Why Should DevOps Be Made A Part of Productivity-Driven Companies?

Why Should DevOps Be Made A Part of Productivity-Driven Companies?

When managing a digital business, there are plenty of things that needed to be looked after carefully. Business software is an integral part of the business that helps companies to increase their working efficiency and contribute to productivity as well. It is essential to understand that software development is a core component of any business that allows them to put it to optimal use. For efficient and effective software development in the company, you need to practice DevOps as a service.

For those who are new to the IT world, DevOps is simply a corporate culture where the development and operation teams are brought together for software development. DevOps has become a prominent part of the business that enables companies to develop and improve software products to focus on business productivity. It is because of DevOps that companies are able to make their software development approaches more fast-paced than the traditional ones.

What is DevOps?

First, it is essential to know that DevOps is neither a tool nor software; it is basically a culture or process that helps in software development. DevOps brings together or forms a communication channel between the development and operation teams to enhance productivity and collaboration in software development. DevOps as a service has primarily benefitted the company by reducing the time frame and eliminating the inefficiency. The development and testing phase of software go parallelly in order to reduce the friction and early detection of the errors.

Why is DevOps Important For A Company?

DevOps solutions are continuously gaining popularity in the digital business as it holds great prominence in the business industry. Organizations of all sizes and objectives are striving to implement DevOps as a service into their company with a view to achieving the best result in the given budget and time. Software development is divided into different phases, and DevOps makes sure that everything falls into the right place. Right from gathering information to the maintenance phase, every stage needs to be completed effectively. DevOps has benefitted the companies with plenty of things; let’s get to know why it holds a prominent place in software development.

Short Development Cycle and More Innovation

When development and operation teams work separately, there are chances of getting a mixed response from both the teams. The development cycles tend to extend when the development team submit requests. With the joint efforts of development and operation team, applications are developed more quickly and efficiently. It also allows the teams with more time to think about innovative approaches to development.

Better Cooperation

It is essential to bring harmony among the teams that lead to collaborative productivity. There is nothing better than bringing DevOps to improve the communication and cooperation between the teams. The DevOps is more focused on combined performance, instead of the individual goals that help in kindling the team spirit among the teams. Together, they can work to achieve the simulated tasks and handle software development with innovation.

Less Failure, Recovery Time and Reflections

One of the primary reasons for failure in the implementation is programming defects. But, with DevOps, there are no such worries as it provides more efficiency and shorter development cycles. There is a continual development of code versions in DevOps that promote easy detection of code defects an reduce the chances of errors. Recovery time is another notable hindrance in software development, but with DevOps, companies can enjoy faster recovery time that leads to efficient development.

Improved Competencies

It is quite evident to interpret that with high efficiency comes accelerated development and fewer chances of errors. All the above mentioned sums up that DevOps can lead to increased competencies in the business. It is essential to choose a DevOps consulting company that can help you with better understanding the culture and implement it in your company in the best way possible. You can also automate your DevOps goals to reduce the manual work time so that developers can focus on other core components of task completion.

Conclusion

It has become more than essential to establish the right blend of efficiency and output in today’s digital age of business. Software development is no different. It is vital to increase the efficiency, and quality output of a software application to increase productivity. DevOps ensure that company manages all its goals regarding software development. It is a set of processes that allows a reliable collaboration between development and operation teams to achieve a set of tasks. DevOps has radically replaced and improved the traditional software development approach and provided businesses with a brand new and updated version of development.

The above mentioned were some of the ideal reasons why DevOps has become a part of the business processes and why you should start thinking about it.

DevOps Basics: Is Doing DevOps Feasible in the Interconnected World?

The word DevOps is a term derived from the words – development, and operations. 

DevOps is a series of practices and techniques that automates the processes involved between information technology and software development teams, to ensure that they can build, test and release software in a faster and more reliable way.

The concept surrounding DevOps is based on building a culture of collaboration between different teams that functions in relative silos. This innovative concept offers various benefits like increased trust, faster and more reliable releasing of software, quick resolution of critical issues, and better management of unplanned work. All these benefits do not only benefit the teams but also for the entire business.

How Is It Done?

With DevOps, businesses are able to unite agile continuous delivery and automation to help development and operations teams to become more efficient, deliver higher value to both business and customers, innovate faster, and ultimately improve business operations and output.

Doing DevOps effectively would mean integrating and collaborating with entities that are external to your company.

So, how do businesses integrate DevOps in their operations? Here are ways on how this is done effectively.

• The integration of open source code into their code base which is dependent on an open-source community where they write their codes.
• Maintaining a healthy relationship with third party sources while ensuring release schedules as well as tool chains are compatible with their needs as well as their partner’s needs.
• Businesses need to make sure that the applications they work with and deliver are compatible with different operating systems, platforms, browsers, and hardware devices that are controlled by third-party sources.
• Businesses must also comply with the regulatory rules that are provided by third parties and ensure that the delivery chains are able to meet those regulatory requirements.
• Applications must comply with the application programming interface that is designed as well as updated by third parties.

All these tips and tricks in integrating DevOps in businesses will help a business grow and develop. However, businesses need to integrate with as well as to adapt to decisions made by third-party partners. If they are not able to comply, problems like broken code, regulatory compliance issues, and loss of third party partners may arise which will ultimately affect business operation performance and output.

Why Should Businesses Opt for DevOps?

In today’s competitive business industry, more businesses are integrating DevOps into their business. To make this integration a success, businesses must be able to build a culture of shared responsibility, transparency, and faster feedback. 

Operational teams and third-party partners should work hand in hand in the operation. Everyone should be aware of how individual actions affect not only specific teams but also other teams that are involved in the release process.

When there is a lack of visibility, transparency, and shared goals, there is also a lack of dependency planning, misaligned business priorities, and finger-pointing issues. All of such issues will result in poor performance as well as substandard quality.

Release Faster and Work Smarter

Like most industries, speed is everything. Businesses that practice DevOps are able to release more frequently with higher quality as well as higher stability.

When a business does not have any automated tests and review cycles, there will be issues concerning release to production. With poor incident response time will affect not only business timely and quality output but also significantly decreases the confidence of the team, as they are unable to meet standard requirements.

Through automation and proper integration of DevOps, all of these issues are significantly reduced or eliminated and timely release with fewer issues is achieved.

Accelerate Resolution Time and Improve Customer Satisfaction

When resolution time is significantly decreased, this means that there is seamless communication along with full transparency between DevOps teams. As a result, downtime is significantly minimized and issues are resolved faster.

When there are critical issues that are not resolved quickly, customer satisfaction is affected. Such critical issues arise when open communication is absent and this will also result in the increased frustration and tension among teams. 

Implement DevSecOps

So, what is DevSecOps? This is the philosophy involving the integration of security process within the process of DevOps. This concept is focused on the creation of new solutions intended for complex software development process.

Better Manage Unplanned Workload

Yes, every operation often encounters unplanned work. In reality, unplanned work can affect your team’s productivity. With DevOps, your team can follow an established process and clear prioritization, the development team along with the operations teams can better manage such unplanned work while being able to continue to focus on set or planned work at the same time.

It cannot be denied that prioritizing as well as transitioning unplanned work across various systems and teams is inefficient and can distract your team from the work at hand. But, with DevOps, there is a process followed that raises visibility and proactive retrospection, DevOps teams can better anticipate and efficiently share and complete unplanned work.

Start Collaborating Now!

 DevOps helps in speeding up processes from development to deployment. These series of approaches require the development and operations teams communicate seamlessly and frequently so the quality output is achieved.

Selecting the right tools is critical for DevOps to be successful. If your operations need to keep up with the rapid development cycles, they would need highly flexible platforms and automated systems.

So, what are you waiting for? Start collaborating and adapting DevOps culture now!

DevOps Explained: Why Opt for DevOps?

DevOps from the terms, development, and operations and is described as a culture rather than a technique or standard. This concept represents a change in the IT culture which focuses on the rapid delivery system through the integration of agile and lean practices in a system-oriented approach.

This culture emphasizes the people and culture and aims to improve the collaboration between development and operations teams. The successful implementation of DevOps depends on various factors including technology and automation tools which can leverage a programmable as well as dynamic infrastructure. It is used to shorten the software development life cycle through the use of fast feedback loops to deliver resolutions, features, and updates on a timely basis and more frequently.

DevOps History Explained 

The concept of DevOps started long ago and was not created in one instance. Instead, it has been nurtured by IT experts in several disciplines. The two primary antecedents of DevOps include enterprise systems management and agile development.

Enterprise systems management or ESM is one of the foundations of the practices involved with DevOps. In fact, system administrators or operations experts as the primary developer of DevOps has incorporated ESM practices including system monitoring, configuration management, toolchain approach, and automated provisioning into the core of DevOps.

On the other hand, agile development is also associated with DevOps. In fact, DevOps can be interpreted as an outgrowth of agile development, as it involves close collaboration with product management, developers, and customers to fill in gaps, resolve issues, and rapidly deliver better products and services.

Problems Encountered During the Creation of DevOps

Development and operations teams do not always see eye to eye on various things. However, they do agree that the business aspect of the line pulls them in different directions. For instance, end-users often demand change involving new features, new revenue streams, and new services. At the same time, end users also want a system that is stable and free from any interruptions and outages. That said, on the business side of the line, companies are often faced with the dilemma on whether to deliver quick changes with unstable production environment or to maintain a stable but rather stale environment. Neither choice is acceptable to enterprise executives.

Developers would want to push out the software the quickest possible way. On the other hand, the operations team knows that these quick changes have the tendency to destabilize the system. DevOps culture was created to resolve such dilemma through the integration of everyone associated with development and deployment into a single as well as a highly automated workflow with the focus of rapid delivery of high quality and stable software which meets all user requirements.

To minimize problems with DevOps, there is a set of principles that must be considered. These principles include the following:

• Set expectations as well as priorities well.
• Determine the fundamental beliefs that guide the expectations and priorities set.
• Collaborate within as well as between different teams, especially in terms of problem-solving.
• Use automation on common as well as repetitive processes to maximize time and effort.
• Integrate feedback and monitor processes and output.
• Share information with everyone to foster a more effective working environment.
• Allow open communication in one channel.

How Does DevOps Work?

Now that the history, as well as problems encountered in the creation of DevOps, has been explained, it is now time to answer the question – how does DevOps work?

Like other cultures, DevOps incorporates various capabilities into one culture. These capabilities include collaboration, continuous integration, automation, continuous delivery, continuous monitoring, continuous testing, and rapid remediation.

• Collaboration. Instead of finger-pointing, both the development and operations team along with other teams (from creation to implementation) collaborate or work together. Basically, the success of DevOps will depend on how well the teams collaborate across the entire company to get things done efficiently, rapidly, and effectively.
• Automation. DevOps relies on automation which means that you need the right tools that can help transition end to end software development to deployment process smoothly.
• Continuous Integration. Like the agile culture, continuous integration is essential in DevOps culture. In fact, it is one of the fundamentals of DevOps. The continual merging of source codes from all develop into a shared mainline allows the smooth flow of workload even when a new code is added and prevents any catastrophic merge conflicts.
• Continuous Testing. Continuous testing allows the creation of a central system of decision which will help assess business risks associated with every application involved in your organization. When this concept is applied consistently, it can guide the entire team to meet business expectations and provides executives to make informed decisions to optimized business output.
• Continuous Delivery. When continuous delivery is implemented properly, multiple deployments may be achieved that has passed through a standardized test process.
• Continuous Monitoring. Continuous monitoring is essential to detect failures and resolve them in real-time. With continuous monitoring, performance, availability, and stability of software are measured. Root causes of issues are quickly identified and resolved to prevent outages and other complications.

What about DevSecOps?

With DevOps, there is debate on whether it has offered security to applications. With the rapid changes surrounding the concept of DevOps, many security tools as well as compliance monitoring tools are not able to keep up. That said, it cannot be denied that security is one of the biggest obstacle to rapid application development and IT innovation.

DevSecOps is the introduction of security earlier in the application development ensuring that application vulnerabilities are minimized. It aims to embed security in every aspect of the application development process. Core security tasks are automated through embedding security controls and processes early on in the DevOps workflow.

Why Opt for DevOps?

Implementing DevOps allows enterprises to get more done, plain and simple. It offers various benefits including continuous software delivery, quicker resolution time, and less complexity to handle. It also offers team benefits which include higher employee engagement, more productive teams, and more professional opportunities. On the business aspect, DevOps offers faster delivery of features, stability, improved communication and collaboration, and more time to innovate.

Speed Deployment: The Biggest Advantage Of DevOps

As far as computing goes, speed deployment refers to the processes involved in getting new software to function optimally in its environment. This includes installation, configuration running, testing, and necessary modifications.In the context of this piece,it refers to app functionality or the speed with which new computing resources can be deployed in today’s digitized world.

Today’s business landscape requires the use of a lot of applications, most of which are used regularly for tasks of varying degrees. The importance of these apps to business goals makes it imperative that they are forever responsive and constantly updated with the latest tools, trends and cutting-edge features. The reverse will result in the competition taking advantage of this lapse to gain more grounds on the market. Finally, your competition is always out there pushing to take advantage of any misstep you make. This is where DevOps comes into the conversation.

What is DevOps

DevOps is a concept that is essentially the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools which automate the processes between software development and IT teams. It enables the speedier and more reliable building, testing,and the releaseof the software. It essentially increases the ability of organizations to deliver applications and services at high speeds by evolving and improving products much faster than organizations that usethe “traditional” software development and infrastructure management processes.

This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.Companies that incorporate DevOps practices get more done because the concept enables them to run their operations and deliver services innovatively, cheaply, speedily and as quickly as possible. Thus serving their customers better andmore effectively than most of the competition. This way, organizations can deploy new systems in a faster manner that does not sacrifice efficiency but marries innovation and continuous deployment. Based on collaboration and communication, DevOps provide agility, better problem-solving abilities, and room for automatic improvement. The ease with which new features are released and bugs fixed is directly proportional to the speed at which customer satisfaction and competitive advantages are achieved. All these are hinged on DevOp’s biggest advantage: speed of deployment.

DevOps and TheSpeed of Deployment

 Speed of deployment is one of the core DevOps metrics as Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) have now become established business principles owing to the advantages that attendincremental, ongoing changes and deployment. To the uninitiated, CIstands for continuous integration, a practice that focuses on making the preparing of releases easier while CD  is an extension of continuous integration to make sure that you can release new changes to your customers quickly in a sustainable way.

Based on CI and CD, DevOps models allow organizations to innovate for customers faster, adapt to changing markets better, and increase the frequency and pace of releases which by extension improves the products and services being offered. Organizations can release incremental updates and deliver new feature much faster because DevOps eliminates time-consuming tasks from the software developmentprocess because of the automation of processes which reduce the margins of error. The automation of the processes used for frequent small production application changeshelps to reduce the risks associated with large-scale production deployments whilemoving fast and making small changes on the fly. For instance, its automated testing feature allows developers to get quick feedback while its automated integration enables changes to be made to the code base as quickly as possible.

DevOpsencourages speed and flexibility during software development. This flexibility allows software development to continue with little interruption regardless of the changes that may occur in the course of the process. Such flexibility also increases the number of releases of a product and so the deliveries of products are enhanced since new releases and updates can happen at a much faster rate.

DevOps has become irresistible to many companies that deliver software in extremely competitive markets because it reduces the time between inception and value when delivering services. This is because the improved collaboration between development and operational teams greatly contributes to the reduction of time required for software building and bug fixing. Consequently, production cycles are shortened, leading to a better time to market. The speed of deployment changes delivery to meet rapidly changing business, customer, and user needs. Ultimately,  a competitive edge is built and the company stays relevant in its niche.

This is particularly important in today’s digital, mobile-first world where customers need new features and updates as frequently as the current trends demand. These days’ companies need to deploy multiple times in a day to stay relevant in the market. The ability of companies to deliver software to their customers before their competition further entrenches them inan ever-changing market.

Although there are security and compliance questions raised, given the vulnerability that attends increased development velocity. These questions are relevant given the fact that all businesses need security yet the agility and speed which DevOps offers, must not be dropped. There is a solution, an innovation- known as  DevSecOps- adapts security tools, processes, and policies into the DevOps toolchain without slowing down deployment. This means that an integrated DevSecOps team can loop security best practices from the very beginning of the service creation, automate them, and ensure that their progress continues to improve through every iteration while staying abreast of the  DevOps process.

Everything You Need To Know About DevOps

DevOps – Development and Operation is a kind of a software development phrase that stands for the combination of philosophies (cultural), tools and practice used in an enterprise delivery of service and applications at a high speed; at the same time improving the product through the integration of the infrastructure management process and the traditional software development.

The concept of development and operation was founded on the creation of art of alliance between teams which historically must have functioned in a relative siloes. This practice automates processes between the software development and the IT teams to build, run and release software that is of high reliability with high velocity.

How it works

Under development and operation is a model referred to as DevOps model – this model gives room for the success of this software. In the model setup, the two teams (development and operations) are merged into a distinct (single) team and the specialists (engineers) work across the whole application lifecycle – from building to testing/running to releasing/deploying then finally into the operation level with range of developed skills not limited to a specific function.  In some of the other model of development and operation, quality in product and security of team are assured throughout the application lifespan. Security in this is more focused on the team used as they practices to automate historically slow processes and those in manual format. As well during collaboration, teams use technology stack and tools to help in accomplishing tasks, deploying codes, infrastructure, operating and evolving applications quickly.

Development and Operations – a culture, philosophy, and movement.

This software is a strong string between development and operation (as the name implies). It enlarges a changeover in mindset, giving tighter integration and better collaboration as;

• A culture

Culture in development and operation promote the willingness to work and share ideas in teams. This based-culture ensures that the partner developers and the operation staffs of an enterprise accomplish optimal running of software with least possible problems. In addition to this, culture also put focuses on bringing into existence a balanced and faster workflow through the development and the IT operation team. Also, features are deployed into the production processes (without disrupting other services) quickly detect and correct mistakes when found to avoid future problems.

• A philosophy

Principles in development and operations are not based on rigid methodologies and processes rather on a professional principle. Philosophies on these are provided in a way that it helps businesses to unite and breakdown any already established traditional silo.

Benefits of Development and Operation (DevOps)

To every enterprise that incorporates development and operation to their business practice, they are set to enjoy some benefits from this software. There are multiple layers of benefits from development and operation and can be categorized as:

1. Business benefits
2. Cultural benefits
3. Technical benefits

1. Business benefits:

The business benefits are seen as those benefits attached to the organization. There are:

• Improvement in collaboration and communication.
• Speed in delivery of features
• Stability in operating the environment
• Increase in time for innovation
• Cultural benefits

These entails:

• Greater professional development opportunities
• Increase in productivity
• Increase in work engagement of employees
• Technical benefits

Benefits mostly enjoyed in the technical sector are:

• Faster resolution of problems and mistakes
• Less complexity
• Consistency in software delivery

Aside from these few mentioned, the major and the biggest advantage of development and operation is speedy deployment.

Speedy deployment: the Biggest Advantage of Development and Operations

The major reasons for the use of development and operation in company is Speed or Velocity. The speed deployment can be further classified as:

• Speed – Fast time to production
• Speed – Fast time to market
• Speed – Responding to changing market and end-users demands

Speed – Fast time to production

To meet up to the daily goal of an enterprise, project must be done and moved quickly into the production sector. In this sector for things to work out well particularly in accuracy, development and operation software must be adopted to provide services at an exceptional velocity with faster delivery of the features, continuous integration, and automated deployment (to limit the chances to mistakes at the same time returning with an increase in productivity. When the agile methodology of development and operation is used, the IT team work unswervingly with the customers’ demands and expected taste/ wants. Over time dev and ops allow the organization to deliver software sometimes 10X to 100X faster. And when more organization are successfully deploying, there will be no room for failure.

Speed – Fast time to market

 In the review written by the development and operations professionals, it was mentioned that the chance to bring in a new revenue-generating service online is based on the faster configuration management, service virtualization, build automation, release automation and many others that can be found in the development and operation tools. These tools work hand to hand to promote continuous delivery and advocate faster service (10X faster). Also, consistency in this practice, gives high quality software and when delivered contribute to market faster.

Speed – Responding to changing market and end-users demands

The major reason why it is recommended to go for development operations is purposely for the benefits of the customers. Tools and practice that comes with this software allows reduction from whiteboard to production to a phase whereby customers’ needs are responded to with time and also empower a collaborative workforce so as to quickly address customers’ demands.

Devsecops

Devsecops in application development is a technique introduced basically for SECURITY. This model was designed to identify and access management, improve already existing security – by bringing it closer to IT, security team, and business objectives. Also, it minimizes vulnerability – through vulnerability scanning that is enabled programmatically all through the development and operations (DevOps) life cycle.