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Survey Highlights Divide Between Development and Operations

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

IT is struggling to keep up with the resulting pace of service demand, according to a new survey by Serena of 200 IT professionals that focused on the current state of IT Service Management (ITSM), with a particular focus on what ITIL calls Service Transition.

In addition, the survey shows the majority of those polled (92 percent) agreed business groups do not perceive IT as a true partner and in some cases report that IT actually impedes their success.

Development and Operations blame each other, the survey indicates. Three quarters cited operations as a roadblock to agile development, and 72 percent cite development as not supporting the goals of operations.

“There is massive interest in DevOps within enterprises today, as there should be. What our survey revealed, however, is the distance that IT organizations need to evolve to realize the promise of DevOps,” said Amita Abraham, Group Product Marketing Manager at Serena Software and the author of the survey report. “This data was telling in that we were able to learn about today’s key ITSM issues, in particular, the need to improve Service Transition, the ITIL set of processes that cover the juncture of Development and Operations.”

Other key findings include:

· Inconsistent and manual ITSM practices are too slow for online, agile business. 70 percent reported poor release management processes.

· Disconnected processes limit Development and Operations’ success. 72 percent revealed that operational change and release management, which are central to the Service Transition prescribed by ITILv3, were the most disconnected.

· Rudimentary communication practices lead to limited visibility into planned changes. 60 percent cited they had “little to no” visibility into planned changes. Survey data showed antiquated communication practices such as email, spreadsheets, and word of mouth are still relied upon for sharing critical and time-sensitive information about planned development of operational changes.

· Poor reporting leads to inaccurate status updates to the business. Only six percent reported having shared release calendars across development and operations.

In addition to the Dev and Ops divide, the survey also highlighted the gap between IT and Business:

· Only 9 percent responded that the business views IT as completely aligned with its goals and as a true partner.

· 56 percent indicated that their organizations were yet to define and automate request management. The lack of a single place for business users to submit requests and automatically get status updates results in further discontent with IT.

The Serena survey was conducted at itSMF’s FUSION 12 Conference last month. Respondents were polled from a variety of industries, including financial services, government, healthcare, online services, manufacturing and more. The sampling of participants included general attendees and speakers.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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Survey Highlights Divide Between Development and Operations

Pete Goldin
Editor and Publisher
APMdigest

IT is struggling to keep up with the resulting pace of service demand, according to a new survey by Serena of 200 IT professionals that focused on the current state of IT Service Management (ITSM), with a particular focus on what ITIL calls Service Transition.

In addition, the survey shows the majority of those polled (92 percent) agreed business groups do not perceive IT as a true partner and in some cases report that IT actually impedes their success.

Development and Operations blame each other, the survey indicates. Three quarters cited operations as a roadblock to agile development, and 72 percent cite development as not supporting the goals of operations.

“There is massive interest in DevOps within enterprises today, as there should be. What our survey revealed, however, is the distance that IT organizations need to evolve to realize the promise of DevOps,” said Amita Abraham, Group Product Marketing Manager at Serena Software and the author of the survey report. “This data was telling in that we were able to learn about today’s key ITSM issues, in particular, the need to improve Service Transition, the ITIL set of processes that cover the juncture of Development and Operations.”

Other key findings include:

· Inconsistent and manual ITSM practices are too slow for online, agile business. 70 percent reported poor release management processes.

· Disconnected processes limit Development and Operations’ success. 72 percent revealed that operational change and release management, which are central to the Service Transition prescribed by ITILv3, were the most disconnected.

· Rudimentary communication practices lead to limited visibility into planned changes. 60 percent cited they had “little to no” visibility into planned changes. Survey data showed antiquated communication practices such as email, spreadsheets, and word of mouth are still relied upon for sharing critical and time-sensitive information about planned development of operational changes.

· Poor reporting leads to inaccurate status updates to the business. Only six percent reported having shared release calendars across development and operations.

In addition to the Dev and Ops divide, the survey also highlighted the gap between IT and Business:

· Only 9 percent responded that the business views IT as completely aligned with its goals and as a true partner.

· 56 percent indicated that their organizations were yet to define and automate request management. The lack of a single place for business users to submit requests and automatically get status updates results in further discontent with IT.

The Serena survey was conducted at itSMF’s FUSION 12 Conference last month. Respondents were polled from a variety of industries, including financial services, government, healthcare, online services, manufacturing and more. The sampling of participants included general attendees and speakers.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

Hot Topics

The Latest

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 14, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud network observability... 

While companies adopt AI at a record pace, they also face the challenge of finding a smart and scalable way to manage its rapidly growing costs. This requires balancing the massive possibilities inherent in AI with the need to control cloud costs, aim for long-term profitability and optimize spending ...

Telecommunications is expanding at an unprecedented pace ... But progress brings complexity. As WanAware's 2025 Telecom Observability Benchmark Report reveals, many operators are discovering that modernization requires more than physical build outs and CapEx — it also demands the tools and insights to manage, secure, and optimize this fast-growing infrastructure in real time ...

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

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