DevOps is faster than older system developments and refers to a combination of IT operations and software development. It is meant to shorten the process of implementing new changes in a system for normal production while still maintaining the quality of the result. While reducing the system development life cycle it still enables continuous delivery, improving the overall efficiency of development and operations.
DevOps is essentially a mixture of tools, practices, and enterprise processes that can vary between companies to efficiently deliver software and services. It helps enterprises maintain speed in a competitive market and quickly adapt to changes and trends.
DevOps cannot be traced to a single origin, but many of the concepts that inform DevOps come from Lean and Deming Plan-Do-Check-Act-Cycle as well as Agile approach and the Toyota Way. Though it is disputed, many say that the earliest version of the DevOps model came from the 1993 Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium (TINA-C).
TINA-C was designed by software engineers for software engineers, and it combined software development with telecommunications operations into a lifecycle service model. It was flexible and capable of evolving, making it a better solution than traditional software development models.
The DevOps process was then formalized at the 2009 DevOps Days conference in Belgium and three years later, Alanna Brown launched the first State of DevOps report. Other major contributors to the DevOps report in its current form, as it is still released annually, are Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Gene Kim.
DevOps Benefits:
Faster Project Delivery Time
As a result of its relation to the Agile method, DevOps integrates its infrastructure techniques into the development process. It then enables a process of continuous development and testing, automation, and fast development cycles. This boosts the speed and efficiency of the entire development organization and creates a continuous feedback loop that helps developers fix errors and make updates.
Team Collaboration
Without DevOps, the various parts of development teams don’t collaborate or communicate well, which can obstruct progress and efficiency. By contrast, DevOps facilitates collaboration between teams, as different groups involved in software development must work together.
Customer Experience
In general, customers are not forgiving of errors, missed deadlines, and other mistakes that arise with the release of upgrades and updates. Fortunately, DevOps decreases the frequency of errors, improves recovery time, and increases development.
DevOps allows development teams to automate the delivery pipeline, allowing consistent processes, fast fixes, and fewer problems. This keeps customers happy and boosts their loyalty.
Early Error Detection
Software development is rarely without errors, which can be frustrating for developers and customers. The ability to detect errors early on in the process can help prevent the likelihood of a major problem and allows developers to create solutions quickly. DevOps increases visibility between teams and process, which makes early error detection possible. Non-stop testing and monitoring gives teams access to a constant feedback loop and assists in continuous updating and improving.
Release Cycle Reduction
The digital world evolves at a rapid pace, so software development teams are constantly working on creating new features and implementing updates. Lengthy release cycles can slow down the pace of innovation, so it’s important to keep release cycles short and efficient.
By implementing an automated system, development and operations teams can rapidly integrate code and speed up the timespan of release cycles. DevOps environments are even able to find errors in code so teams can quickly provide solutions.
Innovation
With so many automated processes, software developers can dedicate more time to innovation instead of constantly writing and reviewing code.
Scalability
Through automation, the DevOps model makes it easier to manage and scale in various circumstances, allowing systems to adapt to updates and changes.
Talent
DevOps has become a new, modern standard, so talented individuals and teams often want a DevOps environment. Older, more traditional models are outdated. They make things more difficult on both customers and developers, so using a DevOps environment is preferable in many regards.
How does DevOps function?
The success and effect of DevOps models varies depending on the goal of an organization. For instance, some organizations may seek to improve deployment frequency while others may focus on mean time to recovery or lead time for changes.
Ultimately, DevOps functions differently for each individual organization. It requires a top-down approach focused on executing in both large and small scales as well as a goal of improved processes.
Business Planning : Successful DevOps starts by finding the right skills, goals, and resources within your organization. Identify key players to lead the implementation and ensure a collaborative team effort.
Collaboration is also dependent on connecting siloed departments with communication. This allows teams to coordinate alongside a centralized plan.
Continuous Testing: DevOps seeks to improve agility while maintaining (or even improving) quality, which makes continuous testing essential. Testing is a major part of the life cycle that is oftentimes overlooked, but DevOps can assist in testing continuity and consistency
Continuous Release and Deployment: Organizations can deploy releases and changes to codes at any time with a continuous deployment pipeline.
Monitoring: With the growing complexity of enterprise systems, it is important to maintain constant monitoring. This helps inform teams about errors or mistakes and allows them to address the issues quickly.
Optimization and Feedback: The DevOps process ends with one of the most important and useful parts of development: customer feedback. DevOps facilitates a faster cycle of tester feedback and implementation of tester feedback. This feedback allows organizations to develop and innovate rapidly to better meet customer needs.
DevOps Best Practices
Cultural Change
The implementation of DevOps requires major cultural shifts within a company. Employees must be prepared to increase communication with one another to fully and all levels of the corporate latter must commit to facilitating a cultural change. By adapting to DevOps, organizations can fully benefit from it.
Centralization
In addition to communication and collaboration throughout an organization, centralized control is also necessary to a successful DevOps system. A central team will create tools and techniques, share them, integrate them, and deploy them.
Make Testing Earlier
Moving testing to an earlier point in the CI/CD pipeline allows teams to easily prevent problems from occurring later on in the development process. This facilitates consistent, high-quality releases as well as continuous innovation.
Testing automation
Testing is an integral step in the process of creating code. By automating this step, development teams can find errors in their code long before important releases. Additionally, automated testing functions more quickly than manual testing while actually maintaining a higher standard of testing.
Continuous Deployment
In continuous deployment, individual pieces of code are tested and deployed while undergoing post-deployment processes all at once, reducing product creation time through automation. This is unlike traditional software development models where code is created before deployment at a later time.
Communication
Rigid development models have separate silos that slow down the process. DevOps solves this by promoting collaboration and communication between all team members. To be effective, everyone should have shared goals, tools, and processes. Communication can be facilitated with tools like Slack, ZenDesk, and Intercom.
Learning
The traditional software development approach includes creating code and deploying it later. With continuous deployment, individual code parts are tested, deployed, and undergo post-deployment processes all at once. Automating the process speeds up product creation.
DevOps prioritizes collaboration by breaking down silos between teams. Communication is crucial for success, so all team members must have common goals, tools, and processes. Tools like Slack can aid communication, and platforms like ZenDesk and Intercom can document customer interactions.
Commitment to continuous learning is a critical aspect of DevOps. Leaders must be patient and persistent in training developers and perfecting the system, recognizing that this transformation will take time.
Automation
Traditional software development models involve a long wait from code creation to deployment. As previously mentioned, with continuous deployment, code is tested and deployed while undergoing post-deployment processes all at once, speeding up product creation.
DevOps emphasizes collaboration between siloed teams. Communication is key, with everyone sharing the same goals, tools, and processes, and tools like Slack and ZenDesk documenting interactions.
A learning culture is crucial for success, with leadership committing to ongoing education and development. Transformation takes time and patience, but automated dashboards provide real-time insights to aid the process. Choose the right dashboard based on your organization’s needs and enjoy the benefits of visual reports.
Monitoring
Software success depends on its performance. Customers won’t tolerate a faulty application. Real-time monitoring is crucial, whether deploying on cloud or through a local data center, to spot problems before they impact customers. Proactive monitoring tools like AppDynamics, Dynatrace, and Retrace can help.