The DevOps Research and Assessment group, or DORA, has conducted broad research on engineering teams’ use of DevOps for nearly a decade. Meanwhile, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) has emerged as a methodology with similar values and goals to DevOps. How do these movements compare? In 2021, for the first time, DORA studied the use of SRE across technology teams, to evaluate its adoption and effectiveness. We found that SRE practices are widespread, with a majority of teams surveyed employing these techniques to some extent. We also found that SRE works: higher adoption of SRE practices predicts better results across the range of DevOps success metrics. In this talk, we’ll explore the relationship between DevOps and SRE and how even elite software delivery teams can benefit through the continuous modernization of technical operations.

I authored the content in the 2021 State of DevOps report (bit.ly/dora-sodr) about SRE. Now I'm eager to share our findings with the community and hear their reactions!