2017 saw Agile remain a preeminent methodology for software development, while DevOps continued to become an industry standard for progressive IT organizations. The New Year is expected to bring more of the same, especially as DevOps matures and companies become more adept at its techniques. What follows is a look at some of the major trends for both frameworks in the upcoming year.
If you are interested in checking out our 2018 trends for software development, simply click on the following link.
At their core, both Agile and DevOps help organizations better manage the application lifecycle of their software. In 2018, expect the tools used for lifecycle management to leverage approaches from both frameworks. This isn’t surprising, since we previously discussed how companies already experienced with Agile find it easier to implement DevOps.
Considering pushback against inflexible DevOps tool chains was one of our software development trends for this year, improving the toolset by adding the flexibility typical of Agile makes perfect sense. Keep an eye on enhancements in ALM tools throughout 2018.
DevOps becoming an industry standard obviously means more companies are spending resources on its adoption. Since executives tend to pay close attention to what their competition is doing, they are likely to be more willing to approve the budget for DevOps projects in 2018.
A recent Gartner study notes that IT-related initiatives are now the second highest priority for executives for this year. This is the highest ranking for technology projects since Gartner began tracking that metric. In short, expect DevOps projects to be the rage all across the technology world over the next 12 months.
With Agile becoming more entrenched as a software development methodology, traditional project metrics aren’t as useful for tracking business value. Expect better reporting tools to become more popular for companies using Agile in 2018. Those who also follow DevOps can take advantage of metrics able to track the entire lifecycle from development to deployment to maintenance.
Companies able to combine Agile and DevOps with their strategic planning initiatives stay ahead of the game compared to those firms taking an individual silo-based approach.
Even as DevOps becomes ingrained throughout the business world, good companies still struggle with its adoption. Organizations typically add experienced practitioners of the framework on a temporary basis to help to get up to speed. In 2018, improved DevOps training courses are expected to become more widely available.
It is also reasonable to predict DevOps certifications to become popular as companies look to hire IT pros with the right skills as part of their new initiatives. Considering the growing importance of Information Security throughout the tech world, specialized DevSecOps certifications are another easy bet to make for 2018.
So, keep an eye on these trends throughout the year to see if our predictions came true once 2019 is upon us. Hopefully, your projects over the next 12 months are successful!
Keep coming back to the Betica Blog for additional dispatches and analysis from the constantly changing software development world. Thanks for reading!
Posted on January 12, 2018