DevOps: Building A New Culture Of Software Development And Delivery

The pandemic has derailed the global economy, impacting businesses across the world. If organizations wish to keep up with the lightning pace of app and platform improvements while staying cyber secure, they must rely on DevOps. DevOps is crucial to business success more than ever.

But before you start your journey with DevOps let’s take a look at what DevOps is. What are the advantages of DevOps? How can you maximize its potential for your business? Read on to find out.

What Is DevOps?

DevOps is a term derived from combining “development” and “operations.” According to Gartner, “DevOps represents a change in IT culture, focusing on rapid IT service delivery through the adoption of agile, lean practices in the context of a system-oriented approach.”

In simple terms, it is a coordination of best practices that automate and integrate the processes between software development and the IT teams. This cross-disciplinary practice enables enterprises to create and improve products faster than traditional software development methods.

Implementing DevOps allows enterprises to have a competitive edge in value and value management. It allows teams to adapt to the changing market and address their customers’ needs effectively.

Tangible Benefits of DevOps

1. Maximizes efficiency

DevOps ensures the quality of application updates. Armed with the logging and monitoring mechanism of DevOps, developers can now oversee the real-time performance of the products.

This will help them make any necessary changes or improvements ensuring the efficiency of the software. Continuous testing enhances the software quality. Plus, it will be more reliable to function consistently and seamlessly.

2. Better communication and cooperation

A DevOps software development culture contributes to happier and more productive teams as its primary focus is on performance. This team spirit helps in building trust that leads to unitedly working to innovate more effectively.

When teams work together with DevOps, they do not wait for a different team to solve problems. Instead, they work toward a common goal focusing on bringing the product to market or production.

3. Faster Innovation

The success of an enterprise depends on its ability to innovate faster than its competitors. Since DevOps collaborates both development and operation efforts, the development cycle is shorter and the applications are ready faster.

4. Reduced implementation failure

Implementation failure can occur due to programming defects. Since DevOps promotes frequent code versions it is easy to detect defects early. This reduces the number of implementation failures. Additionally, recovery is much faster as the teams share ideas and together tackle the challenges of both teams.

5. Cost-effective

Automated testing and CI/CD aid in efficient bug-free codes. Hence, it eliminates the need to combat network downtime and avoid spending additional costs on other related issues.

DevOps automation accelerates the software release pipeline and cuts down on manual interventions. Thus, it minimizes software release costs. Moreover, early detection of defects saves consequent financial damages. Subsequently, DevOps increases profitability while reducing both direct and indirect costs.

6. Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is crucial for businesses to thrive and profit. The constant flow of feedback mechanism of DevOps allows customers to rate the product and its updates. Their feedback will help developers to improve the product.

Besides, customers can keep tabs on the progress of the application with the help of loop feedback. This contributes to customer satisfaction as they now can see the agility in the software development process. As a result, your business can and will gain a competitive advantage in your sector.

Key Features Of DevOps

Code: Everything in DevOps is version-controlled as code along with data.
Continuous: Emphasis is on continuity of integration, deployment, and testing.
Collaboration: Strong collaboration between the operations, development, and security teams is at the heart of DevOps.
Fail fast: Robust automation, tooling, and processes in DevOps help in identifying problems faster preventing delays in the rollout of new features.
Automated environment provisioning: This enables consistency across deployment ensuring reliable release.
Security: This involves all security measures ranging from static security code analysis to vulnerability management.

DevOps Lifecycle

DevOps consists of multiple phases that collectively become the DevOps lifecycle. These phases ensure DevOps optimizes all development processes. Here is a phase-wise break-down of the DevOps lifecycle:

1. Continuous development

This is the first phase where planning and software coding takes place. The planning involves understanding the project and developers begin developing the code for the application. Though planning does not require any tools, maintaining code requires a number of tools.

2. Continuous integration

In the phase of continuous integration, new codes are built and integrated into the existing code. The source code is modified several times on a weekly or daily basis. The continuous integration of new code helps reflect the changes that the customers experience with the updated code.

3. Continuous testing

At this stage, the developed software is continuously tested for bugs with the help of automated tools. This phase can be repositioned around the continuous integration phase as well.

Testing helps developers save effort and time that is usually lost in manual testing. Plus, reports generated help them improve the test evaluation process. This ensures flawless functionality and inter-networking of the application.

4. Continuous feedback

Continuous feedback allows for further analysis of the improvements. The feedback from customers is assessed promptly enabling the developer to release new versions of the software application.

5. Continuous monitoring

This phase is of key importance for application developers as it sustains the availability of services in the application. Continuous monitoring helps determine the root causes of recurring system errors and helps resolve security issues and other problems.

6. Continuous deployment

Although continuous deployment takes place before continuous monitoring, developers ensure that this phase remains active throughout the DevOps lifecycle. Containerization tools are used to achieve continuous deployment. This nullifies all sorts of production failures and system errors.

7. Continuous operations

This is the shortest of all phases. The continuous operation allows developers to automate the process and accelerate the time-to-market for the application.

Use of DevOps in Different Industries

Manufacturing industries: The use of DevOps in car manufacturing can help manufacturers identify errors early on in the production process.

Online financial trading companies: DevOps reduces the overall process time and increases the customer base. DevOps contributes to a drastic reduction in regression testing time which in turn reduced the funding period.

Get Faster, Bigger, and Better with DevOps

It is clear that the DevOps strategy benefits enterprise software development in many ways. DevOps take the legwork out of the software development process and has emerged to be a crucial component for the growth of a business. DevOps provides a wide range of benefits that are measurable and real in implementation.

DevOps can create an astounding long-term impact for internet-based businesses. All businesses need DevOps for faster testing and implementations.

If you are not adopting DevOps practices in your technology projects, then you are increasing the risk of delay on your technology projects and increasing technical debt. The longer you wait, the more effort is required to implement DevOps into your workflow. So, if you are considering implementing DevOps, act quickly! Call us today.

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About the Author

Vinod Saratchandran

Vinod has conceptualized and delivered niche mobility products that cater to various domains including logistics, media & non-profits. He leads, mentors & coaches a team of Project Coordinators & Analysts at Fingent.