Automating and Working from Home

Still Working from Home

We are all impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused many businesses to move its employees to a working-at-home format. Even when this subsides and stay-at-home orders are lifted, many employees will remain remote. Gartner surveyed 317 CFOs and Finance leaders and found that “74% will move to at least 5% of their previously on-site workforce to permanently remote positions post-COVID 19.”¹

IT personnel seem particularly equipped to work remotely, especially with the development of cloud technology and virtual collaboration. Developer activity (including pushes, pull requests, reviewed pull requests, and commented issuers per user) is currently higher than last year.² The coronavirus certainly isn’t stopping developers! Their average working hours have increased by up to an hour a day.²

Decreasing IT Spend

Although there’s still plenty of work to be done, many industries are experiencing decreased business and revenues. Less money coming in means pulling the purse-strings and reevaluating your expenses. Global technology spend is predicted to drop 8% in 2020, from approximately $3.76 trillion in 2019 to an estimated $3.46 trillion this year.³ Some IT projects are being cut completely, others are delayed, and some are continuing as planned.

In addition to IT projects, tools are also being reevaluated. IT leaders at organizations across the globe are deciding which tools to add during this remote time, and which tools to eliminate. 20% of respondents to Garter’s study reported having already deferred on-prem technology spend, while 12% plan to do so in the near future.¹ A shift away from on-prem obviously means a shift to cloud investments, and Garter predicts public cloud service spending to increase 19%.³

Increase Automation While Working at Home 

Most IT roles and processes can be continued remotely, including (and especially) DevOps. Coronavirus aside, the IT landscape is shifting from a traditional to agile methodology. The adoption of automation has only accelerated during this time.

Automation brings increased efficiency, speed, and quality of changes to organizations. With processes like continuous integration and continuous delivery, code is run in small batches, so errors are discovered quickly and resolved more easily. Working remotely means code is being written and deployed by developers working in various locations and with more irregular hours. Automation allows these individual parties to better collaborate and sync their changes.

Automation is important every day, but it’s even more important during this time. And it will continue to be essential as we transition into whatever our new normal looks like…

Are you working from home? And is your organization increasing its automation?

Sources

1. Garter Newsroom: “Gartner CFO Survey Reveals 74% Intend to Shift Some Employees to Remote Work Permanently” April 3, 2020
2. GitHub Octoverse Spotlight: “An analysis of developer productivity, work cadence, and collaboration in the early days of COVID-19” May 6, 2020
3. Forbes: “Gartner Predicts IT Spending Will Plummet By $200 Billion In 2020 As CIOs Slash Budgets” May 13, 2020