DevOps is a mix of philosophies and practices mixed with software development and IT operations to help a company maximize collaboration and development of software in the workplace. Communication, accountability, and automation are three important steps to help accelerate a strong DevOps culture for a company trying to adapt to changing times.
DevOps tools available to companies can be found on platforms like JFrog (https://jfrog.com/devops-tools/), ensuring development and traditional IT teams are able to work together seamlessly. The rapid iteration of software means even more stakeholders in a company must become responsible for ensuring they do their part for overall success in a product’s lifecycle.
The software DevOps lifecycle typically includes the following: planning, gathering requirements, designing, developing, testing, and deploying the product. While it doesn’t necessarily sound like the most strenuous task available, it can become a chaotic mess without proper leadership and careful planning.
Prior to the adoption of DevOps, companies would find they needed resources from multiple teams: developers would be tasked with creating software, with operations addressing production systems. Information technology (IT) teams would need to provide the appropriate tools for use by both developers and operations. Although this sounds fine, the teams often worked in their own silos, so addressing any shortcomings would be relatively difficult.
What if the IT team provided the wrong tools? Who would be responsible for thinking of implementing security? What if the software worked well for internal testing but had trouble scaling for a successful launch? These types of questions proved extremely difficult when all the teams worked within their own siloed environments.
DevOps Requires Cultural Change Within a Company
DevOps cannot be an individual role in a company; rather, it must be a holistic cross-team effort involving everyone involved in developing software. A company that puts steps in place to shift DevOps into a collaborative team effort will find greater success than those which choose not to. This will take time and needs to be an ongoing process that cannot be put on the backburner – managers must keep employees engaged by offering appropriate training and knowledge sharing.
DevOps is must be customer-oriented, with developers paying special attention to what their customers’ needs are, with products and services aligned carefully to the customer. As part of that decision, the lifecycle begins from planning all the way through to the product end date, with comprehensive end-to-end responsibilities offered.
Although DevOps would like to dump off some of their tasks to IT administrators, a strong bond must be carried through by both teams internally. When teams are able to successfully align to help one another, accountability and ownership shift to the appropriate stakeholders in a company.
Advantages of DevOps
Companies that embrace proper DevOps should be able to create better software at a faster rate, ensuring user satisfaction. The enhanced collaboration between developers on the team should also make achieving internal business goals a significantly smoother process.
When a team fails at an objective, learning from those mistakes and working to remedy the situation is a part of any successful DevOps lifecycle. This continuous learning process means improving never ends, with the end goal of releasing a successful product that retains strong customer satisfaction.
Developers should be involved in operations so they’re more aware of how changes to the code might impact the operational side of the lifecycle – and how it may alter the production. However, operations should also have a more proactive approach to the development part of DevOps as well, so they’re better suited to respond to how their changes impact the production infrastructure. It’s this holistic approach which creates a positive synergy between different teams, giving both sides a glimpse into what their peers do.
Ideally, small changes are done as opposed to large-scale changes, teams are able to see faster recovery time and higher success rates. In addition, deployed products tend to be released with less software bugs, with changes that can be made rapidly even when defects are identified.
Final Thoughts
Companies are trying to beat the competition to the punch using technology, and software development is no longer an afterthought for many decision makers. The future for DevOps looks extremely bright, so expect to see fast advancement in the ongoing effort to help developers. When done properly, it can be a significant revenue generator, along with indicating a company willing to be on the bleeding-edge of new technology.
However, attempting to create quality software in an even shorter time period is no easy task. Companies must give their teams the appropriate tools, and DevOps lets developers, IT, and other departments collaborate in an efficient manner.
Pixelated DevOps system -DepositPhotos
