DevOps. Have you ever come across this term earlier?
These days, it becomes a buzzword across the organizations who are aspiring to tie up with the reliable IT outsourcing service providers for software development. DevOps has gained tremendous fame in the last five years by enabling companies to achieve scale.
Previously, agile practices were in demand for successful project execution and delivery. Well, DevOps does not replace Agile practices. But, it definitely provides extended support to complete the project effectively by establishing next level collaboration and communication amongst the businesses and software service providers.
Let's start with what DevOps is all about.
What is DevOps?
The name itself suggests that it is something related to development and operations. DevOps provides a set of processes and philosophies that drive a cultural shift to an organization by promoting collaboration between the development and operations team. It contains dour key components such as collaboration, culture, practices, and tools.
DevOps as a Service, a relatively new discipline, enables organizations to deliver high-quality software, improve time to market, boost productivity, reduce operational cost in order to serve their customers efficiently and stay competitive in the market. Moreover, it helps in a faster software release, unplanned work management, solve the critical issues quickly, and gaining trust & confidence.
For the effective collaboration amongst the development and operations teams, DevOps provides a variety of principles and practices. In this post, we are going to cover # best DevOps practices that one should not ignore.
8 Best Practices That Every Enterprise Should Know Before Adopting DevOps as a Service
#1. Test Automation
In order to compose quality code, developers need to test the software regularly. DevOps allows for early testing that gives developers an opportunity to identify and resolve the issue during software development rather than later in the process.
Automated testings allow for quicker execution of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) in comparison to manual testings. Test automation can be applied to the database and networking changes, middleware configurations, and code development using regression testing and load testing.
Test automation can be accomplished by performing varied activities such as identifying test scenarios and cases, choosing the right set of tools for automation, setting up an appropriate test environment, running test cases and analyzing results.
#2. Integrated Configuration Management
Configuration and change management are integral parts of the operations. Configuration management is about automation, monitoring, management and maintenance of system-wide configurations that take place across networks, servers, application, storage, and other managed services.
Integrated configuration management enables the development teams with a bigger picture. It allows to utilize the existing services during the software development rather than investing time and efforts in reinventing the new services from scratch.
#3. Integrated Change Management
Change management is a process in which configurations are changed and redefined to meet the conditions of dynamic circumstances and new requirements. During the configuration management, if any changes are required then change management comes into the picture. The operations teams provide their inputs on what opportunities and consequences the change might expose at the wider level and what other systems could be impacted.
#4. Continuous Integration
It is a DevOps software development practice where the development team regularly updates the code changes in the repository after which the automated builds and tests run. Continuous Integration practices allow developers to carry out integrations sooner and frequently. Whereas CI tools help them to detect the integration challenges in new and existing code and solve them at the earlier phase only. Thus, CI improves collaborations amongst the teams and ultimately builds a high-quality software product.
#5. Continuous Delivery
Continuous Delivery is a DevOps practice where the newly developed code is updated by developers, get tested by the QA team at the different stages by applying both automated and manual testings, and once the case passes all the testings, it gets into the production. It allows the development team to build, test and release the application faster and frequently, in short cycles.
It helps organizations to increase the number of deliveries, reduce manual works, minimize the risk of failure during production, and more.
#6. Continuous Deployment
The deployment process contains varied sub-processes such as code creation, testing, versioning, deployment, post-deployment, etc. In the continuous deployment process, the code is automatically deployed in the production environment once it successfully passes all the test cases in QA, UAT, and other environments. A lot of tools available that perform continuous deployment start from staging to production with minimum human intervention.
#7. Application Monitoring
App infrastructure monitoring is very crucial to optimize the application performance, whether it is deployed on the cloud or local data center. If a bug hits the application during the release process, then it will be turned into the failure. So, it is very important for the development teams and operations teams to consider proactive monitoring and check the performance of the application. Various tools are available for application monitoring that offer a lot of metrics related to applications, infrastructure, sales, graphs, analytics, etc.
#8. Automated Dashboards
Leverage the DevOps intelligence with the automated dashboard. It will provide the data along with detailed insights and reports of every operation such as the number of tests run, tests’ durations, the number of failure and success in testing. It allows to review configuration changes made to the database and server and deployments that have taken place across the system.
The dashboard acts as a centralized hub that enables the operations team with real-time data insights which help them in selecting the right set of automation tools testings. Moreover, there are varied logs, graphs, and metrics that enable operations teams with a holistic view of changes happening in the system.
Summing Up
DevOps as a service is a culture that most of the software development companies are aspiring for in order to deliver high-quality application by establishing transparency and open collaboration across development teams and operations teams. DevOps practices allow for incremental implementation so organizations do not need to make required changes and updates from the beginning. Following the above mentioned DevOps practices, IT service providers can ensure to develop and deliver robust software solutions that help companies to achieve their business object effectively.
DevOps practices allow for incremental implementation so organizations do not need to make required changes and updates from the beginning. Following the above mentioned DevOps practices, IT service providers can ensure to develop and deliver robust software solutions that help companies to achieve their business object effectively.
Author Bio:
Sandeep has more than 2 decades of experience in creating world class teams and driving innovation through cutting edge products and mobile app development solutions. He is passionate about creating new technology solutions and delivering “Great Customer Experience” by evangelizing “Ubiquitous Mobility”.
Being a CEO of the mobile app development company - Credencys, Sandeep helps clients to bridge the execution gap with services including: Consulting, Design & Architecture, Product strategy, software development, DevOps, Managed Services. With a motto of ‘Go Digital, Sandeep delivers an Extraordinary Customer Experience to its every client. Connect with Sandeep at sandeep@credencys.com.
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