What’s challenging development teams amid their race to the cloud?

Couchbase announced findings from industry research examining the challenges faced by development teams amid the race to the cloud and to execute on digital transformation initiatives.

The global survey of 650 senior IT decision makers found that development teams are under pressure and under-supported. The findings revealed that 88 percent of respondents are aware of challenges faced by development teams, with the top issues including that deadlines and agility requirements were difficult to meet (42 percent); that they were being asked to do too much in too little time (40 percent); or that they did not have the skills (24 percent) or technology (23 percent) they needed.

“Organizations need to understand that when they are undertaking digital transformation, what they are actually doing is putting developers front and center,” said Ravi Mayuram, CTO of Couchbase.

“The modern business depends on the developer and development agility more than ever before. Development teams are not assisting the business, they are leading it to new frontiers through digital transformation. That’s why they need to be given the right resources: be it cloud-based infrastructure, CI/CD friendly tooling and the right training. This is what will ensure success in these times of product-led transformation and growth.”

The research that despite development teams’ extensive contributions to digital transformation and innovation initiatives, a lack of resources and communication with IT leaders is still frustrating them. This is preventing businesses from making the most of their potential, and moving with greater velocity.

Development teams: Overcoming challenges and gaining support

• 86 percent of respondents report obstacles in supporting development teams: The key issues that these enterprises report include difficulty redeploying development teams rapidly to work on new projects when needed (32 percent); ensuring development teams always have the right technology (31 percent); and identifying and solving the problems their teams face (31 percent). Additionally, 40 percent of respondents did not know for certain whether their development teams were behind or ahead of schedule and 27 percent found it challenging to follow the development team’s progress to ensure they are meeting their goal.
• Growth of development teams has stagnated, while digital investment is rising: Despite enterprises planning to increase digital transformation spend by 46 percent in 2022, developer teams only grew by an average of three percent in the last year. In order to bridge the gap, organizations will need to invest in growing their teams while making existing teams more efficient. This can explain why 32 percent of IT leaders are specifically investing in new technologies that make developers’ jobs easier.
• There’s opportunity to further empower developer teams: 30 percent of respondents say that the pandemic has taught them how to empower development teams, yet 24 percent find it difficult to gauge whether development teams are engaged in and enthusiastic about their work. The challenge now is understanding how to get developers excited about their work and demonstrating the results. For example, providing them with their desired technologies and allowing them to build with velocity the way they want to.

Without the right support, development teams aren’t able to drive digital transformation as quickly as the business may need them to. 34 percent of respondents said pressure from developers to support agile development and innovation was a driver for digital transformation projects, showing developers’ direct impact on the speed that an organization can move. Yet 19 percent said development teams’ inability to meet goals set for them had prevented their organization from pursuing new digital transformation projects in the last 12 months.

IT leaders and developers share a similar goal: to build great applications. By increasing transparency and providing the right support and technologies, they can work together to make meaningful progress on digital transformation initiatives.