DEVOPSdigest

This year and every year come down to how we can raise the bar with and for developers. In software development, there are many areas that are working well and some that have room for improvement. Let's dive right into predictions for DevOps in 2022 (and beyond).

1. Improving developer productivity with greater automation

The whole purpose of DevOps is to improve the efficiency of the developer team and to ensure the whole supply chain is working smoothly, from developers to testers to release management. It can go far beyond that. We have tools that can automatically write emails and automatically write content — including an entire article by itself (not this one, though).

We can assume that a DevOps tool should be able to identify code errors by itself, even if it's not able to write new code. Some of this is happening today. What would previously take developers days to fix, they can now fix in a single click of a button.

2. Completely integrating DevOps into the ecosystem

One purpose of DevOps is to reduce risk of deployments and to ensure a quality release, but to do that, a DevOps tool is not sufficient by itself. It needs to integrate with many other tools, such as backup and recovery solutions, software composition analysis and security tools.

For example, everyone wants to improve delivery velocity with a DevOps tool, but the more features and code that get deployed using DevOps, the more the security team has to make sure that the developers are not releasing code that will cause security issues. Imagine if DevOps tools could integrate with a security system that is automatically scanning for those violations. Or if every time a deployment is done, the backup solution could automatically back up the data.

An integrated ecosystem could also automatically identify software that is being shipped as well as identify the current install base of the code in the production org, and create a reporting structure from that information.

3. Deriving value beyond DORA metrics, especially security improvements

In DevOps, DORA includes four key metrics — deployment frequency (DF), lead time for changes (LT), mean time to recovery (MTTR), and change failure rate (CFR). While these are certainly important, customers also need to measure what is really working for them in terms of efficiency. This includes looking at the bottlenecks in the supply chain process and where they may not be using the right features of DevOps tooling. Organizations should consider shifting security left during their DevOps process and bring in security teams earlier in the planning phase. This will help organizations monitor for security holes and potential breach sites earlier. If done correctly, organizations can save a lot of time and money.

Based on 2021 work-from-home trends and major hacks with Microsoft and SolarWinds, this year everyone is shoring up on security. This is paramount in DevOps, and the solutions will need to become deeper and more ingrained inside all platforms.

4. Developing AI based predictions for DevOps

Today, customers have sprint cycles, and they negotiate between the scrum master and developers on the features developers can deliver. There is an untapped well that isn't being leveraged here. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help predict how much software can be delivered in a given amount of time. AI can take past user stories, which are delivered to the business, and combine them with the amount of work that has been done by developers, and analyze the patterns. AI based predictions can help with capacity management as well as setting the right expectations.

5. Simplifying to Consumer-grade DevOps (or should we say AdminOps)

DevOps should be more going towards consumer-grade DevOps. The Salesforce mantra is to turn every business user into an application developer. We can start with the power users, who we can fully enable to do all change management functions by themselves. People who don't have a computer science degree should be able to do most of the changes. This is where consumer grade DevOps comes in.

For example, in Salesforce, there are admins who are business analysts, and they make point and click changes. Most of the industry's tooling is built on complex version control systems like Git version control. Companies need platforms where users don't have to understand all the complexity. It should be even easier next year than it is today for any users to get into the code of their applications. This is huge, and it's where the low code movement is heading.

6. Holding on Metaverse, Focusing on Deeper Collaboration and Visibility

We have heard a lot of buzz about Metaverse, thanks to Facebook, but I don't think DevOps is ready for that right now. Instead, what we will see is a deeper collaboration between team members using tooling like DevOps. DevOps can bring together large teams, help them collaborate remotely and share visibility so that everyone knows what everyone else is doing. It's one of the key strengths of DevOps, and we can leverage it much more in 2022.

7. Managing a Total Cost of Ownership

If you look at Salesforce or similar technologies, there are many costs to manage, from platforms to add-ons and plugins. If companies add the total cost of ownership, it can be very high. Using DevOps, companies can think about how to lower the total cost of ownership and deliver more value to the business. I think this will become hugely important for customers as they are pressured to think about how to deliver more value at a lower price point to their business.

With any prediction, there is always a built-in optimism for change. We don't know what the rest of 2022 may bring, but my hope is that DevOps functionality over the next year will be more integrated, simplified, more secure and more automated.