Global survey of DevOps teams, developers, and web product managers shows minimal time spent on business and product initiatives; troubleshooting listed as top task among cloud professionals

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 23, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI), a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, today announced the findings of its latest survey of tech professionals in DevOps, web product manager (WPM), and developer roles, SolarWinds Cloud Confessions: The Trouble with Troubleshooting. The findings demonstrate a lack of focus on priority business and career growth activities due to daily time spent troubleshooting application issues. This contradicts the core principles of DevOps and places increased pressure on tech professionals to enhance innovation and performance within their organizations.

DevOps, WPMs, and developers spend most of their days troubleshooting; nearly half of the respondents noted it was in the top three tasks they manage on a daily basis. Because of the time spent on troubleshooting tasks, they are unable to devote time to important priorities, such as building product roadmaps, deploying new applications, and strategizing future innovations with business leaders. None of these three tasks appears in their top three daily activities, according to the survey.

“Today’s technology professionals play an unquestioned role in driving innovation for their businesses. Application development and the end user’s experience are inextricable from business growth,” said Joe Kim, executive vice president and global chief technology officer, SolarWinds. “Yet this survey of DevOps, WPMs and developers shows this push towards innovation is minimized in favor of reactive troubleshooting tasks, which are growing due to the need for comprehensive monitoring and visibility into these applications. Tech professionals need to be armed with comprehensive tools that enhance visibility into cloud applications and enable them to spend less time monitoring and troubleshooting, and more time creating opportunities to move their businesses and careers forward. Otherwise, businesses run the risk of a demotivated DevOps team.”

Tech professionals surveyed noted troubleshooting is the most disliked component of their roles, and if these troubleshooting tasks continue to grow without opportunity for job advancement, they state they would leave their current jobs.

Key Findings

SolarWinds Cloud Confessions: The Trouble with Troubleshooting: This survey explores and uncovers how technology professionals spend their work days, and how they might apply their knowledge, insight and skillset to move their organizations forward if they had the time to do so. It also showcases which elements of the job these tech professionals love to do but have to sacrifice on a daily basis for troubleshooting. Key findings show:

1. DevOps, WPMs, and developers spend most of their days troubleshooting.
   1. Troubleshooting app issues is the number one activity tech pros spend their time on, with 48 percent of respondents choosing this as a top three task.
   2. 53 percent of DevOps agree troubleshooting app issues is the top task completed on a given day.
   3. WPMs rank troubleshooting app issues third in the top three at 39 percent, behind planning/strategizing future technology innovations (54 percent) and managing end-user experience (46 percent).
   4. Developers rank troubleshooting app issues second in the top three at 52 percent, behind writing/cleaning up code (58 percent) and before testing (36 percent).
   5. On average, DevOps and WPMs spend less than 25 percent (10-24 percent) of their time proactively optimizing performance of their environments.

2. Due to the time spent troubleshooting, tech pros devote less time to important priorities like building product roadmaps.
   1. Without troubleshooting, tech pros overall would prioritize building product roadmaps as a top three daily activity not listed in their top three current daily tasks.
   2. More specifically, DevOps would also be able to prioritize managing and/or deploying apps; and developers would be able to plan/strategize future tech innovations–tasks they’re unable to prioritize on any given day due to troubleshooting.

3. Most importantly, the time spent troubleshooting means DevOps, developers, and WPMs aren’t able to focus on the parts of the job they love. 
   1. When looking at the top three tasks tech pros complete on any given day compared to the elements of the job they love:

      i. DevOps love managing/deploying apps, but are not able to prioritize it in their top three daily tasks
      ii. WPMs love building product roadmaps, but are not able to prioritize it in their top three daily tasks
      iii. Developers love managing/deploying apps, managing end-user experience and planning/strategizing future tech innovation, but are not able to prioritize in their top three daily tasks

3. 2. When asked about the parts of their job they disliked most, tech pros placed troubleshooting app issues within their top three, despite it being a top daily task.

4. The amount of time spent troubleshooting could lead to tech pros losing motivation or even leaving their current roles.
   1. Overall, the ability to solve real problems and make an impact on the business or customers are the top two reasons DevOps, WPMs, and developers chose to pursue their roles.
   2. Tech pros state they would leave their current jobs if there is no room for advancement or if the work becomes too repetitive or boring, which is concerning given the amount of troubleshooting and lack of proactivity in current roles.

The findings of this report are based on a survey fielded in September 2018, which yielded responses from 336 DevOps, developer, and web product manager (WPM) professionals (practitioner, manager, and director roles) in the U.S. and Canada from public- and private-sector small, mid-size and enterprise companies. Respondents include 115 DevOps, 107 developers, and 114 WPMs. For a full report on the survey findings, please visit https://pages.solarwinds.com/CloudConfessions.html.

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About SolarWinds
SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) is a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT infrastructure management software. Our products give organizations worldwide, regardless of type, size, or IT infrastructure complexity, the power to monitor and manage the performance of their IT environments, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid models. We continuously engage with all types of technology professionals—IT operations professionals, DevOps professionals, and managed service providers (MSPs)—to understand the challenges they face maintaining high-performing and highly available IT infrastructures. The insights we gain from engaging with them, in places like our THWACK online community, allow us to build products that solve well-understood IT management challenges in ways that technology professionals want them solved. This focus on the user and commitment to excellence in end-to-end hybrid IT performance management has established SolarWinds as a worldwide leader in network management software and MSP solutions.

Targeted for DevOps professionals and developers, SolarWinds’ cloud management products provide cloud-based monitoring of the full IT stack whether deployed in the cloud or on-premises. Our cloud management products enable visibility into log data, cloud infrastructure metrics, applications, tracing, and web performance management. Learn more today at https://www.solarwinds.com/devops.

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