DevOps

DevOps is a set of practices, tools, and cultural philosophy that automate and integrate processes between software development and IT teams. It emphasizes team empowerment, cross-team communication, and collaboration with technology automation.

The DevOps movement started around 2007, expressing concerns about the traditional software development model where software development and IT operations communities, developers who write the code, operations that deploy and support the code worked separately. The term DevOps, a combination of the words development and operations, reflects the process of integrating these disciplines into a single and continuous process.

How Does DevOps Work?

The DevOps team includes developers and IT operations working collaboratively throughout the product lifecycle to increase the speed and quality of software distribution. DevOps is a new way of working, a cultural change with significant impacts for teams and organizations they work for.

Under a DevOps model, development and operation teams are no longer "isolated". Sometimes, these teams merge into a single team in which engineers work throughout the application lifecycle from development and testing to delivery and operations, and have various multidisciplinary skills.

DevOps teams use tools to automate and accelerate processes, helping to increase reliability and stability. A DevOps toolchain assists teams in addressing crucial DevOps fundamentals such as continuous integration, continuous delivery, automation, and collaboration.

DevOps values ​​are sometimes applied to teams outside the field of software development. When cybersecurity teams adopt the DevOps approach, security becomes an active and integrated part of the development process. This is called DevSecOps.

DevOps Life Cycle

Due to the “continuous” nature of DevOps, teams use the infinity loop to demonstrate how the stages of the DevOps lifecycle are interrelated. While the cycle seems to flow in order, it symbolizes the need for continuous collaboration and iterative improvement throughout the life cycle.

DevOps Infinity Wheel

The DevOps lifecycle consists of eight stages representing the processes, capabilities and tools required for development (on the left side of the cycle) and operations (on the right side of the cycle). At each stage, teams collaborate and communicate to maintain alignment, speed, and quality.

1. Discovery Stage

Developing software is a team sport. Before starting a project, members of DevOps need to prepare; they should organize and prioritize ideas by conducting workshops for exploring. Ideas should be compatible with strategic goals and should be able to impress customers. Agile can help guide DevOps teams.

2. Plan Stage

DevOps teams should adopt agile practices to increase speed and quality. Agile is an iterative approach to project management and software development that helps teams break down work into smaller pieces to ensure continuous value increase.

3. Development Stage

GIT is a free and open-source version control system. It provides excellent support for branching, merging, and rewriting the repository history, leading to many innovative and powerful workflows and tools for the build process.

4. Scaling Stage

Continuous integration (CI) allows multiple developers to contribute to a single shared pool. Automatic tests are conducted before the integration to ensure accuracy when code changes are merged. Merging and testing the code generally helps development teams gain confidence about the quality and predictability of the code after it is released.

5. Deployment Stage

Continuous delivery (CD) allows teams to frequently automate the features they develop into production. Teams also have the option to offer new code to users not at once, but regularly and methodically. This approach increases the speed, productivity, and sustainability of software development teams.

6. Management Stage

The stage where the end-to-end delivery of IT services to customers is managed is called the management stage. This includes practices related to the design, implementation, configuration, deployment, and maintenance of all IT infrastructure supporting a company's services.

7. Observation Stage

Issues affecting product uptime, speed, and functionality must be quickly identified and resolved. To ensure the services provided continue smoothly, the team needs to be notified automatically about changes, high-risk activities, and failures.

8. Continuous Feedback

DevOps teams need to evaluate each release and generate reports to improve future releases. Teams can improve their processes and use customer feedback as a basis to improve the next release by continuously collecting feedback.

DevOps Tools

DevOps tools address the core stages of the DevOps lifecycle. They help to improve collaboration, provide automation, and observability.

DevOps tools usually follow two approaches: all-in-one or open toolchain. All-in-one toolchain generally offers a complete solution that does not integrate with other third-party tools; an open toolchain allows customizations by permitting integrations with different tools. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages.

What are the Benefits of DevOps?

In a 2020 DevOps Trends survey conducted by Atlassian, 99% of respondents indicated that DevOps had a positive impact on their organizations. Some of the advantages offered by DevOps are as follows:

• Speed and Agility: Teams implementing DevOps deliver software releases more frequently, with higher quality and stability. The continuous deployment method allows teams to build, test, and deliver software with automated tools.
• Improved Collaboration: The foundation of DevOps is a culture of collaboration between developers and operation teams who share responsibilities and combine their tasks. This makes teams more efficient and saves time.
• Fast Delivery: DevOps teams rapidly develop products by increasing the frequency and speed of releases. An competitive advantage can be achieved by rapidly releasing new features and fixing errors.
• Quality and Reliability: Applications such as continuous integration and continuous delivery increase the quality of a software product by ensuring functional and secure changes. Monitoring helps teams get information about performance in real time​.
• Cyber Security: DevSecOps plays a role as an active, integrated part of the development process by integrating security into the continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment pipeline. This makes the workflow secure.

What are the challenges of adopting DevOps?

Breaking habits is hard. Teams accustomed to isolated work style may struggle and even resist to overhaul their team structures to adopt DevOps practices. Some teams might believe that these new tools coming with DevOps are enough to adopt DevOps.

However, DevOps is a combination of people, tools, and culture. Everyone in the DevOps team needs to understand the entire value stream from idea generation to end-user experience. It requires breaking down silos, that is, isolated work modes, to collaborate throughout the product lifecycle.

For further reading about DevOps, you can check out the content prepared by Atlassian here.

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