State of DevOps: Everyone's slinging code out faster

Deployment is up in the world of DevOps. The "lowest" performing IT organizations are deploying software between once a week and once a month — up from every month or six months in 2016, according to the latest State of DevOps report. The data was clustered into three distinct performance categories based on how frequently a …

[tiggity]

Stability?

1/5 change failure rate. That's about 20% too high IMHO, and not what I would call high performing.

But, doing the job properly & getting it right first time is not on trend these days, lets have loads of micro changes that make us look really productive (but still bizarrely given the small size of the changes, still manage to get lots of failures)

Disclosure (most work in agile, code review, test driven development environment, just do not deploy willy nilly)

[Unep Eurobats]

Just when I thought I was starting to understand devops

'the highest [performing] deploy only 46 times more often than the lowest ... They also deploy code less frequently than the bottom rung'.

I'll save that for my next performance review. 'I may be making mistakes more often, but they're less frequent.'

[DrStrangeLug]

Management by the numbers

What Pointy Haired Moron thinks that deployments over time are a good metric of performance ? The unskilled kind that cannot manage a team without numbers to decide things for him.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Management by the numbers

Suicide bomber outfits may think this a good metric.

[Electron Shepherd]

They don't seem to practice what they preach...

From https://docs.puppet.com/puppet/4.10/release_notes.html

Puppet 4.10.1 - Released May 11, 2017.

Puppet 4.10.0 - Released April 5, 2017.

Puppet 4.9.4 - Released March 9th, 2017.

Puppet 4.9.3 - Released February 27, 2017.

The Puppet developers are producing one release a month. The article (presumably quoting from the Puppet report), says:

The "lowest" performing IT organizations are deploying software between once a week and once a month

I'll draw my own conclusions from that...

[Wupspups]

Quality beats quantity

I'd rather someone takes their time and gets it right first time. Rather than punting dodgy code out to users who then whinge like hell because the new super dooper application is a pile of dog droppings.

[barbara.hudson]

Re: Quality beats quantity

It's obvious that if you have do deploy changes that often you're

(1) crappy at predicting requirements

(2) or worse, doing it on the fly by the seat of your pants

(3) have a severe case of featuritis

(4) SQUIRREL!

In all cases, the correct solution is to fire both the incompetent boss, and the incompetent boss who hired them. Or better yet, quit, because the company isn't going to be good for your physical or mental health, and when it goes down the tubes, your financial health.

[John Smith 19]

The real question. How far away is what you have running from what you want running?

If it's pretty close, why do you need frequent roll outs?

OTOH if your current system is only SoA for the last century then you'll want to move things on sooner rather than later.

Let me suggest that if your software only runs on a 17YO OS hosted on a VM running on 10YO OS something is quite seriously wrong, especially if it's running on staff desktops, not buried deep in some server.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: The real question. How far away is what you have running from what you want running?

"OTOH if your current system is only SoA for the last century then you'll want to move things on sooner rather than later."

And if it's still doing what it needs to do and isn't broken you should go ahead and fix it?

[Anonymous Coward]

For Goodness' sake

Does El Reg have to regurgitate every puff piece from Puppet as if it were gospel?

Is there no fact checking, independent scrutiny, or investigative thought being put into the process that takes these DevOps advertorials from inbox to website?

The Reg is usually the site we can rely on to call out ridiculous fawning over a bunch of chancers who have managed to stick a snappy label on a bit of repackaged half-baked synergistic blue-sky thinking technowaffle, not the site that's shovelling it out as fast as it comes in.

Come on Vulture Central, you are so much better than this.

[barbara.hudson]

Re: For Goodness' sake

"The Reg is usually the site we can rely on to call out ridiculous fawning over a bunch of chancers who have managed to stick a snappy label on a bit of repackaged half-baked synergistic blue-sky thinking technowaffle, "

That's being outsourced to the comments section. :-)

[jake]

"by building quality in"

I find it most amusing that the DevOps clowns have convinced Manglement that "quality" can be installed into a product as easily as linking in a library at compile time ... But I'm not surprised. I've seen it before.

At the end of a production line at a company where I once worked was a burn-in station where a QA tech would wire up the new equipment and run a comprehensive set of tests. One of our upper-middle managers was "touring the manufacturing facility" one afternoon and asked the tech "is this where the Quality is installed?". The tech, knowing the manager was pretty much clueless, answered with a simple "yes" to avoid an explanation.

For years afterward, we all cringed when this manager gave tours of our production floor to visiting big-wigs ... He always concluded his tour with a stop at the burn-in area, and with a big flourish would proclaim "this is where the Quality is installed!" ... You could hear the capital Q in the word. A senior IBM field service engineer/rep once took me aside and asked if the guy was for real.

[Bibbit]

Infomercial ahoy!

"But wait. It does suggest that the gap between ..."

Forget the rest of the text. The first two words of that sentence confirm that someone is selling something too good to be true that turns out to be bollocks. Again. And again.

"Sign up for Puppet now and you get get this roll-on cat hair remover for just 5.99! That's right just 5.99 (plus postage & packing)."