Demystifying The Buzzworthy Idea Called ‘DevOps’
DevOps Model
Despite the prominence of Agile Methodology, development and operation teams were isolated, didn’t share information and communicate. The integration of both teams to solve the dysfunction in the industry brought about the acronym DevOps.
While there are several definitions for DevOps, I consider it to be a blend of cultural philosophies, practices, and collaboration tools that increases an organization’s ability to release better quality applications and services with high velocity. The speed leads to better customer satisfaction as requests for features or updates are deployed to production rapidly in a repeatable and automated way which in turn helps organizations compete more effectively in a dynamic market.
DevOps — Under the hood
DevOps is a mixture of changing corporate culture and new technologies which involves embracing open communication, collaboration, transparency, and cross-discipline teamwork between the development and operation units for the most part. Occasionally, the two units are merged into a single unit where all parties involved work across the entire application lifecycle, some models tightly integrate other units as well like the Quality Assurance and Security.
These teams use practices to automate repeatable processes that have been manual, slow, and prone to errors. The new cross-functional technologies and tools used help teams operate and deliver applications and services reliably and quickly thereby creating continuous value for customers.
DevOps is visualized as an infinite and incremental loop of activities that include plan, code, build, test, release, deploy, operate, monitor, and then back to plan.
Benefits of DevOps
· Speed: The DevOps Model uses several tools and technology stack to innovate and deliver applications and services to customers faster, adapt to changing markets better and grow more efficiently through automation at driving business results.
· Rapid Delivery: The DevOps Model breaks the application lifecycle into smaller modules which increases the frequency and pace of releases which in turn makes innovating and improving products faster. The quicker the team can release new features and fix bugs, the faster they can respond to customer feedback and build a competitive advantage.
· Reliability: The DevOps Model uses several tools and technology stacks to automate several processes and get rid of errors, this ensures high quality of applications and infrastructure changes to reliably deliver while having a seamless experience for end-users. Monitoring and logging can give real-time performance information to help decision-making.
· Scale: The DevOps Model uses several adaptive tools and technology stacks that operate and manage infrastructure and other processes at scale. Automation helps manage complex or changes system requirements efficiently and with reduced or no risk at all.
· Improved Collaboration: The DevOps model fosters cross-functional collaboration which builds an effective team that emphasizes values such as ownership of processes and accountability. This eliminates inefficiencies and saves time since there is transparency in their interactions.
· Security: The DevOps model can be used without trading off security by using automated compliance policies, fine-grained controls, and configuration management techniques.
