This article is based on reporting originally published by itwire.com in September 2017, citing research commissioned by recruitment firm Robert Half Technology Australia.
The Collaboration Problem Inside Australian IT Departments
Australian businesses operating in an increasingly competitive technology landscape face a critical internal challenge: the people inside their own IT departments are not collaborating effectively enough. That is the central finding of a report published in 2017 by global recruitment firm Robert Half, based on independent research conducted with Australian chief information officers (CIOs).
CIOs surveyed rated the level of collaboration between IT professionals within their own departments at an average of 7 out of 10 — a figure Robert Half describes as indicative of a meaningful gap that many organisations still need to close. In a landscape where speed to market and cross-functional delivery are competitive differentiators, a 7-out-of-10 collaboration score leaves significant room for improvement.
“With IT being a very large functional area with many specialisations, the key to successfully leverage technology across the business depends highly on the level of effective collaboration that exists within the IT department.”
— Robert Half Australia report
DevOps as the Answer to Siloed IT Teams
Robert Half’s report positions DevOps adoption as the primary mechanism through which businesses can close that collaboration gap. DevOps — shorthand for Development and Operations — is a philosophy and set of practices designed to break down the traditionally siloed boundaries between software development, quality assurance, and IT operations teams.
Andrew Morris, Director of Robert Half Australia at the time of publication, described the rationale clearly:
“DevOps was created to promote a culture of collaboration by breaking down barriers within traditionally siloed IT departments and introducing an infrastructure that allows for integration between product management, software development, and operations — recognising the big IT picture and maximising its potential for the wider business.”
— Andrew Morris, Director, Robert Half Australia
The report notes that Australian companies are under increasing pressure to build, test, and release new or updated solutions faster than ever before. DevOps practices — including continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD), infrastructure as code, and automated testing — are central to meeting that demand.
Adoption Gap: Nearly One in Three CIOs Without DevOps
Despite the growing awareness of DevOps benefits, the research found that 31% of Australian CIOs had not yet implemented a DevOps approach within their IT departments. This stands in contrast to the 63% of CIOs who had already implemented DevOps and were actively building on that foundation to drive further innovation.
This gap has direct business consequences. Organisations without DevOps practices risk slower release cycles, more brittle handoffs between teams, and reduced ability to respond to market changes — all of which compound over time as competitors with mature DevOps pipelines accelerate.
Top DevOps Implementation Challenges
The survey identified several specific barriers that Australian CIOs said were preventing or slowing DevOps adoption. These are worth examining in detail, as they reflect challenges that remain relevant for many organisations today:
- Sourcing the right skills (41%): The single biggest obstacle. Finding engineers with hands-on DevOps experience — spanning automation tooling, cloud platforms, scripting, and CI/CD pipelines — remains difficult in a competitive talent market.
- Lack of a defined DevOps strategy (38%): Organisations attempting to adopt DevOps without a clear roadmap often struggle to align tooling choices, team structures, and delivery goals.
- Lack of central governance (36%): Without agreed standards for pipelines, security controls, and deployment processes, DevOps practices can become inconsistent across teams and projects.
- Changing company culture and traditional hierarchies (36%): DevOps requires a shift from command-and-control management models to shared ownership and psychological safety. This is frequently cited as the hardest change to make.
- Enhancing collaboration within the IT team (27%): Even teams that adopt DevOps tooling often find that cultural and process changes — daily standups, blameless post-mortems, shared on-call responsibilities — take longer to embed.
The Skills Shortage at the Core
A thread running through all of these challenges is the shortage of experienced DevOps talent. Morris described this as a systemic issue:
“With digital evolution outpacing the supply of new IT skills, most of the challenges experienced by companies in relation to DevOps directly relate to a lack of talent in the area, and overcoming these challenges will be pivotal to leverage its success.”
— Andrew Morris, Director, Robert Half Australia
The report’s practical recommendation for employers is multi-pronged: attract DevOps talent by offering competitive salaries, retain existing staff through clear career development pathways, and supplement permanent headcount with experienced contract or temporary professionals during high-demand periods or transformation projects.
What This Means for DevOps Engineering Teams Today
Although this report was published in 2017, its core observations have aged well. The challenges of talent scarcity, unclear DevOps strategy, and cultural resistance to change continue to dominate industry surveys globally. Several practical takeaways remain relevant:
- Measure collaboration explicitly. If your organisation has not assessed how effectively development, operations, and security teams collaborate, run a structured internal review or use DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) metrics as a baseline.
- Strategy before tooling. Implementing Jenkins, GitLab CI, or Kubernetes without a defined delivery strategy and clear ownership model will not resolve collaboration problems on its own.
- Invest in internal upskilling. Given persistent market shortages, training existing engineers in DevOps practices — automation, cloud-native architecture, observability — is often more reliable than competing purely on external hiring.
- Governance is not optional. Especially in regulated industries, establishing guardrails for pipeline security, secrets management, and deployment approvals early prevents costly technical debt later.
- Culture change requires leadership commitment. DevOps transformation stalls without visible sponsorship from CIO and CTO level. Technical practice changes alone are insufficient.
The Robert Half research is a useful snapshot of where Australian IT leadership stood on DevOps adoption in 2017. The gap between early adopters and laggards it identified has narrowed in many sectors, but the underlying challenges of skills, strategy, governance, and culture remain live issues for engineering organisations of all sizes.
Original source: itwire.com, September 2017. Research commissioned by Robert Half Technology Australia.