A new Cisco AppDynamics study reveals that developers spend more than half of their time (57%) in crisis rooms solving application performance issues, rather than focusing on new application development and their company’s innovation strategy.
Cisco conducted a study of 500 developers across the US, UK, Australia and the rest of the world in March and April 2024. Based on the results of the study, developers believe that the current pace of innovation will not be sustainable unless companies equip IT teams with the tools to they need. They are expected to deliver new tools and new features at an ever-faster pace, but at the same time are tasked with addressing the constant demands of Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) and Operations Teams (ITOPs) to manage application availability and performance.
Without the proper tools to understand the root causes of application performance issues and quickly resolve them, developers spend hours debugging applications instead of coding to run new applications. Developers see full observability as an essential tool that allows them to break free from oversight and foster innovation.
Among the main conclusions of this study:
- The need for visibility to meet end user requirements
- 77% point to increasing pressure to deliver seamless and secure digital experiences.
- 67% say their organization lacks the right tools and visibility to understand the root cause of login issues and effectively resolve them.
- 78% believe that implementing full-stack observability within their company would be beneficial.
- 75% fear that a lack of visibility and information about IT performance will increase the risks of service interruptions and outages of critical applications for their business.
- Worried developers :
- 82% admit that they feel frustrated and unmotivated
- 54% say they are more likely to leave their jobs
- 91% believe they should play a greater role in developing and implementing the solutions their business needs.
- LIA is seen as an opportunity : 39% believe their company (and themselves) would benefit from implementing AI to automate the discovery and resolution of application issues, rather than relying on manual processes.
Cisco study: Developers spend more time struggling with problems than innovating
Cisco presents the results of a study that explains that developers spend more than half of their time (57%) in crisis rooms solving application performance problems, instead of devoting themselves to the development of new applications and the innovation strategy of their company.
Developers play a key role in creating, implementing and maintaining the digital applications and services that are critical to the functioning of today’s businesses. And the pressure on them has never been greater. Globally, 85% of developers surveyed say they see increasing pressure to accelerate their production speed, while 77% point to increasing pressure to deliver seamless and secure digital experiences.
But while developers are expected to deliver new tools and features at an increasingly rapid pace, they are also responsible for addressing the constant demands of site reliability engineers (SREs) and operations teams (ITOPs) to manage application availability and performance. As a result, they spend hours in crisis unit meetings solving technical problems with their apps, instead of coding and building new apps.
Lack of essential information about application performance
For developers, this problem is because their companies don’t have the right tools to give them the visibility they need to understand the root cause of application problems. According to them, IT departments do not have complete and unified visibility over applications and the application stack. Therefore, they are very concerned about the possible consequences of this situation, and three-quarters (75%) of them fear that the lack of visibility and information about IT performance will increase the risks of service interruptions and interruptions of applications essential to the activity of their company. .
This situation significantly affects developer morale, with 82% admitting to feeling frustrated and demotivated, and 54% increasingly inclined to leave their current job. These findings should be a wake-up call for companies that now rely on developers to create the reliable, intuitive digital experiences that customers expect. With such high demand for skills development in a tight market and limited talent pool, companies can’t afford an exodus of talent simply because their IT teams don’t have the tools they need to do the job.
Shannon McFarland, vice president of Cisco DevNet said:
Most IT departments have deployed a variety of monitoring tools in various areas, but they are not up to par with today’s complex and dynamic IT environments. This prevents IT managers from generating a complete and unified view of their applications. When things go wrong, it is very difficult to identify the root of the problem, which often leads to crisis situations and forces developers to spend hours trying to help their colleagues fix the situation.
Potential to observe the entire sequence
It is encouraging to see that developers are fully aware of the existence of a solution. 91% of them believe that they should have a more important role in the development and selection of the necessary solutions within their company. Developers believe that full observability could be a game-changer, providing SRE and ITOps teams with unified visibility into applications and infrastructure, both cloud-native and on-premises.
Although developers are not the primary users of full-stack observability solutions and focus on their specific areas of expertise, 78% believe that implementing full-stack observability within their organization would be beneficial. They recognize the benefits of unified visibility across the entire technology environment and recognize that full visibility would allow IT teams to more easily and quickly identify problems, understand their causes and implement the necessary remediation measures. This would result in fewer IT managers from cross-domain teams having to attend crisis room meetings, freeing up talent, including developers, to focus on their work.
76% of developers went so far as to say that it became impossible for them to do their jobs properly because SRE and ITOps teams did not have the information needed to effectively manage IT performance. Which explains why 94% of developers see end-to-end visibility as central to helping them focus on innovation.
The role of artificial intelligence (AI)
In addition to being able to see the entire stack, many developers (39%) also believe that their business (and themselves) would benefit from implementing AI to automate the discovery and resolution of application issues. Instead of relying on manual processes, AI enables IT teams to analyze vast amounts of data, identify problems and apply fixes in real time.
Additionally, developers are ready to adopt new ways of working within the IT department to improve efficiency, productivity and simplify application performance management. Most of them (57%) believe that it is necessary to strengthen cooperation between developers and IT teams. This is already reflected in the implementation of pre-testing methods and drives the widespread adoption of DevOps and DevSecOps methodologies, so that considerations related to application availability, performance and security are natively integrated into the application development cycle.
Mr. McFarland adds:
At a time when developers are in high demand, companies must do everything in their power to give their teams the tools they need to reach their full potential and maximize their performance. The observability of the whole sequence became necessary. Without it, IT teams simply cannot deliver the levels of digital experiences that today’s consumers demand.
About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is a global leader in technology that connects everything securely to make everything possible. Its goal is to foster an inclusive future for all by helping customers rethink their applications, drive hybrid work, secure their business, transform their infrastructure and achieve their sustainability goals.
Source : Cisco
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