You can view DevOps through the lens of software engineering since it integrates the operational workflow of teams and fosters a shared and collaborative culture. In contemporary IT culture, DevOps has led to a transformative cultural change.

It is crucial to understand that DevOps is an Agile software development methodology. It is a dedicated delivery process to facilitate and build cross-functional applications faster. Adapting DevOps software development improves the value and flow of delivering an application. And that’s because the DevOps development approach creates a unified collaborative state across different phases of the development cycle.


Goal and Purpose of DevOps

Whether you want to build lean practices or agile, model DevOps paves the way for incremental development and accelerates software delivery.

A successful DevOps approach comes to fruition when teams hit improved collaboration, exercise empathy, and build a responsible and accountable culture.

Ultimately, adapting and embracing DevOps culture allows enterprises to boost operational efficiencies. It also helps businesses reduce security risks and speed up the delivery of products. Of course, if you need professionals to implement, you can hire DevOps consulting firms like Stackoverdrive.

Importance of DevOps

DevOps allows IT teams to get rid of traditional barriers to collaboration and communication. One of the core values of DevOps is that it improves customer satisfaction and ensures faster delivery. Technically, DevOps is designed to drive continuous process improvement and business innovation.

The same value that improves the delivery process and strengthens communication also ties together with regular product releases and updates. The idea is to use these DevOps values to roll out specific product updates or features as quickly as possible for the end-users.

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DevOps ensures there are no security or quality compromises across different stages. In addition, DevOps is supported by an underlying infrastructure that ensures the reliability and availability of software. As a result, developing, testing, and releasing the software into production becomes easier.

DevSecOps and DevOps: Connect the Dots

Like DevOps, DevSecOps is a separate software development culture that makes the entire application highly secure in the early stages of SDLC. In DevSecOps, teams integrate security tactics into the DevOps development process.

From the very start of an SDLC, DevSecOps utilizes various methods to make the application secure. With DevSecOps, you can automate and personalize different aspects of security. DevOps requires using new tools, technologies, and methods. In layman’s terms, DevSecOps falls under the umbrella of DevOps methodology.

As a DevOps extension, DevSecOps is an integral aspect of the software development lifecycle. Without DevSecOps, DevOps teams wouldn’t be able to meet security compliance requirements from the start of the application development. In fact, DevSecOps allows DevOps teams to safeguard the integrity and reliability of the software.

Once the integrated security is flawless across the DevOps workflows, it allows enterprises to gain heightened visibility and assume more control to take care of complex security needs. Whether it’s auditing or reporting, security teams utilize DevSecOps to ensure seamless enforcement of all policies across the development, testing, and deployment stages. DevOps teams can implement DevSecOps in cloud-native, on-premise, and even hybrid environments – It will still improve the control over the SSDL.

Understand the Role of a DevOps Engineer

DevOps engineer follows the standard DevOps principles and methods. In fact, engineers are responsible for efficiently and accurately integrating the DevOps development processes into dedicated workflows. DevOps engineers also make the most out of automation while testing and reviewing the code.

When it comes to the software development lifecycle, most of the burden of responsibility falls on the shoulders of the DevOps engineer. DevOps engineers are responsible for building, reviewing, executing, and updating platforms and tech tools relevant to the IT infrastructure. In addition, DevOps engineers spot and resolve technical problems and manage software releases for end-users.

CI/CD and DevOps

In line with today’s software development process, CI/CD is one of the main components of DevOps. After all, a purposeful CI/CD- platform accelerates the development time by streamlining workflows, increasing efficiency, and boosting productivity.

Once app development scales up – the CI/CD features start eliminating development complexities. It makes all the more reason to adopt the best DevOps practices to create strict feedback loops and improve security parameters. Ultimately, DevOps teams can scale up safety, leverage CI/CD, and break down the development silos.

Fundamentals and Mechanics of DevOps

3 Essential DevOps Methods

Agile

Agile involves shorter and faster software development lifecycles rather than extensive and complex development methods. However, traditional agile development methods still influence current DevOps practices. Both Kanban and Scrum DevOps methodologies integrate the agile programming elements.

Kanban

Kanban stems from the gained efficiencies on the factory floor. Kanban refers to the current software state that gets tracked via the Kanban board.

Scrum

Scrum involves “how” team members can collaborate in order to speed up the QA projects and development process. Standard Scrum practices involve key workflows, designated roles, and explicit terminology.

DevOps Phases

It has been interesting to see the evolution of DevOps in the last few years. DevOps divides into four distinct phases such as:
  • DevOps Bring Your Own Phase
  • DevOps Do-it-yourself Phase
  • DevOps Best-in-class Phase
  • DevOps Platform
In comparison, the DevOps Platform phase gets the most attraction because it empowers IT security, operations, business, and software team. DevOps platform increases visibility and gives more control to teams across the software development lifecycle. And more empowerment to these teams means more chances to collaboratively build, secure, and roll out software across the system. DevOps platform is a dedicated application with a unified user interface and SaaS deployment. DevOps platform helps teams address vulnerabilities and inefficiencies in the toolchain.

What Does it Take to Build an Effective DevOps Culture?

Building a sophisticated and effective DevOps culture takes proper planning. The trick is to make the most out of DevOps methodologies and their attached values. Building and adopting the “right” DevOps culture is bound to improve the bottom line of the company. In most cases, upper management favors a positive cultural change. Practically, it makes more sense to ensure the adoption of DevOps on an individual level to smooth out the development process and provide added support to different business areas. Teams can harness the power of DevOps to identify bottleneck issues and break down these problems.

DevOps Best Practices

All DevOps practices represent continuous automation and improvement. It is also vital to note that DevOps practices can revolve around one or more phases of the development cycle. Enterprises can follow the best DevOps practices to build a robust DevOps culture:

Continuous Integration

CI practice combines configuration management tools and other test tools to determine the developed code in the production. CI involves prompt feedback across the testing and development processes in order to address code issues.

Continuous Testing

CT practice integrates prescheduled and automated code tests in the form of application code. These types of tests increase the code delivery to production.

Continuous Development

CD practice extends to the planning and coding stages in the DevOps cycle.

Continuous Monitoring

CM practice involves monitoring ongoing coding operations and infrastructure. It works around feedback that highlights the bugs and issues in the development.

Continuous Delivery and Deployment

CD practice automates the changes in the code delivery “after” testing and preproduction. A team member can use the process and approve new code changes into production. Like continuous delivery, continuous deployment practice automates the release of changes or new codes into production.

Infrastructure as Code

Teams can use this practice in different DevOps phases in order to automate the infrastructure. Developers can also integrate infrastructure code from the current development tools.

DevOps Benefits

Improve Product Quality

DevOps helps teams be at the forefront and understand customers' changing requirements to deliver the best quality of product via smaller releases. DevOps improves collaboration across IT operations and development teams, creating opportunities and further improving the quality of the product.

Accelerate Development Process

One of the hallmark benefits of implementing DevOps is that it speeds up the entire development process. In fact, adopting a DevOps culture improves delivery times, which leads to higher customer satisfaction and helps enterprises gain a competitive edge.

Ensure a Stable and Secure Work Environment

DevOps environment stabilizes the operational work environment. Once you’re on top of product updates and fixes – it boosts productivity. Unlike conventional delivery methodologies, DevOps ensures continuous delivery of solutions and products.

Solve Problems Efficiently

The feedback loop is essential to make sure technical problems are addressed in the early stages. And DevOps ensures effective and swift resolution of technical issues. DevOps allows teams to utilize an accurate feedback loop to maintain open communication and ensure high customer satisfaction.

Make Automation Part of the Development Process

With DevOps at the center, automation can become part of the entire development process and drive more innovation. Objectively, automation help teams save a lot of hours by eliminating repetitive and manual routine processes. But DevOps works wonders only when you build tools suitable to your business needs rather than adopt the practice just for the sake of it.

Reduce Operational Costs

One of the perks of adopting DevOps is that it helps enterprises cut back on production costs. DevOps allows teams to streamline the entire development process. And the more communicative and collaborative DevOps environment – the more production costs enterprises can reduce.

Boost Productivity

DevOps translates into transparency and reliability. DevOps allows teams to break down data silos and improves communication and collaboration, which increases productivity standards.

Upscaling Project

When DevOps enters the picture, you can scale up any project by maintaining seamless communication between all teams and streamlining the process. Once there are fewer production disruptions, you can move forward with upscaling by ensuring a stable and secure environment with minimal risk.

More Innovation

When you’re dealing with unified operations and the development process, it creates more room for expansion and innovation. DevOps developers can utilize production data in real-time to understand the impact of changes on an application in an instant. Fortunately, IT teams now understand the short-term and long-term benefits of adopting a DevOps culture. Enterprises continue to look for better ways to develop software and minimize errors. It takes continuous effort and dedication to cultivate a result-oriented DevOps culture in the early stages.