Last Updated on July 11, 2024 by Owen McGab Enaohwo
Recent studies show that implementing DevOps can lead to a 24x faster recovery time and a 2,604% higher change success rate. If you’re looking for ways to increase efficiency in your software development process, then DevOps is the way to go! Read on to learn more about DevOps and how it can improve the software development process.
What Is DevOps?
DevOps is an approach to application development that enables Dev and Ops (Development and Operations) teams to work more efficiently in creating and deploying applications.
This methodology is designed to encourage collaboration between Dev and Ops members, reduce the time it takes for an organization to go from code release to deployment, and automate manual processes.
DevOps further seeks to identify potential delays in software development and technology implementation while providing solutions that minimize the risk of disruptions while increasing product design quality.
DevOps solutions are continuously refined through feedback loops, ultimately helping teams to produce better products faster.
Why Is DevOps Essential?
- It helps companies to maximize efficiency and collaboration by bringing together development and IT operations teams.
- It encourages practices such as automation, continuous integration, rapid deployment, and configuration management so that businesses can respond more quickly to customer needs.
- It enables better communication between developers and operators through more straightforward problem resolution, increased transparency with stakeholders, improved visibility of the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle), and better use of resources.
Ultimately, because DevOps fundamentally changes how a company develops software, it results in faster time to market for applications and improved quality assurance. But how exactly does it do that? By deploying DevOps processes throughout an organization, here are seven ways businesses can gain a competitive advantage in today’s digital world.
How Does It Improve The Software Development Process?
Automation and Orchestration
Automation refers to the use of automated processes to reduce manual effort and speed up the delivery of services; this could involve using script-based tools for deployment or leveraging DevOps platforms for continuous integration.
On the other hand, orchestration breaks down complex tasks into simpler ones that are easier to manage; in DevOps, this typically includes automated workflows that ensure each step on the development journey runs smoothly and efficiently.
Additionally, automation is a crucial part of DevOps because it helps to streamline a software development company’s process by automating mundane tasks like code reviews and deployment processes.
This reduces the manual intervention required from dev teams and allows them to focus on developing higher-quality code in less time.
Lastly, orchestration enables dev teams to deploy applications quickly and reliably in various environments, such as staging or production.
Improved Quality of Deployment
DevOps improves deployment quality by providing rapid feedback loops within each phase while minimizing manual intervention in production systems. But not only that:
- It reduces administrative overhead in deployments by shortening feedback cycles so developers can determine where an issue lies sooner than if they had waited for manual checks to finish.
- It provides better visibility into processes and supportability improvements when problems arise in production.
- It gives developers increased agility and helps reduce risks associated with software changes by streamlining the processes used to move applications through development to production use.
- It helps ensure greater quality assurance during the software development process by enabling developers to test their code at each stage of the SDLC. This results in fewer errors being deployed into production and shorter downtime if something goes wrong.
More Collaboration between Development and Operations Teams
DevOps delves into cultivating a collaborative culture in teams that bridge the gap between developers and IT operations staff. This helps them overcome operational silos and access resources they might otherwise not have. This also pushes teams to integrate systems, processes, and tools to efficiently create value together, leading to higher-quality applications delivered faster.
A popular ride-sharing service demonstrates a real-life example of improved collaboration between dev and ops teams. The dev team realized their users had difficulty finding rides during peak hours due to a lack of availability, so the dev and ops teams worked together to create a new system that allowed them to add more drivers to the platform quickly.
The dev team implemented a feature that allowed users to quickly request rides in advance and let them know when they could expect one. Meanwhile, the ops team developed an automated system that alerted drivers within a particular geographic area when a new ride request came in, enabling more efficient dispatching of cars and reducing customer wait times. This meant more drivers would be available during peak hours, making it easier for customers to find rides quickly, even during busy periods.
In addition, the dev and ops teams also collaborated on improving customer experience by working with various third-party payment providers to provide secure payments for rides. This allowed customers to pay for their rides without worrying about their financial details being compromised or exposed.
By working closely to improve customer experience and driver availability, the dev and ops teams enabled the company’s product offering to become much more competitive. Although they took some time to work out all the details of their collaboration, their efforts were worth it in the end, as they helped make this ride-sharing service one of the top players in its market today.
Faster Delivery Cycles
DevOps strengthens collaboration between developers, quality assurance, and IT operations by leveraging automation processes to expedite the delivery of applications and updates to reduce downtime.
By utilizing DevOps best practices, organizations can accelerate their delivery cycles significantly. Automated tests are vital for DevOps success since they not only allow for reduced time-to-rollout but also ensure that high-quality standards are met without manual intervention.
A global online travel agency demonstrates that DevOps leads to faster delivery cycles. The dev team used automated testing tools to iterate on features and bug fixes quickly. In contrast, the ops team created an automated deployment system to deploy new software updates in minutes rather than hours or days.
The dev team also implemented feature flags, allowing them to release features to users gradually. This permitted the dev team to test certain features before rolling them out widely, reducing the risk of bugs being released into production.
Meanwhile, the ops team worked together with developers to create a unified logging system across all environments so they could easily track errors and performance metrics.
With these improved DevOps processes in place, the travel agency could deliver new software updates more frequently and with greater confidence in their quality. Hence, customers could access new features faster than ever before and enjoy a better overall user experience — leading to higher customer satisfaction ratings and increased usage across all platforms.
Increased Security and Quality Assurance
By using DevOps, organizations can reap both immediate and long-term security and quality assurance benefits, as DevOps encourages an iterative way of developing software that includes regular testing and monitoring.
This means identifying and fixing potential issues much faster than without DevOps — which in turn leads to improved security protocols that minimize vulnerabilities and increase quality assurance for the final product.
DevOps also enables organizations to adjust existing applications with minimal effort when needed quickly, further protecting their users from potential bugs or malicious issues.
An example of increased security and quality assurance can be seen in the case of a large healthcare organization. To ensure patient privacy and data integrity, the dev team implemented an automated testing process, allowing them to quickly detect any potential security vulnerabilities before releasing their applications into production.
Through this process, bugs were identified and fixed much faster than traditional methods, enabling the dev team to release software updates with greater confidence in their security.
But that’s not all — the dev team also integrated automated monitoring tools within their DevOps pipelines, which enabled them to track application health in real-time and detect any suspicious activity that could potentially lead to system outages or data breaches. As a result, they could avoid downtime and keep the organization’s systems running smoothly.
The healthcare organization also adopted feature flags which allowed dev teams to roll out new features while maintaining existing services intact gradually — reducing the risk of releasing bugs into production and allowing for more flexibility when testing different parts in different environments.
Furthermore, by utilizing DevOps best practices such as continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD), dev teams could ensure that only working code was released into production — further boosting the overall security of their applications. In addition to reducing errors and expediting deployments, a key benefit of DevOps is enhancing application security. By encouraging teams to implement comprehensive container security measures, organizations can protect their software throughout the development life cycle, from initial design to deployment. This involves not just automating security processes but also adopting best practices for container security which are critical in today’s cloud-native environments.
Cost Savings from Automated Processes
By introducing automation into the software development process, dev teams can quickly and easily deploy software updates without needing additional resources or labor. This results in fewer hours on mundane tasks such as manual testing, freeing dev team members to focus on more complex issues.
An example is a large retail chain. With automated deployments and testing, dev teams could reduce their production time while ensuring quality standards were met.
This enabled them to increase the speed at which they could deploy new features while reducing their operational costs — leading to significant cost savings over time.
Fewer Errors in Production Releases
Adopting DevOps techniques such as continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) guarantees that only functioning software is deployed in production, allowing developers to stay ahead of the competition — drastically reducing the number of errors in production releases.
For example, a large e-commerce organization implemented DevOps processes to streamline its software development. By automating testing and introducing feature flags, dev teams could quickly identify any potential issues before releasing their applications into production — resulting in fewer bugs being seen once applications went live.
In addition, through automated monitoring tools, dev teams could track application health in real-time and detect any suspicious activity that could potentially lead to system outages or data breaches — meaning they had greater visibility on the overall performance of their applications and could act faster to ensure those applications were running smoothly at all times.
How To Get Started With DevOps?
When it comes to getting started with DevOps, there are two main methods available to organizations: doing it yourself from scratch or opting for DevOps-as-a-Service.
Doing it from scratch requires dev teams to build a complete automated process from the ground up — including all of the necessary tools, such as Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD). This process can be highly time-consuming, as dev teams must carefully design and configure each part of their pipeline. Dev teams must also understand cloud architectures to ensure their deployments are secure.
Actionable Step-by-Step Guide to Doing It Yourself:
- Understand the basics of DevOps – Before beginning the process, it is essential to understand DevOps concepts, principles, and tools. This will ensure that dev teams can make informed decisions when designing their automation pipelines.
- Identify the right tools and technologies – After understanding DevOps, dev teams should identify the best automation pipeline technology stack and tools that fit their organization’s needs. This includes CI/CD tools like Jenkins or CircleCI, version control systems like Git, cloud hosting platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure, and database orchestration technologies like Kubernetes or Docker Swarm.
- Design the DevOps pipeline – Once the right tools have been selected, dev teams should design their pipeline to ensure software applications are built correctly, tested thoroughly, and deployed quickly into production environments with minimal errors. This includes configuring automated build processes for Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD) for quick releases into production, Code Quality Analysis (CQA) to ensure code is up to standards, automated testing frameworks for unit and integration tests, feature flags for gradual rollouts and monitoring tools for real-time application health tracking.
- Automate complex processes – Once dev teams have identified all of their necessary automation steps within a DevOps pipeline, they can automate more complex processes, such as deployment strategies or infrastructure, as code configuration management tasks through scripting languages such as Bash or Python.
- Train new employees or manage a team – To ensure proper implementation of DevOps processes throughout an organization, all employees must understand the importance of these practices and how they fit into company goals. This means dev teams should plan training sessions for new hires on best practices related to DevOps pipelines and ensure existing team members are up-to-speed with any new updates or changes in technology being used in production deployments. Furthermore, the company must have a systemized database to help new and existing team members through the processes seamlessly.
- Monitor progress over time – Lastly, it’s essential to track progress over time by analyzing data from each stage within a DevOps pipeline to determine how efficient deployments are running and if any improvements need to be made in terms of speed or accuracy of builds and deployments across multiple environments (e.g., staging vs. production).
Alternatively, you can opt for DevOps-as-a-Service, which provides an end-to-end managed solution that reduces the complexity associated with implementing DevOps best practices.
This model allows dev teams to quickly deploy applications without needing deep technical knowledge or additional resources.
It also simplifies security compliance requirements by providing dev teams with built-in security measures such as automated monitoring tools and feature flags that enable gradual rollouts — significantly reducing both the cost and time associated with development cycles.
DevOps-as-a-Service can help dev teams quickly deploy applications without knowing much technical stuff.
It also makes it easier for dev teams to follow the rules about security. The bad part is that dev teams have less control over the process and might need more money or resources.
Thus, DaaS might be a good choice for dev teams that don’t know much technical stuff and need help following security rules but don’t want to have too much control over the process.
Learn more about DevOps-as-a-Service here: What Is Devops As A Service? The Really Big (And Fun) Guide
Conclusion
- DevOps is an essential practice for modern software development teams as it helps speed up the process and increase accuracy.
- To effectively implement DevOps practices, dev teams must select the right tools, build a DevOps pipeline, automate processes, train employees and monitor progress over time.
- DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS) can simplify dev teams’ security compliance requirements and reduce the cost and time associated with development cycles — the caveat is that dev teams have less control over the process.
- With dev teams needing to know more technical stuff and comply with tighter security rules, properly implementing DevOps best practices is the key to success in today’s software development industry.
Share this blog post to help other dev teams understand why they should use DevOps best practices in their software development projects!
Author Bio
Donald Garmon is a writer and marketer with an obsession with process-oriented systems. He believes that by utilizing well-structured processes, it is possible to create success in any business endeavor. As an author, he has written extensively on marketing, operations management, and technology. His works have been featured in several leading publications and blogs. When not writing, Donald enjoys traveling and spending time with his family. He is always looking for new ways to innovate and optimize processes, making him an invaluable asset in any organization.