In most organizations, there exists a fine line of difference between the development and operation teams. As per this traditional workflow, developers are responsible for designing and developing a software product. Once development is completed, testers implement several methodologies to complete testing of the developed codes and log in bugs and defects. Deployment and migration teams are responsible for code deployment to various environments and data management, respectively.
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As different individuals handle department sections of the software development cycle, the overall time is more. It also introduces tons of bugs and discrepancies. This is where the concept of DevOps comes into play!
DevOps or Development and Operational teams are cojoined, where a single team is formed with multi-skilled professionals. Here, a developer needs to know how testing and database management work to process the entire software life function successfully. Similarly, the deployment professionals must have varied skills. With DevOps, the manual legacy systems of an organization can be automated for enhancing both performance and productivity.
Importance of DevOps
DevOps play a crucial role in bringing all the phases of software development in sync. Since it combines the development and operational teams, the technology offers more leverage than one can comprehend. These are:
- With automatic and continuous deployment techniques, codes can be released into the desired environments faster.
- Any error in the deployment scripts or class files can be known easily from the logs.
- Thanks to the integrated operations, workflows can be simplified for faster performance and enhanced productivity.
- With enhanced collaboration between the development and operational team, it is possible to work on the user feedback and remove redundancies.
- DevOps helps automate several repetitive tasks for faster work and reduces manual intervention.
- With the implementation of DevOps, you can introduce a far more agile process within the organization.
History of DevOps
Here is a brief timeline describing how a mere discussion between two professionals led to the emergence of such revolutionary technology.
- In 2007, Patrick Debois and Andrew Clay discussed where DevOps was conceptualized.
- After they expressed their concerns about the lack of sync between teams involved in the software development lifecycle, they decided to find a more agile solution in 2008.
- In 2009, O’Reilly Velocity Conference, John Allspaw and Paul Hammond gave a presentation on DevOps.
- In 2010, DevOps Day was celebrated in Belgium, which marked its first footstep in the global market.
- After a year, in 2010, professionals willing to venture further into this new concept organized the DevOps Days in the US, which received a huge global presence.
- In 2011, several IT organizations worked with vendors to develop new DevOps tools.
- Post this in 2012, the world saw several companies collaborating with top-notch players in the DevOps, like HP, IBM, and more.
- In 2013, Kevin Behr, Gene Kim, and George Spafford released the first book on DevOps named the “The Phoenix Project.”
- Gene Kim, Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and others produced the DevOps State of Industry Report.
- Gartner revealed that DevOps can become a new world-changing strategy for 2000 in the Gartner report, 2016.
- The Forester Research of 2017 declared that year to be the “Year of Enterprise DevOps”.
- By the end of 2018, around 30 conferences were held on DevOps, solely in the US.
- A Gartner report of 2019 revealed that leaders are inclining towards DevOps but might struggle with organizational changes.
- 2021 revealed how DevOps can identify human errors and facilitate the development process.
DevOps lifecycle: Steps Included
DevOps can be integrated throughout the entire software development life cycle, making its overall lifecycle more extensive. Following is a brief explanation of the stages involved with DevOps.
1. Plan
The DevOps lifecycle begins by planning the entire software development workflow based on the current project requirements and viewpoints of users and stakeholders. It needs to be as extensive as possible to ensure all the aspects are covered, like the interface design of the software, its navigation and backend functionality, integration capacity, and many more.
2. Code
Once the plan is ready, the coding step commences. Here, codes are developed based on the initial requirements. Since coding is cumbersome, most developers rely on third-party build tools to reduce investment time and mitigate development risks.
3. Build
In this step, developers utilize different tools to commit the codes developed and upload them on the concerned source code software. Ideally, build applications are integrated into the coding platform and the server software to streamline the integration and delivery processes.
4. Test
The software is ready for test after the codes are uploaded to the source code location. Ideally, most DevOps projects involve multifarious testing processes, like functional testing, manual testing, automation testing, performance testing, and many more. Upon completion, the testing results are gathered and analyzed further to conclude about the software’s performance, functionalities, and other features.
5. Release
Once the testing results are satisfactory, the codes are released to be available in the operational environment. Depending on the deployment strategy implemented, it may or may not be the live environment.
6. Deploy
The build versions are further deployed to the concerned environment using different DevOps tools. It is crucial to note here that professionals can integrate the principles of continuous delivery and integration to speed up the deployment process and reduce server downtime.
7. Operate
After successfully deploying the codes into the operational environment, users start operating on the software and list down the loopholes or errors.
8. Monitor
It is the last stage of the DevOps lifecycle, where reports are gathered from software functioning, customer feedback, performance results, and many more. These reports are further analyzed to fix bugs, deploy any change, or enhance user satisfaction.
Top DevOps Strategies to use in SDLC
While DevOps has a much higher success rate than any other SDLC model or methodology, professionals must rely on specific strategies for more efficiency, enhanced performance and reduced manual effort. So, the following section will introduce some of the high-yielding DevOps strategies to be implemented.
- First of all, it is crucial to promote a collaborative culture to handle DevOps projects. In other words, different teams working on a project, like developers, testers, and others, should work collaboratively to handle the entire SDLC and remove communication and data siloes.
- Customer satisfaction is one ranking attribute determining whether the implemented workflow is appropriate. Therefore, professionals should orchestrate the DevOps model based on customer experience and mitigate failure risks.
- Implementing agile methodology for DevOps is better since it speeds up the SDLC process and yields better results. For instance, developers and testers can work collaboratively to develop and test codes simultaneously for quick bug fixes, better testing approaches, and many more.
- Another important DevOps strategy is to rely on CI and CD. With continuous integration, code changes can be merged with the existing codebase in the central repository without affecting the server uptime. Furthermore, continuous delivery ensures the code changes are automatically integrated into the production server with minimal risks.
Advantages of using the DevOps Model
- DevOps enables faster delivery with minimal risks thanks to the automated workflow process.
- It promotes collaborative work culture between the teams involved with handling the SDLC.
- DevOps also removes communication and data siloes to ensure that efficiency is not compromised.
- The DevOps strategies and workflows can be scaled on the go for deploying code changes, integrating the same with the existing code base, and releasing the changes to the production server.
- Since new features can be made life much faster, DevOps helps enhance overall customer satisfaction and experience.
- With the help of continuous monitoring and testing, DevOps professionals ensure that security protocols are up to date.
Pitfalls of DevOps
- Implementing DevOps is a costly process, which is why it could be better for small-scale projects.
- There needs to be a standardized document or methodology concerning DevOps, making it challenging to decide the success beforehand.
- It requires integrating multiple tools since DevOps is complex and cannot be handled easily.
- DevOps compels professionals to make continuous changes to the codebase and deployment strategies. It can be tricky to understand the modifications if no prior version history is present.
Conclusion
DevOps is a pioneering technology, with a potential to bring a major revolution in the development and IT operations field. Whether its amalgamation of dev and ops teams or automation of builds, tests, and releases, it will help enterprises and businesses to overcome the pain points, including data and communication siloes, production leaks, delays, and demeaning efficiencies. However, professionals should orchestrate appropriate and data-driven action strategies to harness the full potential of DevOps for their IT projects.
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