This article is based on reporting originally published by SD Times and the DevOps Institute’s Upskilling 2020: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report.
The Missing Piece in Most DevOps Transformations
Most enterprise DevOps initiatives invest heavily in toolchains, automation pipelines, and cloud infrastructure—but according to Jayne Groll, CEO of the DevOps Institute, that focus is dangerously lopsided. While digital transformation dominates the conversation, Groll argues that the industry urgently needs a human transformation to match it.
“Human transformation is the single most critical success factor to enable DevOps practices and patterns for enterprise IT organizations. Traditional upskilling and talent development approaches won’t be enough for enterprises to remain competitive because the increasing demand for IT professionals with core human skills is escalating to a point that business leaders have not yet seen in their lifetime. We must update our humans through new skill sets as often, and with the same focus, as our technology.”
— Jayne Groll, CEO, DevOps Institute
What the Upskilling 2020 Report Found
The DevOps Institute’s Upskilling 2020: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report—based on responses from more than 1,200 practitioners and business leaders—paints a clear picture of where the talent gap is most painful:
- More than 50% of respondents reported experiencing difficulties on their DevOps transformation journeys.
- 58% said finding skilled DevOps professionals is a significant challenge.
- 48% find it difficult to retain skilled DevOps talent once hired.
Compounding the problem, organizational investment in upskilling remains inadequate:
- 38% of respondents work in organizations that have no upskilling program at all.
- 21% are working toward implementing one.
- 7% don’t even know whether an upskilling program exists in their organization.
- Only 31% reported that their company already has a formal upskilling program in place.
The Three Pillars of the DevOps Human
The report identifies the top skill categories needed to develop what the DevOps Institute calls a “DevOps Human”:
- Process skills and knowledge — Understanding methodologies like Scrum, Value Stream Mapping, and Lean principles.
- Automation — Proficiency with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and test automation.
- Human skills — Collaboration, interpersonal communication, empathy, and creativity.
Notably, human skills are not an afterthought in this framework—they appear alongside automation as a top-tier requirement, a significant shift in how technical roles are being evaluated.
From T-Shaped to E-Shaped: Evolving the Model
The 2019 DevOps Institute skills report introduced the concept of the T-shaped professional: someone with deep expertise in one discipline (the vertical stem of the T) combined with broad, general knowledge across adjacent areas (the horizontal bar). This model was positioned as the answer to the growing demand for speed, agility, and software quality.
The 2020 report evolves this further, introducing the E-shaped DevOps human. The “E” framework is built around four dimensions, referred to as the 4-Es:
- Experience — Practical, hands-on application of skills in real environments.
- Expertise — Deep, specialized knowledge in one or more areas.
- Exploration — Curiosity-driven learning and a willingness to experiment.
- Execution — The ability to deliver results and drive work to completion.
Within the E-shaped model, the report distinguishes between two categories of skills:
Horizontal Skills (Breadth)
- Automation
- Functional skills
- Knowledge management
- Technical proficiency
Vertical Skills (Depth)
- Flow and systems thinking
- Practice-specific knowledge (e.g., Scrum, Value Stream Mapping)
- Human skills: collaboration, interpersonal communication, empathy, and creativity
Why Human Skills Are Gaining Priority
Eveline Oehrlich, Research Director at the DevOps Institute, underscores that the increased emphasis on human skills isn’t coming from practitioners alone—it’s coming from management:
“We already saw a significant demand for a variety of human must-have skills in our 2019 research and this year we saw a tremendous increase across all human skills—collaboration, interpersonal skills, empathy and creativity, to name a few. The most important though is the increase in value placed on the human skills, which comes from the management and business leaders in our survey. Our research shows that a mindset shift is happening with the transition from ‘soft’ skills to ‘human’ skills, but more importantly, today’s leaders must change their mindset to recognize the value human skills will bring to a team and organization.”
— Eveline Oehrlich, Research Director, DevOps Institute
The rebranding of “soft skills” as “human skills” is deliberate and meaningful. The term “soft” has historically implied these capabilities are secondary or supplementary. By reframing them as “human skills,” the DevOps Institute is positioning collaboration, empathy, and creativity as core professional competencies—on equal footing with technical and automation knowledge.
What This Means for DevOps Teams in Practice
If you’re leading a DevOps team or shaping an engineering organization, the report’s findings translate into several concrete priorities:
- Audit your upskilling program. If your organization is among the 38% with no formal program, that gap is costing you in recruitment difficulty and retention risk.
- Expand your definition of a strong candidate. Hiring managers who filter exclusively for technical certifications or tooling experience may be passing over candidates with the collaboration and systems-thinking skills that make DevOps teams function well.
- Invest in cross-functional learning. The E-shaped model values exploration and breadth as much as depth. Encourage engineers to learn about adjacent disciplines—security, product, operations—not just their primary stack.
- Make human skills a performance criterion. If collaboration and empathy appear nowhere in performance reviews or career ladders, they won’t be treated as serious professional goals.
- Recognize that culture problems are skills problems. Friction between development and operations, poor incident communication, and siloed decision-making are often symptoms of under-developed human skills, not just organizational design failures.
The Bottom Line
DevOps tooling and automation will continue to advance rapidly. But the data from the DevOps Institute’s 2020 report makes a compelling case that technology alone cannot carry a DevOps transformation. Organizations that neglect the human side—failing to upskill their people, undervaluing collaboration and empathy, and treating soft skills as peripheral—will struggle to see returns on their technical investments. The competitive advantage increasingly belongs to organizations that develop the whole engineer, not just the technical one.