Perforce Software, the DevOps company for global teams seeking AI innovation at scale, today announced the findings of the 2026 State of DevOps Report, which surveyed 820 technology professionals worldwide; 54% of respondents hold C-level positions. The survey examined whether AI renders traditional DevOps practices obsolete, how AI is impacting roles, whether rising energy or cloud costs limit AI adoption, and governance gaps in AI adoption.
Alongside the State of DevOps Report, Perforce produced a report focused specifically on AI’s role in testing.
“The market often asks whether AI will replace DevOps. Our research shows the opposite: AI amplifies DevOps,” said Anjali Arora, CTO of Perforce and Author of The State of DevOps Report. “Organizations with disciplined engineering practices, automation, strong collaboration, and focus on control, auditability, and governance are the ones scaling AI successfully and turning innovation into measurable business outcomes.”
Key Report Findings:
The findings conclude that organizations with mature DevOps practices* are more successful in scaling AI than those with immature practices. In short, DevOps has not failed; incomplete DevOps has. DevOps is also the precursor to AI expanded across a company’s SLDC:
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70% of organizations say DevOps maturity materially affects AI success.
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Further, organizations with mature DevOps practices embed AI more readily across their software delivery lifecycle:
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72% AI Embedded for High Maturity
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43%AI Embedded of Mid-Maturity
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18% AI Embedded for Low-Maturity
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AI is Shifting Roles in DevOps, Especially in Testing:
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87% of respondents believe that AI will enable engineers to focus less on scripting and more on system design and directing outcomes. Often called a shift-up role change.
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Testing is one of the greatest areas of impact for role changes:
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55% of QA teams increased focus on quality analytics rather than test execution
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53% of respondents say developers author tests directly.
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41% report QA teams are evolving into Quality Engineering (QE) teams, with 39% citing a focus on orchestration across pipelines, environments, and data.
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38% say that business analysts are involved in test creation.
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“The research confirms what we are already seeing: AI is helping teams shift up from execution to oversight and strategy, effectively elevating individual roles,” said Jake Hookom, EVP of Product at Perforce and Author of The State of DevOps Report. “But the research also highlights that governance and auditability need to be a focus for organizations and the collaboration between teams.”
Confidence in AI Outputs Outweighs Visibility into AI’s Performance and Governance:
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77% have confidence in AI outputs, with 57% citing operational efficiency, 49% say productivity ROI is top-of-mind, and 47% note that improved developer experience is most important.
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Yet governance is fragmented and incomplete. Compliance oversight is split between multiple functions, and only 39% have full automated audit trails. Without automated audit trails, measurement becomes expensive and inconsistent.
The Benefit and Cost of AI: 37% Cite Cloud and Energy Cost as a Limiting Factor:
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74% say AI meets or exceeds expectations. 50% measure AI’s value through customer retention or acquisition, 48% see faster delivery, and 44% cite revenue or market share impact.
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74% said that cloud/compute costs and energy usage influence their organization’s decisions about AI adoption, and 37% cite these as limiting factors.
The survey was conducted across November and December 2025, and gathered 820 responses across North America, the UK and Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. 54% of respondents have C-level job titles, with a further 26% holding VP/head/director job titles. 85% are key buyers or decision-makers, and the remaining 15% have direct purchasing influence. The survey was performed on Perforce’s behalf by research organization Panterra. The State of DevOps report has been established for over a decade, during which time over 40,000 people have contributed to the surveys.
*The DevOps Maturity Model
