Research finds software delivery maturity strongly affects revenue gains

Forrester research shows organisations with a high level of software delivery maturity are three times more likely to grow at 15% or more annually.

The study was commissioned for CloudBees, an enterprise software delivery company. The research also finds organisations not modernising their software delivery processes may face roadblocks limiting growth, slow DevOps transformations, and exposed security and risk vulnerabilities.

"The organisations that unravel the complexities of the software delivery process exceed business objectives and grow revenue faster than those that do not," says CloudBees CEO, Stephen DeWitt.

"Those that don't, face issues with collaboration and communication across their organisations, which can lead to siloed development, delivery bottlenecks, and ultimately customer dissatisfaction.

"It's like driving on a dirt road instead of a four-lane highway to achieve your goals. You can get where you're going faster and with fewer pot-holes along the way," he says.

The study, titled "Modernizing Software Delivery with End-to-End Automation, Orchestration and Collaboration," is based on a survey of 317 IT decision-makers.

According to the research, organisations pairing delivery automation capabilities with effective collaboration practices, will see more successful digital transformations and exceed business expectations at a higher rate than those that cannot. It finds software delivery maturity is correlated with improved market share, user adoption, innovation and customer loyalty.

Forrester says organisations reaching high levels of software delivery maturity also generate continuous business benefits.

According to the study, they are more likely to:

• Succeed with DevOps transformations: High-maturity respondents are more than five times as likely to say their DevOps transformation is exceeding business expectations.
• Grow revenue faster: High-maturity organisations are more likely to grow revenue at a higher rate than their less mature peers, they are almost three times as likely to be growing at 15% or more year over year.
• Adapt to changing market conditions: High-maturity respondents in the survey are nearly twice as likely as low-maturity respondents to say their organisations responded to the pandemic better than their peers.

Although progress has been considerable, many find they are still facing difficulties. Only 27% of respondents say they practise continuous deployment with automation, from commit through to testing, build/integration, package, and final release.

And 25% of respondent rate their governance, risk, and compliance capabilities for software delivery as very mature, with 40% saying they are not mature.

Fewer than three in 10 high-maturity respondents say they have all the information they need in a single examination to understand software release status, dropping to 2% for low maturity. While less than half of high-maturity respondents, and only one in 10 low-maturity, say they can locate the bottlenecks in their delivery processes in order to fix them.