DevOps is the lifeblood of the technology industry. It paves the way for an limitless range of SaaS solutions and digital experiences that support commerce, media, HR, manufacturing and every thing in between.
DevOps itself already has a market valuation that is expected to be a hit $18 billion by 2026. This number may increase further as the technology industry prepares to spend roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars in 2025 to meet the unmet demand for artificial intelligence.
Software development will play a leading role here, but driving growth through the adoption of great digital products and services requires a fresh approach.
Velocity, the latest defining metric
There is a growing problem in DevOps that is often neglected. Speed is the rate at which a company can speed up its release cycle to bring latest features or products to market without sacrificing quality.
Top performers, e.g Netflix AND Amazon they have mastered the incredible ability to expand full release cycles in a matter of days. More specifically, Amazon deploys code every 11.7 seconds using microservices and CI/CD, while Netflix enables every day updates via full-cycle developers.
This is unlike traditional enterprises where it takes roughly three to six months to complete the release cycle due to rigid hierarchies, manual quality control, and limited CI/CD automation. These existing structures mean that organizations often fail to distinguish high-performing teams from lagging ones, despite tracking engineering metrics. True efficiency requires each speed and quality.
If velocity metrics are not improved, corporations risk falling behind quickly, making it a business-critical issue.
Work faster, work smarter
Faced with increasing pressure to deliver products at a faster pace, many organizations assume that the solution could also be to put more hands to work. In fact, throwing the problem at more developers finally ends up burning up the company’s resources with no noticeable improvement in velocity.
This is because this approach does not address fundamental issues reminiscent of pipeline bottlenecks or the complexity of contemporary software architectures.
Similarly, falling into the trap of low-quality code in order to get to a deadline faster is like using a band-aid to stop a leak. This may help the company deliver a latest feature, but it won’t solve the underlying problems. More importantly, pushing code with quality issues may cause serious reputational damage.
To get to the bottom of the problem once and for all, leaders need to understand what questions to ask to uncover sources of waste and establish KPIs that may actually improve the speed and quality of development efforts.
Increase productivity with data
Asking the right questions is the first step to improving speed, but leaders may even need access to detailed data to make significant improvements on an ongoing basis.
When organizations leverage tools and technologies to measure the entire pipeline and leverage the productivity management software that teams use, problems begin to surface and grow to be transparent.
The data will provide the specific information needed to effectively improve the speed of release cycles. The data can accurately determine how effectively teams are performing at bug testing or determine the average time it takes to hand off work between teams.
With these insights at hand, you may pull the right levers. For example, training or automation tools could be used in areas where teams are struggling to complete QA checks on time. In other cases, there are avoidable sources of waste.
This approach will deliver an immediate return on investment, helping organizations speed up release cycles and bring great latest products and features to users.