Most fast-paced IT companies are often on the lookout for streamlined ways to deploy new products quickly while maintaining existing ones without much fuss. DevOps provides an ingenious solution in this regard by facilitating collaboration between a company’s software development and IT operations teams.
In an organization, the Dev team is the team in charge of software development. The Ops team on the other hand manages the software testing and operations.
Read on to know what DevOps is, how it works and how it can help your business?
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a method of software engineering that integrates software development (Dev) and software operations (Ops) to encourage a culture of cooperation, collaboration, and shared responsibility.
Using DevOps practices allows both Devs and Ops to increase the efficiency, security, and speed of software development as well as delivery, compared to the traditional method where both teams have no contact with each other until necessary. DevOps allows the two teams to work together to optimize the Dev’s productivity and the Ops’ reliability.
DevOps also integrates other teams within the organization such as the Quality Assurance team and the Security team. This ensures that all teams take full ownership of their services and see the entire development cycle as part of their various responsibilities.
DevOps Implementation Services
DevOps Implementation Services are offered by organizations that are experts in DevOps culture and philosophy. They assist businesses and companies to implement DevOps principles and practices to help them deliver optimum solutions to their customers.
This implementation services inculcate DevOps practices into a business’ system, following this roadmap:
- Assessing a business to check if it needs DevOps
- Analysis to dismantle silos in organizations and practice team collaboration
- Selecting compatible tools to ensure a smooth DevOps journey
- Focusing on end-user satisfaction and ensuring integration, monitoring, and continuous delivery
- Obtaining review and feedback during each stage of implementation
If you are keen on adopting standard practices to foster team collaboration and enhance software quality, we offer a complete solution that will enable DevOpssucceed in your organization. Contact us today and let’s get started!
DevOps Tools
DevOps tools are applications that assist in automating the software development process. They focus on cooperation between professionals in software development and operations, as well as in product management.
DevOps tools aid teams in automating software development processes such as building, deployment, dependency management, and conflict management amongst others.
These tools address the key phrases in the DevOps lifecycle which include:
- Planning
- Building
- Continuous integration and Continuous delivery
- Monitoring
- Operation
- Continuous feedback
Here are some of the best DevOps tools available:
Some tools are better adapted to handling certain aspects in the DevOps lifecycle depending on your business needs.
Reasons for Companies to Implement DevOps
DevOps is rapidly replacing the traditional method where the Devs team and the Ops team are “siloed” and operate separately. It is more efficient, reducing the time it takes to deliver high-quality software. Below are other reasons why companies should implement DevOps:
1. It maximizes efficiency through automation
Implementing DevOps manages engineering processes from end to end, which helps to deploy software more frequently and securely by automating software development and operations processes.
2. It improves the stability and speed of software development
The collaboration of teams involved in DevOps ensures that any software produced is deployed quickly and updated as needed. This is hugely beneficial, especially in fast-paced organizations.
3. It facilitates better collaboration
By eliminating communication barriers and bringing teams into contact, DevOps improves the communication between them and allows them to share resources easily. It gives teammates a chance to work directly with each other rather than through a rigid chain of command.
4. It reduces recovery time
Implementing DevOps practices helps to minimize the impacts of deployment failures on the overall efficiency. This is achieved by shortening development cycles and releasing new versions more often, thereby significantly reducing the average time for detecting errors. This makes it easier to spot the slightest code defects as early as possible.
DevOps Model
DevOps Models, also known as DevOps topologies, are the various team structures used to implement DevOps within an organization or company.
Since the primary aim of DevOps is to enhance value delivery for the business and its customers, different organizations can have different topologies or models suitable for them to achieve effective collaboration between Devs and Ops. The following are the most commonly used models in organizations:
1. Dev and Ops Collaboration
In Dev and Ops collaboration, the Dev team and the Ops team share when needed. This model requires strong technical leadership to work.
2. Fully Shared Ops Responsibilities
In this model, there is very little distinction between the Devs and the Ops because all of them are focused on a shared purpose. It is also known as ‘NoOps’ and it works best for organizations with one main web-based product or service.
3. Ops as Infrastructure-as-a-Service
Ops as IaaS is a model that treats Operations as a team that provides the elastic infrastructure where applications are tested and deployed. It then uses another team (usually one within Dev) as a source of expertise on operational features, monitoring, metrics, and server provisioning among others.
This model is best suited to organizations with numerous different solutions, or whose applications run entirely in public clouds.
4. DevOps as an External Service
DevOps as an external service is a model where the Devs team of a small organization reaches out to a service provider to help them handle the Operations aspect of software development.
5. DevOps Advocacy Team
The DevOps Advocacy Team is used in organizations with large gaps between the Devs and Ops teams. It exists on an ongoing basis intending to enhance collaboration and cooperation between Dev and Ops teams. They bridge the gap between the two teams and spread awareness about DevOps practices.
DevOps Practices
DevOps practices are the different forms through which DevOps is implemented in an organization. These key practices assist organizations in innovating faster through the processes of streamlining and automating software development. Below are some of the best DevOps practices:
1. Continuous Integration
Continuous integration is mainly used to track how ready a code being developed is for production. This practice aims to find and address bugs quickly, identify and resolve code issues, improve software quality and reduce the time it takes to release software updates.
2. Continuous Delivery
Continuous delivery is a DevOps practice that is used to automate the release of new code changes after testing in preparation for production release.
3. Infrastructure as Code
Infrastructure as a code is used during various phases of DevOps to automate the provision and management of infrastructure required for a software release using code and software development techniques.
4. Microservices Architecture
Microservices Architecture is a DevOps approach that considers a single application as a collection of small services. Where each service interacts with the other services through an interface, using a lightweight medium such as an HTTP-based API.
Each service has a single purpose. Different programming languages can be used to write microservices and they can be deployed independently or as a collection of services.
DevOps Principles
DevOps principles are methodologies that guide the efficacy of software development and deployment. They include:
- Creation of a collaborative and cooperative environment
- Implementation of End-to-End responsibility
- Constant and continuous improvement
- Waste minimization
- Customer-oriented plans
- Acceptance and learning from mistakes
- Teamwork
Key DevOps Strategy Takeaways
Below are some tips to help you to implement a successful DevOps strategy or practice:
- Encourage minimal viable product initiatives to ensure that results show, no matter how small
- Ensure that your implementation is specially adapted to the areas lacking in your business
- Create a centralized dashboard so that you can track your overall progress
- Set up an internal DevOps community in the organization to help comprehend the activities of other teams and facilitate effective information and resources exchange
- Know that DevOps is never a one size fits all program. The strategy to be implemented is based on the needs of the organization.
Conclusion
The world of software development and operations is evolving and new methods of doing things effectively are being created daily. DevOps is one of these methods.
Find the best structures for your organization and implement them. Don’t forget, we are a click away from providing professional solutions and answers to every inquiry you might have.
To your growth!