This article is based on survey analysis originally published on TechTarget, drawing on research conducted by Troy DuMoulin, VP of Research and Development at Pink Elephant, a global IT Service Management (ITSM) training and consulting firm.
Why This DevOps Wave Is Different
DevOps is not the first large-scale IT improvement initiative to gain industry momentum — but according to Troy DuMoulin of Pink Elephant, it may be the most durable. Writing on TechTarget, DuMoulin argues that previous IT transformation efforts were largely driven by internal innovation cycles. The current DevOps push, by contrast, is propelled by external economic and competitive forces: digital disruption has made speed-to-market a survival requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
Pink Elephant surveyed attendees at its annual ITSM conference to test whether these observations matched real organizational priorities. The results across several questions paint a consistent picture: IT teams are consciously trading process maturity for velocity, and they are reaching for frameworks — DevOps, Lean, and Agile — that promise exactly that.
DevOps-Focused Transformation: Where Organizations Stand
The survey’s first question asked respondents whether they were actively working on a DevOps-focused transformation. The intent was to measure how broadly the term DevOps culture had been adopted as a label for organizational improvement goals — specifically, the dismantling of silos and the improvement of cross-team communication and collaboration.
Finding: A majority of respondents — 57% — indicated that transforming to a DevOps culture was a current, active focus of their organization. While the question was binary and does not capture the depth or maturity of those efforts, the result suggests that DevOps has moved well beyond early-adopter status and into mainstream IT planning.
Speed Over Maturity: A Significant Shift in Priorities
Pink Elephant has run its annual conference for more than three decades. Historically, attendee discussions centered on ITSM process maturity, control frameworks, and high-availability practices. Over the three years prior to this survey, however, DuMoulin observed a marked shift in the language used by conference participants: terms associated with control and stability gave way to terms associated with urgency, velocity, and speed-to-market.
To test whether this language shift reflected genuine organizational priorities, the survey asked directly: Is process speed currently more important than process maturity?
Finding: Close to 60% of surveyed organizations confirmed that speed is currently more important to them than process maturity. This is a striking result from an audience historically focused on ITIL-aligned process rigor. It suggests that competitive pressure — not internal preference — is driving organizations to accept higher process risk in exchange for faster delivery cycles.
Frameworks Identified with Velocity: Year-Over-Year Adoption Trends
To understand which frameworks organizations are investing in, the survey asked respondents to select all methodologies currently representing an area of focus. The question was kept identical across two consecutive survey years to allow direct comparison. Respondents could choose multiple frameworks, and the results reflect current investment priorities rather than a ranking of overall importance.
The year-over-year comparison surfaces three notable trends:
- Waterfall project management declined sharply. Investment in traditional sequential, activity-based project management fell by 66% compared to the previous year’s survey. Waterfall remains a primary method in most organizations, but active development investment in the approach is dropping quickly.
- DevOps adoption grew 7% year over year. This was the highest positive change of any velocity-focused framework in the comparison period.
- Lean IT grew 6% year over year. Lean’s emphasis on eliminating waste and improving flow aligns directly with the speed-to-market priorities respondents identified elsewhere in the survey.
Agile also registered strong overall adoption — second only to ITSM across all frameworks listed. Given that ITSM adoption is expected given the conference context, Agile’s position reinforces the broader pattern: organizations are systematically reallocating attention toward frameworks that promise faster value delivery.
The Call to Action: Digital Disruption Leaves No Room for Delay
DuMoulin draws a historical parallel to make the scale of this shift concrete. The current IT transformation, he argues, is comparable in impact to the transition from centralized mainframe computing to decentralized client-server architectures. The critical difference is the driver: the client-server revolution was sparked by internal IT innovation, whereas the current transformation is being forced by external economic and competitive conditions.
Digital disruptors — competitors who have built software-first business models — can move faster, iterate more cheaply, and reach customers more directly than traditional enterprises. Organizations that do not increase their own speed to market risk losing market position to these competitors. In this context, the rapid growth of the DevOps trend is not a fad. It is a rational organizational response to an existential competitive threat.
The survey data supports this conclusion: organizations are not adopting DevOps because it is fashionable. They are adopting it — along with Lean and Agile — because they have concluded that their current delivery speeds are incompatible with the competitive environment they face.
Key Takeaways for DevOps Practitioners
- DevOps adoption is majority-level: More than half of surveyed IT organizations are actively pursuing a DevOps cultural transformation, not just evaluating it.
- Speed has displaced maturity as the top priority: Nearly 60% of organizations now rate delivery speed above process maturity — a significant change for an audience historically focused on ITIL rigor.
- Waterfall is losing investment, not just mindshare: A 66% year-over-year decline in active investment in waterfall project management represents a concrete reallocation of organizational attention.
- Lean and DevOps are growing together: The parallel growth of Lean IT and DevOps reflects a shared underlying goal: eliminating friction and accelerating the flow of value from idea to production.
- External pressure is the primary driver: Unlike previous IT transformation waves, the current DevOps push is being driven by competitive necessity rather than internal IT advocacy.
Original analysis by Troy DuMoulin, Pink Elephant. Source: TechTarget.