If you’ve been keeping track of the IT and development communities, you know that DevOps is experiencing a boom. Forrester started this year as the ” Year of Enterprise DevOps” in 2018, and DevOps popularity continues to grow yearly.
There’s a good reason for this. At the close of 2017, 50% of businesses had implemented DevOps.
In the era where IT operations focus on DevOps, It is crucial to know what the DevOps process looks like and what organizations should do to apply this new method best.
What exactly is DevOps?
In its essence, DevOps is a philosophy and practice that focuses on collaboration, agility, and automation in IT and development teams.
Traditionally development of software development was conducted in silos and with IT action and IT development working in isolation within their processes and teams. This division and conflicting values resulted in an environment that was rife with inconsistencies, poor alignment, and production delays (some have even dubbed the Operations department”War Room”) DevOps is a response to the “us vs. them” development style.
The objective is to connect IT operational activities and development to enhance collaboration and Communication, create more smooth processes, and align goals and strategies to ensure speedier and more effective delivery.
DevOps principles
Although DevOps is a method that can be applied to a real-world situation, it is also an approach to changing the mindset and culture within a company. Several vital concepts underpin this idea:
- Automation Automate everything, including workflows, testing of new code, and the way your infrastructure is set up to minimize the amount of work and waste.
- Iteration: Write small pieces of code in an hour-long sprint to enable releases and sub-releases that increase the rate and frequency of deployments.
- Improvements continuously: Continuously evaluate, learn from the mistakes and then act upon feedback to optimize the performance, cost, and time required to deploy.
- Collaboration Teams: Join forces to encourage Communication, and break down the barriers between the development of IT operations and quality control.
DevOps concepts typically apply the lean and agile philosophy to operations, focused on automation and tools to speed up deployment.
Automatization (and the tools that facilitate automation (and the tools that support it) allow IT professionals, and developers to integrate their efforts into one seamless process and adopt agile practices such as continuous integration and delivery, and deployment. This allows collaboration across the entire development pipeline, from initial concepts and builds through the deployment phase and even testing.
Furthermore, DevOps principles prioritize iterative processes that allow constant testing and feedback. In addition, this helps to speed up development. It not only speeds up the development process however it also enhances the security and quality of the product.
By constantly conducting tests, monitoring, and refining feedback using smaller but frequent deployments, the concept of DevOps within your business effectively closes the gap between developers, users, and the IT operation.
Benefits of DevOps
Although it’s not a magic solution, DevOps can solve many of the most common issues plaguing traditional IT companies.
The focus placed upon collaboration, automatization, and agility could have significant benefits, such as:
- More rapid time to market
- Higher Return on Investment
- More significant user/customer satisfaction
- Improved efficiency
- Collaboration improved
- The early detection of and correcting of any issues
Since teams collaborate effortlessly, supported by the process and the culture, among the numerous benefits of DevOps is significantly less risk of miscommunication or confusion. Clear Communication leads to increased effectiveness and, ultimately, better quality products.
Furthermore, agile practices, like Continuous Integration and Deployment coupled with automated testing and regular feedback, can help speed up the development procedure and guarantee that bugs and other issues are discovered and addressed early.
It’s not surprising how many companies are trying to adopt this approach to benefit from DevOps. When properly implemented, it is believed that a DevOps process can result in improved product offerings, more satisfied customers, and a more beneficial bottom line. But, those who enter in the area of DevOps they can consider taking Post Graduate program in DevOps If they’re interested in a DevOps careers.
It is the DevOps process flow.
This DevOps workflow is entirely about efficiency and automation. Each stage of the DevOps lifecycle is focused on closing the gap between development and operations, driving the production process through continuous development and integration, testing and monitoring delivery, and deployment.
Continuous development
Continuous development is a broad word that refers to the iterative process used to develop software to be distributed to customers. Continuous integration involves continual testing and delivery as well as consistent implementation.
By implementing an ongoing development strategy, and its sub-strategies, companies can enjoy speedier development of new products or features that are better quality and less risk without encountering significant bandwidth-related obstacles.
Continuous integration
Continuous integration (CI) is an application development technique commonly used within the DevOps process flow. Developers often integrate their code changes in a repository shared by all, where the updates are tested automatically.
Continuous integration guarantees that the most current and valid code is accessible to developers. CI can help avoid expensive development delays by permitting many developers to work with the same code source without fear, rather than waiting for separate pieces of code in one go when the release date approaches.
This is a crucial part of the DevOps flow of operations that seeks to combine speed, agility, reliability, and security.
Continuous testing
Continuous testing is a validation method that allows developers to verify that the code is working exactly as intended in a live setting. Testing can reveal problems and some aspects of the software that require fixing or improvement. It can also be moved back to the development stages to ensure that the product is continually improved.
Monitoring and continuous feedback
Through the development pipeline, Your team must be able to provide continuous monitoring and feedback for the systems and products. Also, it is recommended that the bulk of the monitoring process must be automated to provide constant feedback.
This lets IT operations spot issues and alert developers instantly. Continuous feedback provides better security and reliability of the system and faster response to problems.
Continuous delivery
Continuous delivery (CD) is the next step after CI. Code changes are built automatically, then tested and packaged for distribution into production. The objective is to provide updates to users swiftly and continuously.
To do that, CD automates the release process (building upon the automated testing of CI) to ensure that new builds are released with the click of a button.
Continuous deployment
For the experienced DevOps company, Continuous deployment might be the best option instead of CD. Continuous deployment is the completely automatized form of CD that does not require any human (i.e., manual) intervention needed.
Every verified change is instantly released to the users in the continuous deployment procedure. This process removes the requirement for scheduled release dates and increases your feedback cycle. More frequent, more minor releases let developers get users’ feedback quickly and resolve issues faster and more incredible speed.
Continuous deployment is an excellent idea for the DevOps team. However, it should only be implemented following the DevOps procedure has been worked out. To ensure that continuous deployment works efficiently, organizations must be able to establish reliable and rigorous automation of their testing environments. If you’re still not there, start by implementing CI, and CD can assist you in getting there.
Implementing DevOps in your business
The task may seem overwhelming if you’re still not implementing a DevOps procedure in your company. Be aware that it isn’t just a process change but a culture shift.DevOps job opportunities are extremely growing. it is crucial to get prepared for the job with DevOps Interview Questions.
If you want to succeed with DevOps adoption, think about the implementation in phases. Based on the situation in which your company is today, you might prefer the agile methodology to DevOps implementation.
A gradual process of implementation could be like this:
- Set up an agile development process
- Cloud computing is a must
- Change your workflow to a CI or CD workflow
- Automate your software deployment
- Automated testing software
- Implement continuous deployment
Be aware that DevOps automation is both an infrastructure and a shift in tooling. Without the appropriate infrastructure and tools that support your processes, you could end up running into gaps in the DevOps procedure flow. Every step of the development pipeline must be as efficient and flexible as possible to build a genuinely DevOps environment.
Additionally, think about how visuals can aid you in mapping out your DevOps processes and comprehending all aspects of the process, from who is involved in what area to timelines and process flows. Visuals can help ease the strategy implementation process and keep everyone in the same place from the beginning.
DevOps tools that can aid you in mapping your processes
Although DevOps is more about the mindset in the same way as it’s about processes, there are numerous moving components to track. While you transition your method to the DevOps environment, think about using these tools to remain in the right direction.
- Git: It is distributed source code management DevOps tool that lets you track your development process. You can easily save or revert to a different source code version. You can also use staging areas, branching, and various workflow options.
- Lucidchart Visual workspace can help IT managers and developers make clear diagrams of teams, processes, and data. You can use Lucidchart as a DevOps tool to visualize your brand-new DevOps workflow to help team members train and document handoffs, monitor development, and ensure everyone is on the same team.
- Kubernetes Brings containers to the next level by creating groups of logical units, placing them in clusters, and automating the distribution process and scheduling. Kubernetes is a well-known open-source system and a DevOps tool that assists teams in moving their projects forward with ease and speed.
- Raygun: Check your crash and errors using Raygun, the application performance monitoring tool. This DevOps tool will help you find the cause of the issue and trace the case to the specific section of code, function, and API.
One of the most significant issues IT managers face is managing a vast toolchain. Whatever applications and tools you utilize to create DevOps operate, Lucidchart can help you to keep things in order.
Lucidchart will aid you in mapping out your toolchain and help you understand how each tool is interfacing with the DevOps processes. Data linking lets users link their diagrams to living data. You can track your application’s status in real-time, proactively addressing issues and interacting with colleagues to address issues.