You are running a successful business, but you want to achieve more? You know that the best thing is to use IT to develop your business. Are you thinking about implementing DevOps, but you are not sure where to begin? No worries, we will guide you.
We can’t stress enough how incredible it is that technology affects every single aspect of our lives these days! Would you agree? I mean, until 15 years ago or so, although we had internet, computers, etc., it seemed that we also lived separately from technology. Nowadays, it isn’t the case anymore. Same as with everything else, technology is very present in the business world. You can’t even imagine running a business, let alone a successful one if you don’t use technology. We have to be present online, write blogs, create attractive websites, use the latest software, etc. Otherwise, it would become super challenging to run a business.
Recently, we read about a plethora of businesses adopting DevOps! At the beginning, we were totally confused about how it functions. There are so many tech innovations and creations that it is not possible even to follow everything. But the more we researched, the more it was clear how fantastic this methodology is whether you want to create games such as ultra hot deluxe, or do other things that could be useful for our companies.
So What Is DevOps?
Maybe many of you already know, but let’s explain it just in case. What is DevOps? The term itself was created by using two words – development and operations. It is a shared approach to various tasks performed by IT teams and the company’s software development. Now, you need to remember that DevOps in itself isn’t a technology. It is a concept that helps technologies. In simplest terms, this methodology aims to bring development and operations teams together, so they can create the best quality software. This is not an entirely new tech. However, as of recently, it is spreading super quickly throughout the technical community. If we wanted to describe it in the most narrow terms, we would say that the terms describe the adoption of software development along with automation and programmable infrastructure. It should also build trust and cohesion between developers and operations. Ideally, they should all have the idea of working for one DevOps team.
How Does DevOps Work?
DevOps is a set of practices shared by IT specialists and development engineers who work together during the lifecycle of the project. That means that they are consulting each other on everything from design and development to production release and support. From the beginning to the end of the project DevOps engineer team works together to achieve the desired goal. There are plenty of benefits when you adopt the DevOps framework. For example, one of the most important benefits you get when you put DevOps in action is that it breaks down the Silos. Also, the desired results come super quickly, releasing the final product to satisfy the market, and more importantly, the needs of your clients. In exchange, you get an improved return on investment (ROI). Implementing DevOps also means that there is an improvement in terms of the collaboration between teams.
What Are DevOps Best Practices
People Are the Priority, Processes & Technologies Come Second
You may have heard something similar if someone mentioned Agile Manifesto to you. It is indeed similar because it applies to DevOps developers, too. Everyone who knows about software development knows that people, processes, and technologies are the three things that are most vital for the success of the project. Of course, it is essential to achieve minimal SDLC time and have good tools and technologies. But before that, you need to have a team that is motivated to work together and shares a common goal. Hence, you need to have an excellent management team that will make sure that all teams understand each other and get along.
Visualising the Entire Workflow
There is something incredibly powerful about seeing the entire workflow! When every member of the team knows exactly how the work is progressing, they can know what’s needed to do next. Also, it becomes much easier to identify and deal with whatever problems occur during the process. Apart from that, everyone can understand how things they are doing affect the whole project.
Keep Automating Processes
Automation is one of DevOps’s best practices. Automation reduces the amount of manual work. Ergo, the development cycle is much faster. Of course, you need to make a good analysis to understand what to automate and what not, because you don’t want errors repeating automatically, for example. The best you can do is making automated tests at the beginning. You will need only a few minutes to run each test, which will be a big change compared to manual tests that can last for hours. When you automate tests, you can use DevOps to do the same with the entire software development cycle.
Start Small and Gradually Grow
You probably heard that companies see benefits immediately after implementing DevOps. That is true in most cases. However, you still need to be careful when implementing it. The best thing is to start implementing this methodology in one team. That way, when other teams see the results, they will also want to apply them in their teams. Otherwise, if you just come and say “Okay, from tomorrow we are using DevOps! “, there is a risk of encountering some problems, such as rejection by the employees.
Monitor and Observe Continuously
This is something you must not forget when you implement DevOps. The processes need to be monitored closely and regularly. That is the only way you can recognize problems in time. It will allow you to have more visibility and improve the productivity of your team of DevOps developers.
Conclusion
Maybe you heard about DevOps before, and you are already implementing DevOps. Maybe this information is something new for you. Be as it may, the DevOps methodology is super useful for all types of businesses. To people who are not experienced, it may seem intimidating. However, since you know much more information, will it be simpler to implement it in your company’s team? Have you used DevOps before? What are your experiences?
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About the Author
Darrell is a software developer and freelance journalist who graduated from MIT and living in Chicago. He worked for several companies that implemented DevOps. In his free time, he is writing for our portal.
