Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Blog Summary: This blog is a handbook covering significant philosophies, principles, & practices of DevOps methodology necessary for an organization to deliver software solutions at high velocity. Explore why it develops software at a faster pace and evolves management processes.
Transformation of processes is pivotal to the success of a business/organization. If the processes are not aligned, your final product will suffer. Synapses often occur because of the lack of coordination between teams in the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC).
The primary reason behind miscommunication is the siloed architecture of traditional management processes. 50% of organizations find siloed architecture the key challenge in delivering value to their customers.
Ultimately, the delays in software releases are reflected in the final product. Hence, SDLC teams & processes must ensure that they minimize project risks to meet customer expectations beyond production.
Over these last few years, software companies have felt the need to adopt DevOps, a continuous process of developing, deploying, and maintaining a software product.
77% of organizations say they depend on DevOps to deploy software or have plans to adopt it.
In this article, we’ll look at the principles, & practices that make DevOps so efficient. So stay tight, & keep reading!
DevOps is a modern software development approach that builds and deploys software solutions at a faster & more efficient pace. At the heart of the methodology lies removing all barriers between the development & operations teams of a software project’s SDLC.
It’s often referred to as the DevOps culture as the entire approach changes under this mode of software development process. DevOps teams work in tandem to produce results on time & acquire the desired software quality.
Products are released faster to market & the deployment pipeline becomes smoother as the operation team meets every immediate requirement of the development team & vice versa.
Take the first step to unlock the power of Agile processes and streamline your software development life cycle.
The paradigm shift the DevOps culture has brought in IT environments is remarkable. This is credibly due to its underlying philosophies that give due importance to people & processes.
Let’s look at the core values of DevOps methodology.
Throughout the software development process, the development & operation teams work hand-in-hand to establish results efficiently. Every internal or specialty product team knows what’s happening in the other team. This real-time understanding helps the operation teams to manage infrastructure & digital environments effectively. In contrast, the development team can proceed without facing a server breakdown or network crisis.
The guiding philosophy of Agile DevOps revolves around satisfying customers & delivering software products that are of the highest quality. The deployed product receives further feature integrations & updates once customers use it & share their feedback about the product. Several channels, such as surveys, forms, MVPs, etc., are used for gathering customer feedback to incorporate them into the final product.
In the DevOps vision, there’s never a period attained when a software product doesn’t require updates or code changes. With continuous feedback, there’s always room for improvement in building software with the right infrastructure configuration. Improving the code quality enhances the user experience & hence consistent code integration is necessary.
Without a siloed structure in the workflows, every team member can view the progress of the individual tasks of each member. It creates a distributed sense of accountability. Additionally, it also makes it easy to identify the teams that are falling behind or unable to complete their tasks. Thus, it leads to a software project’s timely completion because teams can address the issues.
The use of the right IT tools is facilitated to enforce the DevOps culture. Several types of tools are used depending on the functionality to be covered. For instance, Jenkins is used as a continuous integration tool, whereas Puppet is used as a configuration management tool. Kubernetes is used for containerization purposes & so on.
To operate by the DevOps culture & its underlying philosophies, a set of DevOps principles have to be adopted. Software development can be facilitated fully when the development and operations teams stay put to the principles. Enlisted below are the fundamental DevOps principles.
Development teams & Ops teams must stay updated about each team’s current project progress status & the underlying parameters that determine the success of the particular task. Smooth collaboration & communication channels must be established to avoid confusion midway & hence build quality software.
Code superiority can be attained only with frequent code updates & optimization. Minor code edits/changes can significantly overhaul the performance of an application. CI/CD practices are constantly implemented in the DevOps model as they help to address constant consumer demands & provide them with tailor-based solutions.
DevOps automation is fundamentally a methodology that streamlines and automates tasks across the entire software development lifecycle. Most of the software development, deployment, & post-launch maintenance processes are automated using automation tools. To keep the QA in check, automated tests are run. It saves a lot of time & coding effort, giving developers the time to focus on areas where coding is required.
When implementing agile development of software applications under the DevOps approach, errors can happen anywhere in the pipeline. That’s why one of the key DevOps principles is consistently monitoring the pipeline. While doing so, technical failures & performance deficiencies can be identified & rectified on time.
DevOps is not a one-day means of attaining the entire concept of working in harmony & complete transparency, it’s an ever-growing process. As teams begin to respect each others’ work & contribution to the software development lifecycle, the essence of DevOps is achieved. By experimenting consistently with which tools and practices are the best for a suitable project, you can maximize the efficiency of DevOps.
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The DevOps lifecycle comprises a series of steps/stages that necessarily help to complete the software project within the allotted time. There’s one common factor that ties these steps & it’s the term ‘Continuous.’ Let’s look at the 7 stages involved in a DevOps software development lifecycle.
The first stage of the DevOps lifecycle focuses on deriving the vision for the entire project & establishing KPIs. It’s the planning & research phase for estimating the budget, & project completion time. Projects are divided into smaller tasks & milestones are fixed to implement continuous development. When all the parameters are set, coding begins.
Coding is facilitated with small sprints, just as in the case of agile development, to ensure that all the required features are incorporated. It also helps implement changes easily whenever there’s a modification needed.
We enter the continuous integration stage after the primary round of continuous development. To improve the code that’s initially built, code modifications are performed. All errors that can be identified are rectified via unit testing & new updates/functionality is integrated. This is a continuous process that happens throughout the entire software development lifecycle.
Continuous integration & testing go hand in hand with the DevOps approach. Whenever a new piece of code is developed, or microservices are built, they are tested before it’s integrated into the original code. DevOps automation tools such as Jenkins are used to identify potential errors & rectify them. DevOps developers also use Selenium to test code to ensure that the code functions well across multiple browsers.
Upon testing of the code, it’s released into the production environment to see how the performance goes. Infrastructure configuration management is critical in this stage & that’s where the operations teams come in. They manage the servers & interact directly with the DevOps teams to facilitate continuous deployment of the code effectively. Here’s where the essence of DevOps emerges as products are deployed faster owing to the smooth bypass between Dev & Ops teams.
Upon the release of the software project, studying customer behavior is important. It helps determine the loopholes in code and the rewriting process begins to improve the functionality. Feedback can be collected via forms, surveys, and other means such as emails and social media. Continuous delivery results from gathering customer feedback and implementing that feedback for improved projects. Hence, this stage is of utmost importance.
Once the app is fully deployed, there needs to be continuous monitoring to ensure that no technical issues or server breakdowns happen. Security vulnerabilities are sought during the monitoring stage & wherever a threat is encountered, precautionary steps are taken to remove it. Automation tools are used to perform effective monitoring.
The last stage of the DevOps cycle is a continuous operation. The continuous check on the application’s performance & regular updates leaves very little upfront maintenance required for an uninterrupted user experience.
You can leverage great benefits by adopting the DevOps methodology to facilitate your software development process.
With DevOps practices such as CI/CD, code optimization, infrastructure-as-code, & use of automation tools like Jenkins, Docker, etc., products can be developed with superior ease & deployed fast.
The DevOps approach enables your teams to become adaptive to various project requirements and successfully solve team problems. It helps them implement code changes effectively with better collaboration & communication skills.
As the development & operations teams are constantly in touch with each team’s current tasks & progress, there won’t be any failures. The Ops team knowing the technical requirements of the Dev team ensures that the right amount of infrastructure support is there. Also, since every code is tested before deployment, the workflow isn’t disrupted.
Anyone working on a particular task can view what their team is working on & align with the goals of the organization. There’s complete transparency & no team is isolated from the rest. Whenever a project scope change or significant functional modification is required, all the teams know it.
As the software products developed undergo several minor code changes & integration via agile sprints, the final product will prove valuable to the customers. With feedback being incorporated from the surveys & forms, users can expect all their opinions to be integrated into the apps.
DevOps culture requires you to select the right tools needed for code build, release, test, maintenance, & operations. Using the proper set of tools saves time & boosts the productivity of the teams. According to your organizational requirements, you can choose the suitable toolchain. Common choices of tools for different phases of the DevOps lifecycle are Jenkins, Docker, Puppet, Kubernetes, Terraform, etc.
A project’s SDLC of IT organizations often has development teams and operations teams working on different responsibilities. However, they lack a shared understanding of building software. Adopting the DevOps culture to its trust essence is worthwhile, but you can start with baby steps. At Moon Technolabs, we provide DevOps consultation services by thoroughly understanding the framework of IT organizations and suggesting ways to incorporate the DevOps culture.
Jayanti Katariya is the CEO of Moon Technolabs, a fast-growing IT solutions provider, with 18+ years of experience in the industry. Passionate about developing creative apps from a young age, he pursued an engineering degree to further this interest. Under his leadership, Moon Technolabs has helped numerous brands establish their online presence and he has also launched an invoicing software that assists businesses to streamline their financial operations.
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