Today’s tech leaders are investing in Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) and platform engineering teams in a bid to improve customer satisfaction and better meet demand. This is because an IDP can have a major impact on overall organizational performance, such as shortening time to market (TTM), improving software supply chain best practices, and driving revenue growth. In this blog, we discuss several key findings from a recent Forrester Opportunity Snapshot commissioned by Humanitec, which can help ensure the success of digital initiatives and boost revenue for organizations with restricted budgets.
Let's start by taking a look at what organizations are prioritizing in the next 12 months.
Key finding 1: The need to increase efficiency as a key focus
To keep pace with digital transformation, organizations are recognizing the need for developers to build and deliver software with greater efficiency than ever before. According to the research, 87% of DevOps leaders agree increasing developer productivity is a priority for the next 12 months, while 85% say better meeting customer demand will be their focus. And when it comes to ensuring continuous transformation, 85% say they are shortening release cycle times. But what are the key challenges driving this change?
Key finding 2: Several obstacles hinder developer productivity
The combination of an uncertain economic outlook, increased competition, and shifting customer demand has rendered traditional DevOps methods completely outdated for today’s business landscape. This is highlighted in the report, with 41% of respondents citing developer productivity and experience being difficult to improve due to pandemic-related issues with onboarding, training, and mentoring. These challenges have been further compounded by the distributed workforce, which adds even more complexity and barriers. Other blockers to app development include a lack of DevOps practices (25%), while challenges for improving operations include too many manual and/or ticket-based processes (23%).
Key finding 3: Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) boost developer productivity
So what’s the solution? Here’s where IDPs take center stage. According to the Snapshot, 43% of respondents say IDPs enable true developer self-service, helping developers become less reliant on Ops and reducing bottlenecks caused by ticket ops. This is one of the biggest pain points caused by the increasing complexity of cloud architectures. Not only do platforms help alleviate this challenge, but they also have a potentially huge impact on developer velocity and satisfaction by optimizing developer workloads and freeing teams up to focus on value-adding work.
Key finding 4: Developer Experience (DevEx) impacts overall business performance
Perhaps the most important takeaway is that IDPs provide a curated set of processes and tools that are easy to consume and can improve DevEx. Why does this matter? Because with frictionless self-service experiences, teams can work more efficiently to reduce TTM and grow revenue. In fact, as a result of improving DevEx, 74% of respondents can drive developer productivity, 77% can shorten TTM, while 85% can impact revenue growth. In terms of meeting customer demand, 75% say they can better attract and retain customers, with 82% reporting increased customer satisfaction. And when it comes to developer recruitment and retention, 81% can affect positive change. In other words, an organization that’s able to deliver an awesome DevEx is likely to reap the benefits right across the business.
In summary, the majority of respondents in this survey agree that by improving DevEx, they can positively impact several key business areas. This includes being able to shorten release cycle times, attract and retain customers, improve TTM, and boost revenue growth; a winning combination capable of turbocharging overall business performance.
To get the results in full, download the snapshot here.
