UK enterprises are losing time and money due to software deployment delays
UK companies are spending an average of four extra months pushing software to production, time that’s lost to inefficiency. These delays are reflected in hard costs. According to Gearset’s research, IT teams are losing GBP £107,000 per year on average due to deployment setbacks. This leads to reduced responsiveness, slower customer-facing releases, and diminished long-term competitiveness.
The average UK company now deploys software once every 29 days. When you extend that with an average 3.8-month delay, everything from bug fixes to major innovations slows down dramatically. This sluggishness creates drag at every level of the business, from support teams dealing with old issues to sales teams waiting for improvements promised to clients.
Compare that to global DevOps leaders. The DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) group backed by Google sets the bar considerably higher, pushing frequent, high-quality, and fast-turnaround deployments. UK enterprises are not meeting that bar. And while the delays aren’t surprising, their normalized acceptance is. That’s the real problem.
C-suite strategy can’t ignore this anymore. Deployment lag affects how fast your teams can react to the market, launch new products, and compete with faster, more nimble organizations. If your deployment process isn’t accelerating, your company isn’t either.
Skill shortages and lack of automation are holding deployment back
Delays don’t happen in a vacuum. They’re the result of structural limits inside teams. Gearset’s study found that 87% of companies are experiencing skill shortages in their IT departments. Over half of respondents, 51%, point to this as a leading cause of late deployments. That raises a key point: You can’t optimize software release cycles if you don’t have the right people in place.
What’s equally important is automation, and the gap there is real. About 43% of teams can’t implement or maintain automated deployment tools due to their existing skill gaps. This has a ripple effect. Manual processes clog up the pipeline. Delays extend. And technical debt accumulates. Gearset’s research shows that 30% of deployment delays are directly caused by the absence of automation in the pipeline.
This is a clear opportunity, for improvement and competitive advantage. Hire smarter, train your teams, deploy better tools. The ROI is obvious: faster releases, less downtime, and more time focused on innovation over maintenance.
Leadership disconnect is slowing down progress
Here’s what the data says: business leaders and IT teams aren’t seeing deployment performance the same way. That misalignment is a problem, because you can’t fix what you don’t accurately assess. According to Gearset’s research, 40% of business leaders believe their software is delivered early or ahead of schedule. Just 10% think it’s running late. On the ground, IT leaders see it differently, 52% report delays, and only 2% say deployments are early.
When leadership operates on inaccurate assumptions, priorities shift in the wrong direction. Resources go to the wrong areas, and real pain points, like tooling, automation, and skills, get overlooked. Executives think the system is working. It isn’t. And that misunderstanding sustains the delays, the inefficiencies, and the cost.
Even more revealing: many business leaders point to artificial intelligence development as the source of delay. Over half, 54%, say AI projects are slowing them down. But from the teams doing the actual work, the cause is much more straightforward: lack of automation and a shortage of technical expertise.
If you’re a C-suite leader, closing this perception gap needs to be a top priority. Talk directly with your DevOps and engineering teams. Ask about their blockers. Then act on it. When leadership and IT align, deployment can become a strategic driver instead of a hidden cost center.
Automation and talent are the path to high-performance software delivery
According to Jack McCurdy, DevOps Advocate at Gearset, UK IT teams have the capability to perform at elite levels, but only if they’re given the right tools and supported with the right people. That means investing directly into the systems and skills that speed up how software gets built, tested, and launched.
If your teams are spending hours, or days, deploying updates manually, you are burning time and money. If your developers don’t have the skills to maintain automated tooling, you’re stuck in a slow lane by default. Gearset’s research confirms what high-performance teams know already: you don’t fix these problems with shortcuts. You fix them with targeted, well-funded strategies that bridge the skill gaps and put automation to work across the pipeline.
Automation demands oversight, maintenance, and alignment with business goals. But what’s consistently clear is this: companies that get automation and talent right, outperform. They release software faster, with fewer errors. They adapt quicker, and they don’t fall behind when priorities shift suddenly.
If you’re sitting on a leadership team wondering where the next competitive edge is, start here. Deployment must be strategic. Aligning talent, automation, and leadership vision is what high-functioning teams do. And it’s what will separate you from the rest in the quarters ahead.
Deployment inefficiencies are undermining the UK tech sector’s global position
The issue with slow software deployment isn’t confined to a single company or team. It’s affecting the entire UK tech sector, and it’s starting to show. The delays, skills shortages, and automation gaps highlighted by Gearset’s research are limiting how effectively UK-based firms can scale, innovate, and compete. For many, these challenges are becoming more than operational, they’re strategic risks.
When companies consistently fail to deliver software quickly, cycles stretch, customer value stagnates, and retention slips. In many cases, this directly impacts where global firms decide to base operations. Faster deployment environments with stronger talent pools are more attractive. So, if these conditions don’t improve, the UK risks losing top-tier businesses to regions moving faster and investing smarter.
Gearset’s findings make it clear: deployment issues contribute to wider threats like brain drain, talent retention problems, and declining investor confidence. The longer performance lags behind global benchmarks like those outlined in Google’s DORA metrics, the bigger the gap becomes.
For C-suite leaders, the takeaway is straightforward. Addressing deployment efficiency means securing long-term competitiveness. It’s about keeping top talent engaged and preventing decentralization of your tech base. The most valuable companies in the world ship software reliably, at speed, and with talent to match. If the UK tech sector wants to reclaim that trajectory, improvements in how deployments are handled need to start now, and they need to start from the top.
Main highlights
- Software delays are costing real money: UK IT teams lose an average of £107K annually due to slow software deployments, driven by extended release cycles and below-benchmark performance metrics. Leaders should treat deployment efficiency as a core economic lever.
- Skill gaps and lack of automation are operational blockers: 87% of IT departments face skills shortages, directly limiting the adoption of automation, responsible for 30% of delays. Investing in talent and automation is critical to improving speed and scalability.
- Leadership and IT aren’t aligned on deployment realities: Business leaders underestimate delay frequency and misidentify causes, while IT teams flag resource shortages and tooling gaps. Executives should sync closely with technical teams to allocate resources where they matter most.
- Automation and staffing are strategic imperatives: Without skilled teams and robust tooling, software delivery remains slow and costly. C-suite leaders must see automation and talent development as drivers of innovation, not optional improvements.
- Deployment inefficiency is hurting UK tech competitiveness: Poor delivery cycles impact growth, increase risk of talent drain, and weaken the UK’s global tech position. Fixing internal deployment issues is now essential to protect long-term business and sector resilience.
