DevOps Development Process - a Game-Changer for Your Business

It goes without saying, the world of information technology is developing very rapidly. A wide variety of educational programs, forums, hubs, conferences are constantly opening up more and more new faces for this field of business. Recently, the IT market has been literally buzzing with the term DevOps and related development processes.

In large companies, where every dedicated expert is responsible for their piece of work, all processes are set up so that employees do not interfere with each other. This seems like a good option to avoid conflicts. But only at first glance. In fact, it turned out that developers and system administrators, for instance, can often overlap in work, and they don’t know how to interact properly.

This issue gave a push to the appearance of DevOps. This is a marketing name, which today can be associated both with the type of internal culture of the company and with a separate profession.

What is DevOps?

Initially, DevOps (development and operations) appeared as a culture of behavior within the company, according to which the communication between software engineers and system administrators should have a well-adjusted, clear format.

If you delve into the history of the origin of this phenomenon, DevOps comes from the principles of the so-called "flexible development". In 2001, the Agile Manifesto was issued. It is a set of proposals for improving the development process, as well as an attempt to find new methods of work in the IT field.

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The main Agile undertakings:

• People and close interaction between them are more valuable things than processes and tools.
• An effective product is more valuable than supporting documentation.
• Customer interaction is more important than settling agreement conditions.
• Flexibility in the development process is more important than strict compliance with the plan.

DevOps technologies appeared a little later but became an excellent confirmation of many theses from the Agile Manifesto. After all, it prioritizes the relationship between people in the company. Correct interaction destroys the barriers within the enterprise. It is only necessary to correctly use and select the tools for its proper adjustment.

In general, the DevOps methodology is a series of practices that should reduce software development time, as well as improve the updating processes. But as it turned out, including administrators and developers in the process is not enough to set up the devops process properly.

You need qualified specialists who can set up infrastructure and then adapt the necessary software for it. Our company has extensive experience in implementing this technology, and we know for sure how it benefits business from different domains.

Today, experts acknowledge that it is very difficult for large businesses to do without DevOps. Small companies can also achieve a more effective combination of personnel, different work processes and tech moments, but DevOps isn’t such a necessity for them. Implementing the best practices DevOps, the team will be able to master concepts such as regular synchronization and quality coordination at all stages of development.

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Surely, at first, it may not be easy for employees. It will be necessary to establish a new workflow rhythm, introduce new habits. But after a very short period of time, this state of affairs will set up stability in the actions of personnel and control in the development of complex products. According to statistics, the number of companies implementing DevOps is increasing by 7% annually.

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There are a few clear rules for a company that wants to comply with devops responsibilities:

• Formation of a clear goal(s);  
• Understanding of the goal by all team members;
• Clear and regular communication, constant sharing of work results;
• Gaining an ability to react promptly to the appeared issues.

By the way, corporations such as Google and Netflix have long implemented DevOps technology to establish an internal corporate culture. And judging by the successes of these companies, they are quite pleased with such innovations.

Also read: How to Hire a DevOps Engineer

DevOps from Development to Production Process

To fully implement DevOps in the company workflow, management will need to work hard. But this work will quickly pay off and bring the expected results. To do this, you need to adjust processes.

Selecting efficient tools

One universal set of tools required for DevOps has not yet been identified, but most often used and efficient tech measures include:

• Server for continuous integration. It will process the new software code much faster, with the speed of continuous delivery.
• Software monitoring tools for tracking software performance and availability issues.
• Automated testing tools. They should be used to test how the software works in different environments.
• Software for the exchange of information. They will help improve communication within the team, as well as between different working groups.
• Software for orchestrating applications. Such tools are very useful for significant software deployments.

Defining the devops environment

For everything to work clearly and smoothly, it is also necessary to think over the type of infrastructure that will ensure the proper level of work of the tools. There are also some controversial, but very useful options, such as:

• IaaS cloud infrastructure is very popular. It can guarantee high scalability as well as good transportability.
• Serverless computing can also speed up the devops software development process well with an event-based model.
• Docker containers have proven their worth in terms of continuous delivery. With their help, it becomes easier to run designed software anywhere.

Reorganizing the team

As already mentioned, the implementation of DevOps can be a little stressful for the team. Fortunately, many unpleasant aspects can be avoided if you seek help from specialists. You do not need to hire new personnel, introduce new positions or reassign employees to new places.

A professional team will help you choose the best devops tools and reorganize your IT group so that new effective ways of exchanging data between specialists from different working groups appear.

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Approaches may vary. For example, some software engineers can spend some more time in the service department. You may have to introduce systematic meetings for employees from different departments.

There are many methods that are used to organize DevOps in companies of different sizes and directions. Much is selected individually for the needs of a particular company and team.

Establishing feedback reaction

The means for high-quality communication of IT specialists alone will not solve the problem of information exchange and development process definition. In order for everything to work correctly, and not bring new problems, you must configure the process of reacting to responses.

The solution may be in regular meetings. With their help, working groups can discuss newly identified tasks and challenges. right there on the spot, joint efforts can be made to develop elimination plans or solutions to issues.

The team must constantly consider feedback, respond to inquiries and, if necessary, quickly make improvements. That's what DevOps is for. Using it, you can properly set up these processes and stop missing important intermediate data.

DevOps for web development

DevOps technology is excellently used in web application development. For example, internal corporate chats and programs for keeping records of eCommerce transactions. DevOps tools allow you to quickly and efficiently establish the infrastructure in which the application will operate automatically. This greatly speeds up work.

For instance, for the uniformity of the environment, you can use Docker. After creating certain functionality, the software engineer sends the code to the repository. Further, accordingly, the devops implementation plan begins the process of continuous integration and delivery.

When the installation and automatic verification are complete, the testing process begins using DevOps tools (for example, Selenium). It automates the actions of the browser in the case of the application.

If problems arise during manual testing, the software engineer can quickly make changes and issue updates. This happens at lightning speed, even in the case of several repetitions.

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Highlighting the benefits of DevOps projects is quite simple. After all, there are many excellent reviews from companies that have successfully implemented this methodology. In practice, of course, everything is more complicated, because you need the right approach, a set of tools, an appropriate infrastructure and staff readiness.

Summary

The DevOps phenomenon is the most vivid representation of the principle "People and interaction are more important than processes and tools." Large companies often start from the opposite. This is a pretty controversial decision. Indeed, strong interaction, cooperation, communication in the process of project implementation can significantly accelerate many working moments in DevOps companies.

The DevOps methodology has taken root so well in companies of various sizes that it has transformed into a separate specialization. This is probably due to the fact that the process of establishing relations between departments and specialists is not so simple and requires constant adjustment.

But this only confirms the fact that organizations that want to increase productivity simply need to take advantage of modern developments. For this, there are companies that professionally set up the DevOps process to help QA and development team.