Brands, enterprises, and businesses need to implement efficient DevOps-driven strategies to stay in sync with the kind of upcoming technological developments that are taking place. Mobile apps and platforms are getting extremely efficient in delivering fast results, therefore one has to focus on implementing highly robust DevOps-driven strategies in 2021.
DevOps is an amalgamation of two entities – development and operations that proudly represents the change it has brought in the IT culture because it has been able to power the speed of IT delivery with a system-oriented approach. The integral components of DevOps are automated mechanisms, accountability, collaborations, integrations, monitoring, transparency, and visibility.
As per the reports published by Research and Market, the market for DevOps is expected to witness a growth rate of 20% between 2018-2022. The whole DevOps community has grown dramatically which has brought drastic changes in the IT industry. In the coming future, it is assumed that businesses around the globe will draw more attention to it because its adoption is inevitable.
Developers are the blood and spine of this software-driven world, without them this digital age wouldn’t have existed; therefore, there is a dire need to understand more and more about DevOps and the trends associated with it so that organizations can keep their head high in the era of the digital revolution. The best DevOps practices revolve around having agile project management, a shift in CI/CD, monitoring, automation, observability, and consistent feedback.
What Does DevOps Do?
DevOps enhances the communication between the operations and development engineers who participate in the same service cycle.
To simplify it further, we can say that DevOps is a business drive that eliminates all the barriers that exist between the development and operation team who make a collaborative effort while working on a specific software application so that they can boost the speed-up and enhance the quality of their software development. This collaboration exists throughout the application’s service life, which means that it exists from app development, testing, deploying, to operations.
Significance and Purpose Of DevOps
DevOps is a cluster of practices that are used to develop, test, and deploy software at a faster rate while ensuring 100% reliability. It eases the friction between software development and IT teams by providing automated as well as integrated solutions. With the help of DevOps, companies can expand because it allows them to deliver applications and services at a high speed. It can help you in renovating your existing business structure and IT processes. The market size of DevOps is expected to expand from $2.90 Billion in 2017 to $10.31 Billion in 2023 at a CAGR of 24.7%. As per Google’s State Of DevOps report (2018), high-performing DevOps teams provide 208 times more and 106 times quicker delivery when compared to low-performing teams. It not only speeds up the market but also delivers high-quality output while lowering the rate of failure.
The Best practices for implementing DevOps
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Agile project management
Agile is a sequential, step-by-step process of repetitive tweaking and improving the software application throughout the process of development. This helps the company in providing value to their customers while delivering it at a faster pace. Agile groups work in smaller fragments or portions as they avoid relying on a single release date. All strategies, plan of action, and requirements are analyzed again and again which allows the team to provide necessary feedback. An agile project management methodology has the following stages – concept, inception, development, release, production, and retirement. Teams breakdown large projects into smaller entities which allows them to make quick changes as the scope for making progress increases drastically. Kanban and Scrum are the two major frameworks under an agile methodology that focus on delivering value in the shortest time.
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Shift left with CI/CD
Shift left with CI/CD implies an early introduction of testing during the process of code development. What is the advantage then? Your QA team doesn’t have to run separate tests and deliver multiple suggestions, you can perform a range of tests throughout the process of coding. Developers can fix bugs and can even enhance the quality of their codes while they work on a specific codebase section. Shift left in software development focuses on quality, prevention of issues rather than detection, and introducing the testing phase much earlier in the service cycle.
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DevOps Tools
A DevOps toolchain must consist of all the right tools for each stage in a DevOps lifecycle, that shall have the abilities to improve software quality and pace of delivery.
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Automated Processes
A consistent integration and fast rate of delivery help the developers in merging codes consistently into the main vault of the project. CI/CD eliminates the need for manual code testing because it automates the whole process. Having the provision to automate testing is very crucial to implement beneficial DevOps practices. These tests consist of end-to-end testing, integration tests, unit tests, and performance tests.
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Monitoring DevOps pipeline and applications
To avoid uncertain delays that can interfere in between due to poor testing and broken build, it is imperative to monitor the DevOps pipeline. Having a robust process of automation enhances the pace of development dramatically but in case there is a failure then you have to do all the work manually. Therefore a constant DevOps pipeline and application monitoring are very important to figure out performance inaccuracies, list of failures before your customers experience them.
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Observability
As the industry has shifted its dependence from physical systems and applications to cloud-based solutions, monitoring and other applications based on microservices have got even more complicated. Therefore, observability has become a very crucial factor. Logs, traces, and metrics are the top key components of observability. Logs include the time data of the functioning of the systems or the applications. Traces monitors the flow of logic that exists within the application. At last, Metrics incorporate CPU/RAM usage, disk space, connectivity, etc. With the information and insights provided by these three components, one can judge the performance and functioning of the system based on which one can make early predictions.
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Flow Of Regular Feedback
With a flow of continuous feedback, your team shall have all the information and details about the tasks they have to perform. This allows the team to achieve the target under a stipulated time period. In terms of development, it keeps the team well-aware of the failures in the pipeline. This also allows the developers to get highly tested, quality codes quickly. In terms of product management, the team remains well-informed of any failures in the production process, it keeps them informed about the existing performance issues or bugs. Years ago people use to say that the development team can either optimize speed or they can optimize quality. With continuous feedback, they can handle both aspects.
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Transforming The culture
DevOps is a collective effort, it should have collaborative efforts from all ends, trust, and transparency. If your company or team is among those who already have these qualities within them, then adoption of DevOps practices can be comparatively easier for your team.
Otherwise, your team or company has to work on these qualities. Low cross-communication, limited ownership, and responsibility can act as barriers. To inhibit successful DevOps practices you have to eliminate these barriers. Implementing DevOps practices is a long-term journey therefore you must focus on your team and its processes while initiating your DevOps transformation. Make sure you incorporate advanced tools, continuous integration, and functionality to develop an efficient team culture.
Conclusion
Traditionally, IT organizations were divided into two teams, the operations team, and the development team. On one hand, the development team used to look after code reviews, software development, etc. On the other hand, the operations team used to look after elements like load balancing, deployment, etc.
Before DevOps, the operations team had to evaluate the performance of the application and report to the development team in case of any issues. This made the life cycle of the project too slow and lengthy. Once DevOps was introduced, it brought a dramatic change in the way teams aligned to function. It created a bridge between the development and operation which boosted the efficiency of app development while keeping it secure as well as reliable.
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