THE TROUBLE WITH TROUBLESHOOTING.

• Author: Beck, Darren
• Position: FRONTIER HORIZONS

SolarWinds Worldwide, a provider of IT management software, has announced the findings of its latest survey of tech professionals in DevOps, web product manager (WPM), and developer roles, "Cloud Confessions: The Trouble with Troubleshooting."

The findings demonstrate a lack of focus on priority business and career growth activities due to daily time spent troubleshooting application issues. This contradicts the core principles of DevOps and places increased pressure on tech professionals to enhance innovation and performance within their organizations.

DevOps, WPMs, and developers spend most of their days troubleshooting; nearly half of the respondents indicate it is in the top three tasks they manage on a daily basis. Because of the time spent on troubleshooting, they are unable to devote time to important priorities, such as building product roadmaps, deploying new applications, and strategizing future innovations with business leaders. None of these tasks appears in their top three daily activities, according to the survey.

Today's technology professionals play an unquestioned role in driving innovation for their businesses. Application development and the end user's experience are inextricable from business growth," says Joe Kim, executive vice president and global chief technology officer. Yet, this survey shows this push towards innovation is minimized in favor of reactive troubleshooting tasks, which are growing due to the need for comprehensive monitoring and visibility into these applications.

Tech professionals need to be armed with comprehensive tools that enhance visibility into cloud applications and enable them to spend less time monitoring and troubleshooting, and more time creating opportunities to move their businesses and careers forward. Otherwise, businesses run the risk of a demotivated DevOps team."

Tech professionals surveyed note troubleshooting is the most-disliked component of their roles and, if these troubleshooting tasks continue to grow without opportunity for job advancement, they state they would leave their current jobs.

The survey explores how technology professionals spend their workdays, and how they might apply their knowledge, insight, and skill set to move...