What Is DevOps? Definition, Goals, Methodology, and Best Practices
DevOps helps organizations deliver services and applications much faster than conventional software development processes.
DevOps is defined as a combination of processes and tools created to facilitate organizations in delivering services and applications much faster than conventional software development processes. DevOps, a combination of development and operations, is a complete collaboration of process, technology, and people, to provide continuous value to customers. The article explains the basics of DevOps and shares some best practices for 2021.
Table of Contents
- What Is DevOps?
- Key Goals and Benefits of DevOps
- DevOps Methodologies and Process
- Top 10 DevOps Best Practices for 2021
What Is DevOps?
DevOps is defined as a combination of processes and tools created to facilitate organizations in delivering services and applications much faster than they can through conventional software development processes. It helps increase customers’ confidence in the applications that an organization offers, thereby allowing the company to flourish and achieve its business goals faster.
DevOps Philosophy
The DevOps philosophy focuses on breaking away from traditionally siloed teams in software development to adopt a more collaborative approach. Under the DevOps model, development and operations teams work in constant cohesion throughout the entire project lifecycle, starting right from development to deployment.
When security is the main focus, the quality assurance team is tightly knitted with the DevOps team throughout the app lifecycle. In this situation, some DevOps teams are also referred to as DevSecOps. Close coordination with the QA team ensures that no loopholes are left unchecked in the provided service/app.
How DevOps Works
A DevOps process can be summarized as an infinite loop that comprises the following stages — build, test, and release through the delivery pipeline and plan and monitor through feedback, which resets the loop again. With such an amazing combination, teams use tech stack and tooling that assists them in reliably developing apps. Moreover, going away from the norm, teams use automated processes here. DevOps tools also allow engineers to complete different tasks independently. Be it provisioning infrastructure or deploying code, they can accomplish these tasks without being dependent on one another. As such, the DevOps model accelerates the overall application development process.
Key Goals and Benefits of DevOps
Goals of DevOps
The fast-paced growth of the IT industry and continuous advancements in technology make it critical to set DevOps goals that are experimental and challenging for companies to compete and thrive in the market. Here are the key goals and principles that every successful DevOps program has in common.
1. Ensures effective collaboration between teams
Effective collaboration in any process relies on shared ownership. During the development process, all those involved should embrace the fact that everyone is equally responsible for the entire development process. Whether it is development, testing, or deployment, each team member should be involved. They should understand that they have an equal stake in the final outcome. In the DevOps paradigm, passing of work from one team to another is completely defined and broken down. This accelerates the entire process of development since collaboration between all the teams involved is streamlined.
2. Creates scalable infrastructure platforms
The primary focus of DevOps is to create a sustainable infrastructure for applications that make them highly scalable. According to the demands of the modern-day business world, scalable apps have become an absolute necessity. In an ideal situation, the process of scaling should be reliable and fully automated. As a result, the app will have the ability to adapt to any situation when a marketing effort goes viral. With the app being scalable, it can adjust itself to large traffic volumes and provide an immaculate user experience.
3. Builds on-demand release capabilities
Companies must focus on keeping their software in a ‘releasable’ state. Continuous delivery will allow the software to add new features and go live at any stage. DevOps aims to automate the process of release management because it has a plethora of advantages. Automated release management is predictable, fast, and very consistent. Moreover, through automation, companies can release new versions as per their requirements. Automated release management also has complete and thorough audit trials, as these are essential for compliance purposes.
4. Provides faster feedback
Automating monotonous tasks such as testing and reporting will accelerate the process of rapid feedback. Since the development team will know what has to change, it can roll out the updated version faster. In addition, the team can better understand the impact of the changes that it has done in the software lifecycle. A concrete understanding of changes will assist team members in working efficiently in tandem. With rapid feedback, the operations team and developers can make better decisions collectively and enhance the app’s performance.
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Benefits of DevOps
DevOps helps organizations deliver added value to their customers. Here are some compelling benefits of DevOps.
1. Smarter work and faster release
With DevOps, your development team can release the required deliverables quickly. Faster release of deliverables will keep you miles ahead of your competitors, which is very important in today’s cut-throat business realm. Businesses should understand that if their review cycle is not automated, it will slow down the release process. Moreover, the inclusion of disparate tools will lead to context switching and higher costs. Thus, DevOps can help rectify this worrisome business situation.
2. Quick resolution of issues
In a business world where speed and accuracy are paramount, a fast feedback loop will help you thrive. With DevOps, the communication process becomes seamless, and, as such, it minimizes the time required to solve issues. Without open communication, key issues can slip out of mind, which will have serious repercussions in the long run. DevOps fosters open communication that helps resolve issues, thus unblocking the release pipeline faster.
3. Better collaboration between teams
DevOps paves the way for more dynamic and round-the-clock communication between teams. It renders an environment for mutual collaboration and integration among teams that are distributed globally. Eliminating the traditional departmental barriers between teams forms a new sense of ownership, wherein each team member feels equally responsible for meeting delivery timelines. This collaboration contributes to happier and more engaged employees.
4. Fostering innovative mindsets
With DevOps, deployment phases of the application are more relaxed as compared to traditional methods. This is because it streamlines the entire process, ensures that there are no lapses in quality, and allows on-time and efficient release. Thus, as everything is in order, the development team is more at peace. This allows it to think out of the box and provide additional value to the user. Having a development team with an innovative mindset is a boon for any business organization. An innovative approach, in itself, has immense scope and leads to better quality and resolution of issues at hand. Thus, through DevOps, the process of expanding the horizon of an app becomes much easier.
5. Faster threat detection
Automated and continuous testing of the code will make the process of threat detection faster. As developers can locate problem areas at an early stage, they can then resolve them faster. Thus, DevOps is a vital cog in maintaining and enhancing the quality and performance of an app. As the overall build of the app is in capable hands, teams working together are empowered to share feedback as and when necessary.
6. Increased customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is paramount in any day and age, irrespective of the business one is involved in. DevOps is known for enhancing customer experience, which ultimately increases the level of customer satisfaction. Dissatisfied customers are never a good sign for any business. Feedback loops are an important component of DevOps. These loops empower end users to track the progress of app development at various stages.
In addition, they can suggest changes (if any) or give their inputs to make the app more customer-centric. Due to their dynamic nature, feedback loops help developers and customers remain on the same page. Moreover, DevOps accelerates the process of app development, which eventually lessens the delivery timer. This has a positive impact on the customer satisfaction ratio.
7. Providing the much-needed edge
Along with staying true to their development process, companies need to ensure that they sustain themselves in the cut-throat competition. Implementing DevOps can be your trump card to provide your organization with that much-needed edge. Competitive advantage is necessary, as it can become the deciding factor in the popularity of an application in many cases. Some factors set expert businesses apart from mediocre ones:
- Top-quality features
- Quicker and timely software releases
- Maximizing return on investments
- Listening to constructive feedback
Having DevOps will tick all the above-mentioned criteria and give your business a powerful competitive advantage.
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DevOps Methodologies and Process
The processes and methodologies of DevOps entirely focus on automation and agility. The sole aim of DevOps is to accelerate the process of app production. Moreover, the DevOps lifecycle is all about continuity and consistency. It drives the entire production process through continuous integration, development, feedback, monitoring, testing, delivery, and deployment.
The Process of DevOps
1. Development
Continuous development is an umbrella term used for iterative software development processes. The development process is an amalgamation of everything, ranging from testing to integration to delivery to deployment. The continuous development strategy and its sub-strategies are interrelated. Thus, implementing them will allow organizations to achieve faster delivery, lower risks, and overcome bandwidth barriers significantly.
2. Building and integration
Continuous integration (CI) is a methodology that is commonly used in the DevOps process flow. This ensures that the most validated codes are available for developers. Since developers have access to up-to-date codes, the level of application development is bound to get enhanced. CI also allows multiple developers to work on the same source code with confidence. Thus, it saves time and prevents costly delays. It is safe to say that if you aim for speed and reliability with DevOps, continuous integration is a vital aspect.
3. Testing
Continuous verification and testing of the app is highly necessary as it ensures that the code is working properly. Besides this, continuous testing can help the team unearth hidden bugs and rectify them at an early stage. When bugs are rectified on time, the app development process can be completed within the predefined time frame.
4. Feedback and monitoring
Continuous monitoring of the development process is necessary as it helps keep the system error-free. Moreover, to provide continuous feedback, the monitoring process needs to be entirely automated. The automated system will notify about the issues and lapses in IT operations in real-time. On-time feedback plays a pivotal role in enhancing the overall credibility of the system.
5. Delivery
The next logical step after continuous integration is continuous delivery (CD). This process focuses on sustainable release updates to end users rapidly. To ensure smooth delivery, CD automates the entire release process of the product. Having the base of automated testing in CI, new builds can be released hassle-free with just one click.
6. Deployment
Continuous deployment is a fully automated version of continuous delivery. For experienced DevOps companies, continuous deployment is always a better option than continuous delivery. In the deployment process, every change that has been validated is directly released to end users. Thus, there is no need to schedule the release dates with the deployment process. Moreover, it also speeds up the feedback loop as well.
As releases are frequent but smaller, developers can get quick feedback and address issues as early as possible. Continuous deployment is always applied after the entire DevOps process has been ironed out.
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Top 10 DevOps Best Practices for 2021
Let’s look at some DevOps best practices for 2021.
DevOps Best Practices for 2021
1. Implement an automated dashboard
A computerized dashboard will enable you to use DevOps to its optimum. Implementing the automated dashboard is essential as it acts as a centralized tool. It empowers the operations group with a set of information that helps them in better decision-making. In addition, the dashboard has a concrete graphical representation that makes things clearer and understandable. Thus, business organizations can have a holistic perspective about the whole process.
2. Keep the entire team together
It is almost inevitable to keep the entire team on the same page during any development process. With DevOps, you can keep all stakeholders and the deployment and operations teams in the same loop. As a result, there is streamlined communication within and across teams during the entire development process. To benefit from DevOps in communication, it is necessary for every team member to be connected in the loop. This allows everyone associated with the project to have a clear idea of what other team members are doing, which increases transparency across the process.
3. Be patient with developers
Organizations should understand that not everyone in the team will adjust to DevOps in the same way at the same time. Thus, the company needs to impart complete education about the DevOps tool to developers. Although keeping a keen eye on their progress is important, do not force them to learn things too fast. The concept of DevOps might be alien to some developers. Be patient and allow them to learn through experience and time. Always remember that thorough training takes time.
4. Allow DevOps to be a cultural change
Business organizations need to adopt DevOps as a whole if they wish to see noticeable changes. Thinking that DevOps is too huge can hamper the adoption process. The best practice here is to consider DevOps as a cultural change rather than a burden. If you consider it a burden, you will not be able to educate your developers completely. It’s a known fact that, in the IT sector, interdepartmental silos are relevant. However, with DevOps, the entire team will be required to work as one unit.
5. Maintain a centralized unit
DevOps has a plethora of tools such as Docker, Splunk, Jenkins, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to have a centralized unit for smooth operations. This centralized unit will also be responsible for the creation of all the necessary tools. Along with this, the centralized unit is vital in enhancing agility in the entire development team. Through a centralized unit, teams can convey information about advantageous tools for the business organization. The team in charge can be responsible for creating various guidance programs and maintaining the tools.
6. Build flexible infrastructure
Testing and application build processes should be flexible enough to handle a wide range of exceptions. There are a plethora of configuration management tools that take care of infrastructure changes. To ensure consistency, failure infrastructure modes (if any) are continuously tested. If a component is reported faulty during the test process, it is automatically scheduled for analysis. This analysis runs in the background and doesn’t hamper the performance of other components.
In the elastic infrastructure practice, executable files are archived automatically and frequently. Here, archives include all integration and release repositories. As a result, if there is a need to update the older version, it becomes easier to retrieve the build. By doing this, the timeframe of the update process can be lessened a great deal (for instance, from hours to minutes).
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Final thoughts
DevOps is a very powerful tool that can benefit organizations a great deal if used optimally. Implementing the above-mentioned best practices would go a long way in achieving these goals to achieve excellence with DevOps and deliver high-quality services and applications much faster. If you have a solid DevOps strategy and can implement it in a streamlined way, the sky’s the limit for your business. DevOps is a great tool that can enhance your entire application delivery process from ideation to end-to-end delivery.
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