Businesses implement DevOps frameworks to bring their development and operations teams together. DevOps practices have become popular in software development as continuous delivery and Agile principles have transformed the development process.
More organizations are implementing a DevOps methodology in production environments to transform their development processes and work more efficiently. DevOps enables software development and operations teams to practice continuous integration and continuous delivery.
This post will explore the DevOps framework to give your business an understanding of the underlying principles, advantages, and challenges associated with DevOps practices.
DevOps: Revolutionizing Software Development
DevOps is a combination of the words development and operations. You can think of DevOps processes as a marriage between operations and development teams.
These teams were siloed in traditional software development paradigms, even though their work is closely related. DevOps tools and practices merge software development, Quality Assurance, and deployment and integration into a single set of processes.
DevOps frameworks evolved from Agile and continuous delivery philosophies. The underlying principles of the DevOps model include the following:
- Culture
- Automation
- Measurement
- Sharing
If your business wants to enjoy the benefits of DevOps transformation, it is critical to understand the underlying principles of all DevOps models.
Culture
At its core, DevOps is an organizational culture and collaborative mindset that brings the development team and operations team together. DevOps culture is built on the pillars and principles of:
- Constant communication and collaboration – Communication is the foundation of DevOps. Your teams should understand each other’s roles, needs, and responsibilities. DevOps is about creating a cohesive team across formerly siloed departments. You don’t need the latest DevOps tools to foster a collaborative environment. Communication and collaboration must be the cultural cornerstone of your culture before DevOps can work effectively.
- Incremental changes – DevOps utilizes continuous integration and delivery models to roll out changes and release products to users incrementally as they are developed. This enables the development team to make changes quickly as user feedback is gathered.
- Shared project responsibility – Part of forming a cohesive and collaborative team is taking responsibility for a project’s outcome. Each team member has their specific tasks and responsibilities, but ultimately, the entire team must share responsibility for the success or failure of a project.
- Early fixes – Part of the DevOps model is continuous testing. This ensures that problems, bugs, and other fixes are found early and addressed ASAP. The sooner a problem with the project is identified and fixed, the less it costs.
While communication and collaboration are arguably the most critical aspect of DevOps, the other three principles are vital to the ultimate success of a DevOps team. Before paying for the latest DevOps tool or configuration management tool, ensure your organizational culture is aligned with DevOps.
If your internal culture is not aligned with DevOps, no amount of tools or frameworks will help your business implement a successful DevOps process.
Automation
Automation is vital to DevOps. DevOps aims to automate as many processes as possible. Several procedures and processes in development, deployment, testing, and configuration can be automated by leveraging DevOps tools.
The benefit of automation is that it enables team members to focus on important tasks without having to push through the laborious, rote, and time-consuming tasks that can be automated. Automation helps teams work more efficiently and deliver new releases faster.
Measurement
It is difficult to make fact-based decisions without measuring key performance indicators (KPIs). Your organization must measure and analyze KPIs to fully optimize the DevOps workflow.
Measuring performance metrics is a critical component of DevOps. Every decision your team makes should be based on clear data and facts.
Sharing
Sharing is an important part of collaboration. DevOps requires team members to constantly share feedback, knowledge, and best practices. Sharing promotes transparency and collaboration, creates collective knowledge, and reduces team constraints.
By constantly sharing knowledge, the project can continue without missing a beat if one team member is out on vacation or quits their job. Your organization should never find itself in a place where it is reliant on one person to move a process forward.
Sharing knowledge eliminates these common bottlenecks and ensures that organizational processes are not affected by the absence of any one team member.
The Advantages of DevOps
DevOps is more than just a set of actions; it is an organizational philosophy. If your business understands this and fully embraces the concept, there are several benefits associated with DevOps, including the following:
- Faster time to market
- Increased communication
- Less menial work
Faster Time to Market
The first business to get its product to market often enjoys a significant competitive advantage. DevOps helps organizations get their software products to market in less time.
DevOps improves the entire development and deployment process. In addition, it enables teams to rapidly improve products based on user feedback. The result is a product that gets to users sooner and continues to evolve and meet user expectations and demands.
Increased Communication
DevOps reduces or eliminates organizational silos and increases communication and collaboration between teams. Your operations are interconnected, even if they don’t communicate effectively.
The great benefit of DevOps is that it emphasizes communication and collaboration across teams. Ultimately, this leads to the development of better software products and reduces operational downtimes.
Less Menial Work
Thanks to automation, DevOps reduces the menial work required in a software development project. When your teams have less menial work to consume their time, they can work on innovative ideas and learn additional skills to benefit the project team.
Automating menial tasks also helps businesses rapidly develop and release new features for their software, which ultimately aids the time it takes a business to get its product to the market.
The Challenges of DevOps
While the advantages of DevOps outweigh the challenges, there are challenges to consider, including the following:
- Over automation
- Proliferation of tools
Over Automation
Automation is critical to DevOps, but over-automation can lead to issues. For instance, unnecessary automated processes can become unsafe or fragile. This can lead to security issues, code problems, and more.
Proliferation of Tools
While using DevOps tools is beneficial, it is possible to have too many tools. Not only are these tools expensive, but they require team training to effectively use them. The main drawback of having too many tools is using too many resources to purchase solutions and train employees.
In addition, it is difficult to fully utilize DevOps tools when several different tools are in use. This can contribute to over-automation and create additional barriers between processes.
Final Thoughts
DevOps is a valuable practice businesses can implement. However, if your business is interested in DevOps, it is vital to fully align your company’s culture with the philosophy to ensure its effectiveness. If you want to learn more about DevOps frameworks or principles, contact an experienced development partner like Koombea.
