What is DevOps?
“Collaboration is the key to success” and that is what DevOps does. More than a process DevOps is a culture that brings in collaboration between the “Development team” and “Operations team”; this is also how DevOps got its name. DevOps plays a major role in Agile software development process and organizations use DevOps to develop, test, deploy and maintain applications with greater speed, quality and control.
At Tecziq we offer DevOps as a Service (DaaS) to our customers who deployed application without implementing DevOps.
Why DevOps is required?
#1 Shorter development time, faster delivery
In traditional development lifecycle the development and operations team worked in different silos, leading to more number of development cycles. With DevOps in play development cycles have been reduced and it has helped business to take their application to market quickly and do more marketing related experiments in a shorter duration.
#2 Reduced failures, increased recovery time
The chances of finding errors in code increases with DevOps leading to quicker fixing which makes the development faster. Apart from development getting faster with DevOps the risk of deployment failure is also reduced as there generally are no bug in the release code most of the time. Deployment failures getting reduced means decreased rollbacks and increased recovery time for an application.
#3 Better communication and collaboration
As mentioned earlier in defining DevOps, it is a culture; a culture that enables development and operations team to collaborate and work together to produce desired results. This culture increases the productivity of both development and operations team. There is no wait for results after handing over the application from one team to another and the whole process helps in reduced time to market.
#4 Higher efficiency
Organizations using DevOps use automation tools that help the development teams efficiency as well as productivity. Usage of tools like Appium, Selenium help identify issue quicker than manual processes. The entire development process become faster and less error prone.
#5 Reduce overall cost
With automation in play DevOps help organizations develop and deploy applications faster and with fewer human resources. DevOps thus helps business and start-ups to save money on their application development projects.
Is DevOps different from traditional IT?
DevOps is not literally different than traditional IT, it is more of a value addition to the traditional approach. DevOps is no rocket science, it is just the practices and policies which makes the approach different and better than traditional IT. Some key factors that differentiate DevOps from traditional IT are as follows:
image credit: Credencys
DevOps Lifecycle
DevOps lifecycle is generally represented by an infinity symbol; it stands for continuous improvement. DevOps lifecycle can be defined as below.
image credit: Credencys
DevOps Process Flow
DevOps lifecycle main focus is about driving seamless and fast development process by collaboration between development and operations team through continuous integration, deployment, delivery and feedback. DevOps achieves the pace through the introduction automation in various stages of development. The entire lifecycle of DevOps can be divided into 4 parts as discussed below.
Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration or more favourably called “CI” is a process where development team updates their codes in a repository shared with the entire project team. The code is then tested and validated automatically. This repository has the most updated and validated version of the code and any team member can use it thus reducing delay due to wait.
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Delivery or more favourably called “CD” helps the operations team to automatically build, test, and pack the code changes done during CI for release. CD just like CI automates the delivery process for faster build releases.
Continuous Deployment
Continuous Deployment unlike CI and CD is a process with no human intervention. Continuous deployment involves usage of tools that automate the process of testing and releasing the code as soon as it detects the change in code. Continuous Deployment eliminates the need to schedule release dates and quickens the feedback loop.
Continuous Feedback
Continuous Feedback involves usage of tools that help the operations team to detect bugs in a system and update the development team about them at the same time. It ensures faster and streamlined communication, higher reliability and better security of the software.
DevOps Implementation Points
Implementation of a DevOps process as a culture require some points to be kept in mind for a successful implementation across the organization.
#1 Customer is the king
Any improvement in a process should keep in focus the customer; DevOps implementation should always think from customer point-of-view and work in the direction to invest in services, tools and products which adds value to their business.
#2 Full accountability
Apart from responsibility a sense of accountability needs to be developed in the DevOps team as the team is accountable not only to deliver applications but is also responsible to provide support for the product lifecycle.
#3 Continuous improvement
A process and a product requires to be enhanced and tweaked overtime to achieve optimal value from its implementation. DevOps culture believes in the same philosophy of continuous improvement for which it has the CI/CD process which guarantees to minimize development time and cost.
#4 Automation at its core
Automation is at the core of DevOps. The process of DevOps is incomplete without automation. Automation increases the efficiency and productivity of software development along with optimizing the development cost.
#5 Teamwork
DevOps culture is highly dependent on teamwork. A DevOps team (designer, developer, and tester) sit together and work collaboratively in a single silo to reduce rework, increase efficiency, reduce time to market and improve product quality.
#6 Testing and Monitoring
As DevOps culture believes in continuous improvement, DevOps teams must test and monitor the application on a continuous basis.
What is DevOps as a Service?
DevOps as a service (DaaS) is now adopted by many application development companies around the world because it makes software development faster and risk-free.
DevOps as a service mainly aims towards providing customers with service to migrate their existing applications to the cloud and make it more reliable, efficient, and high functioning. What DevOps as a service achieves is that it makes sure that the changes or actions carried out during the development and delivery of software are trackable.
Through Tecziq’s DevOps as service companies have achieved excellent business value by implementing DevOps strategies such as Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.
DevOps as a Service – the benefits
Some of the major benefits an organization can achieve by implementing DevOps as a service to upgrade their legacy systems are mentioned below.
#1 Better collaboration
Easy, controlled and all time accessibility to Cloud-based DevOps makes it easier for developers, designers, and testers to collaborate without any delay, dependency or miscommunication.
#2 Faster testing and deployment
Automation in testing tools provide great power to the testers to test and deploy a piece of code faster than ever.
#3 Reduced complexity
Complexity of data and information flow in a project with multiple members and team is huge, DevOps reduces that complexity. With DevOps implemented a developer can test his/her code while an operations manager can make changes in the code wherever necessary through code and configuration management tools which save overall development and deployment time as well as make everything easy to understand and track.
#4 Quality conforming to requirement
DevOps being a continuous process focusses on continual quality check and leaves no room for enhancements or upgrades by the end of a software delivery unless there are changes in requirements. This provides highest quality application conforming to requirements within the committed timelines.
Conclusion
DevOps as a service will help your organization grow faster by allowing you to deliver more value to your customers. Outsourcing DevOps services from a reputable company like Tecziq Solutions will help you to keep your focus on our business while the team takes care of product planning, development, testing, deployment, and delivery.
With the ever changing landscape opting for DevOps as Service is your way to customer success whether you are looking for a new application development or upgrade to a legacy application.
