traditional development where examination is make by a separate team with little or no automation and long release cycles. For me, that indicates that respondents represent the direction that test and other software practices are going, to a modern, collaborative approach focus on frequent speech of value to customers.

The full results of the report are viewablehere,but if you just require my key takeaways, keep reading!


“ Modern ” versus “ Traditional ” practices

The majority of respondents work on teams with continuous integration (CI), with a significant number moving towards continuous delivery (CD) or continuous deployment (CD). This is in line with what I see in the software community. I was a bit surprised that most respondents are on squad that unloosen between multiple time a day and monthly, which would fit with agile development. & nbsp;

DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSES BY SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT CULTURE

 

Customer felicity and product character

Teams with happy customers lean to be faster at repairing critical product bugs. No surprisal thither. What look weird to me is that respondents who suppose they were gratify with the tooling be more likely to have unhappy customers. That ’ s an odd relationship, and we can only speculate about what it imply. It may be related to most responder saying they are often on the watch for new tools, practices, and strategies to improve product character. If you ne'er try to ameliorate your toolset, maybe it ’ s because you ’ re expend all your time fighting fires in the form of production problems. Or maybe those teams are complacent about their tooling and other solutions, and don ’ t experimentation to see if better tools and proficiency would improve customer satisfaction?

LOWERING MEAN TIME TO REPAIR
POSITIVELY IMPACTS CUSTOMER HAPPINESSS

RESPONDENTS HAPPY WITH THEIR TOOLING
ARE MORE Probable TO HAVE UNHAPPY CUSTOMERS


Popular testing activities

For autonomous testing across multiple user personas, check out SUSATest — it explores your app like 10 different real users.

The most popular testing activity account by survey respondents was: (drumroll) exploratory quiz! Wow! A few years ago, many teams I happen weren ’ t still familiar with exploratory testing. In the early days of agile ontogenesis, squad concentrate on functional examination, and many did not see the value of having manual exploratory testing specialist on board. It ’ s gratifying to see that edge out exam automation.

In hindsight, behavior-driven development (BDD), acceptance test-driven development (ATDD) and spec by example (SBE) should have be grouped together on the survey because they ’ re all basically the same action: guiding ontogenesis with business-facing examination. Given the eminent percentage of citizenry execute BDD, and adding in substantial percent for ATDD and SBE, it ’ s clear that this is an established practice.

When we look at the consequence showing teams that do mechanization are less likely to encounter glitch in production after release, it ’ s fair to say that some of this is due to BDD/ATDD/SBE, which not only answer in automated regression exam, but help the team figure shared understanding of each feature they germinate and more potential to present what the customer wants. The customer happiness degree for teams that automatise versus those that don ’ t besides may contemplate the wide adoption of BDD/ATDD/SBE.

QA ACTIVITIES BY POPULARITY

 

Test automation and satisfaction with testing

Survey results showed that the more automated tests a team has, the less satisfied its testers are with their examination summons. It ’ s hard for me to draw determination from that. Some of it could be due to the tedious, time-consuming employment of analyzing failures of “ freaky ” regression tests and trying to fix them. But manual fixation testing is just as time-consuming and tedious. This is an region for future view to dig into. Certainly the sight shows that testers do the most work related to end-to-end tests. & nbsp;

TEAMS THAT AUTOMATE MOST OR ALL OF THEIR TESTS
ARE MORE DISSATISFIED WITH THEIR TESTING PROCESS


Stress and DevOps

Though so many people reported using up-to-date practices like CI, CD, test automation, and exploratory testing, most respondent are stressed out when it ’ s time to release. Continuous delivery is hypothesise to consist of, to quotehttps: //continuousdelivery.com, predictable, routine matter that can be performed on requirement. Even more surprisingly, respondents on teams practise DevOps were the most stressed. What the heck? The survey shows customers are happier with more frequent freeing, and that teams using modern exercise have felicitous client, so why are the team appendage shin at release clip?

Again, I can simply contemplate. A lot of software practitioners think they ’ re doing “ DevOps ” because their establishment has a “ DevOps Team ”, which is a bit of an anti-pattern when the idea is for all persona on the team to act together and not in silo. And frequent bringing aren ’ t an indicant of success with agile development or DevOps, if the squad isn ’ t working at a sustainable pace. I surmise a lot of respondents categorise their teams as using “ mod ” practices, when they ’ re really endure from respective disfunction. A self-organizing team deal its own workload that is given time to learn and continually improve can release small changes frequently with little danger and thus little stress. A squad being drive by management to release big changes every week or every day that has not master canonic practices to endorse that will cut corners, build up technical debt, and just feel itself dragged down farther into the abyss.

RESPONDENTS ON DEVOPS TEAMS
FEEL THE MOST STRESSED


Culture and performance

The survey showed activeness like coaching and consulting, business domain expertise, and facilitating skills towards the backside of the popularity scale. High-performing teams don ’ t happen by stroke. They ’ re the result of a nurturing learning culture where they are supported by experts who can help them learn not only the technical creature to use but also the communication and collaboration skills they postulate to follow together.

Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim delve into the acculturation of team based on the State of DevOps study. One conclusion: “ people who feel indorse by their employers, who have the tools and resources to do their work, and who feel their judgment is prize become out well work. ” People with eminent job satisfaction “ get to make decisions, employing their attainment, experience and judgment ” instead of managing labor.

I hope that future DevTestOps Landscape Surveys can facilitate us learn more about job satisfaction level of respondents, and get more detail on what contributes to high-stress releases. It ’ s open that we have a community of curious people who are acute to learn about new creature and practices. Perhaps we ’ ll see that extending to team and cultural praxis that contribute to job satisfaction and, after, happier customers.

Check out the full report here for still more findings: & nbsp;https: //www.mabl.com/devtestops-survey-results

Quality Engineering Resources

Automate This With SUSA

Upload your APK or URL. SUSA explores like 10 real users — finds bugs, accessibility violations, and security issues. No scripts needed.

Try SUSA Free

Test Your App Autonomously

Upload your APK or URL. SUSA explores like 10 real users — finds bugs, accessibility violations, and security issues. No scripts.

Try SUSA Free