OverOps recently surveyed more than 600 professionals focused on software development and operations to better understand the challenges they face in delivering high quality software at speed. VMblog had an opportunity to catch up with Tal Weiss, co-founder and CTO of OverOps, to dig deeper into the findings and what they mean for software quality moving forward.
The full report can be found here
VMblog: To kick things off, tell us about the focus and significance of the survey.
Tal Weiss: In today’s software delivery pipeline, speed and stability are frequently at odds. The fast-paced business landscape has driven the need for increased development velocity – often at the expense of application quality. Engineering teams are increasingly challenged with the task of keeping up with competitors without sacrificing the customer experience in the process. The goal of our research was to dig deeper into how organizations are looking at software quality versus speed to delivery.
VMblog: What do most software professionals choose in the battle of quality versus speed?
Weiss: The overwhelming majority of engineering organizations (70%) say software quality trumps delivery speed, yet critical production issues persist. That still leaves almost a third of respondents who cite the speed of a software release is more important than ensuring software quality, even if it means critical errors could pop up in production. And more than half of the survey respondents (53%) said they encounter such critical or customer-impacting issues in production at least one or more times a month. Two out of three reported spending at least one day per week troubleshooting issues in their code, with about a third reporting they spend anywhere from two days to a full week.
Vmblog: What did the findings reveal about the top techniques used in the modern software quality ecosystem?
Weiss: From CI/CD and daily release schedules to feature flags and alerting, today’s engineering teams are using a broad ecosystem of cutting-edge technologies and practices. Some of the top tools include manual testing (70%), automated testing (65%) and log management (62%).
Interestingly, the 70% of respondents that prefer quality use automated testing pre-production compared to only 54% of those that cite speed is paramount over quality. Automated testing is about making things faster, but it also enforces policies and reduces the chance for human error.
VMblog: Were there any predictions or indicators as to the next big thing in software quality?
Weiss: While engineering teams are continuing to invest in pipeline automation and containerized microservices, automated code analysis has seen an uptick as an emerging technology. When asked about which tools participants plan to adopt in 2020, 37% said static code analysis and 28% said dynamic code analysis, putting these analysis tools at the top of the list.
VMblog: Was there anything that surprised you or one big takeaway?
Weiss: The report shows just how much work there is to be done with regards to striking a better balance between speed and quality. At the root of the problem is a misalignment between processes and resources with primary engineering and business goals. This is then compounded by a lack of investment in the right tooling and culture that enables efficient error detection and resolution, regardless of where you are in the pipeline. We have reached a turning point where we need to be much more serious about how we address these issues going forward.
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