DevOps Lifecycle and Its Phases

DevOps is an incredible methodology featuring various tools and practices. It combines your development and operation teams for better collaboration. This offers plenty of benefits for your organization, including faster development cycles, improved deployment frequency, and enhanced product quality.

However, you should know that DevOps isn’t a one-step process. Instead, the DevOps lifecycle comprises different stages you should know for a successful implementation.

To help you in this regard, we will discuss the DevOps lifecycle and how it benefits your organization. Continue reading.

What is the DevOps Lifecycle?

Typically, a DevOps Lifecycle is a series of interconnected processes and practices. It includes continuous software development, integration, testing, deployment, monitoring, and feedback.

The DevOps process covers everything from the developer to the user. It’s primarily known as a system that unifies operations and development teams and ensures smooth collaboration between them.

What Are the Phases of the DevOps Lifecycle?

The DevOps lifecycle includes several phases: planning, development, integration, testing, deployment, monitoring, and feedback.

Each of these phases is underpinned by foundational principles known as the “7Cs”: Culture, Collaboration, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery/Deployment, Continuous Testing, Continuous Monitoring, and Continuous Feedback.

Let’s discuss each phase and its corresponding principle in detail:

#1. Planning Phase

The planning phase in a DevOps Lifecycle revolves around designing the whole map for the DevOps project. In this, all stakeholders participate in regular meetings to discuss project scope and strategies.

They collectively decide the deadline for tasks, resource allocation, and key metrics to track. Here’s an overview of some important KPIs for DevOps that are set in the planning phase:

• Deployment Frequency: It’s the rate at which code changes are introduced into the production environment or to the end users.
• Change Lead Time: CLT is the time from when the DevOps team works on a new code or changes to when it’s provided to customers.
• Change Failure Rate (CFR): It determines the number of changes or new features that failed after they were provided to the end user.
• Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR): MTTR refers to the time your DevOps team can take to recover a system from a sudden hiccup or failure.

This thorough planning ensures everyone on the team is well aware of their responsibilities and aligns their efforts with overall project objectives.

#2. Development Phase

In the continuous development phase, developers collaborate to create codes for your IT infrastructure and wrap them into executable packages. This is also known as collaborative coding when more than one person is working on a piece of code.

Developers rely on a version control tool or system to efficiently manage and track changes to the codebase. These version control systems are software solutions enabling multiple developers to work on various parts of the code simultaneously. Some specific tools that you can use in the development phase are Docker or Jenkins.

#3. Integration Phase

The integration phase, or the Continuous integration stage, is an important part of the DevOps lifecycle. It’s a practice in which developers merge their codes into a central repository. Once codes are combined, automated testing is done to check the credibility of the code to ensure it doesn’t fail in the staging or production environment.

There are various DevOps tools used to automate the continuous integration process, including CircleCI, Azure, and GitLab. They make sure your software solutions are high-quality and align with the end user’s requirements.

#4. Testing Phase

As the name suggests, the continuous testing phase in the DevOps life cycle is the rigorous testing of each software solution for continuous and fast delivery. It’s totally automated and carried out at different stages of the SLDC.
Automated testing aims to quickly identify any loopholes and areas of improvement in your codes and report them to the developers for a fix. Here are some types of automated testing in DevOps:

• Unit Testing: Unit testing focuses on small and discrete units of the code. In this, individual systems, like specific functions or classes, are regularly tested in isolation from the rest of the IT system to check their performance.
• Integrated Testing: Integration testing, as pretty much visible from its name, refers to tests that are run to check whether components work together as expected. This testing ensures smooth communication between different modules and components of the software product, verifying them correctly as a unified system.
• End-to-End Testing: Another type of automated testing is end-to-end testing, which evaluates the entire software application from start to finish under real-life circumstances. In this, the DevOps team simulates what a real user scenario exactly looks like and tests the entire application flow.

#5. Deployment Phase

The fifth DevOps lifecycle phase is when the software or application is prepared for the production environment. It is at this stage that continuous delivery comes into play. The CD automatically modified and packaged software and deployed it into the production area. The major goal of CD is to cut down costs, accelerate deployment, and lower the risks of code failure or poor quality.

DevOps teams also use other methods like blue-green deployment to minimize downtime. In this method, two identical environments, blue and green, are maintained. The blue environment, for instance, is used to attract and serve traffic using older application versions.

While the green environment is to test new features or a new version of the application or software, once the new system is verified, the traffic is shifted from the blue to the green environment, which enables a smooth transition with minimal disruption to end users. Here are some other deployment strategies that you can use:

• Canary Release: Canary release is a step-by-step process in which new features or updates are first rolled out for a smaller customer section. Once it shows the desired results, you can then share it with a larger audience.
• A/B Testing is an old yet quite effective deployment method. In this method, two different versions of an application are given to each group. You can analyze user behavior and satisfaction data to determine which version best meets the customer’s needs.

There are various strategies for deployment and product delivery. However, it’s suggested that you understand your key requirements and choose the method that best aligns with your project goals.

#6. Monitoring Phase

The monitoring stage of the DevOps lifecycle is where applications and software are observed and evaluated to spot and address issues as they arise. This is also known as incident response and may involve gathering information on various aspects, including CPU usage or disc space, to make sure all systems work at their best. Let’s look at the types of DevOps monitoring:

• Application Monitoring provides information on how your application performs, including app uptime and security. It also informs you about any issues like slow loading times or sudden crashes.
• Synthetic Monitoring: This monitoring type utilizes user behavior patterns to simulate user interactions with your website or applications to get a detailed idea of its performance.
• Network Monitoring: As the name indicates, network monitoring revolves around evaluating various network components like routers or servers. It tracks bandwidth and latency to prevent network-related problems.

We have also listed some key benefits of continuous monitoring for your entire DevOps project:

• Continuous monitoring paves the way for early detection of issues, which leads to quick resolution and minimal downtime.
• By monitoring anomalies and suspicious activities, DevOps monitoring detects and reduces security threats, protecting your applications from cyber attacks.
• It provides you with real-time insights into system performance to optimize resource usage and improve efficiency.

#7. Feedback and Optimization Phase

The seventh and one of the most important phases of DevOps lifecycle is the continuous feedback and optimization phase. During this stage, user feedback is collected to see how well your applications or software solutions meet their needs. The feedback is shared with the key stakeholders, and the applications are then fine-tuned to enhance their functionality, positively impacting the user experience. Following are a few methods to collect feedback from customers for continuous improvement:

• Unstructured: Monitoring social media channels for user comments, complaints, and suggestions provides valuable insights into user sentiment and issues.
• Structured: Conducting surveys and utilizing tools like Jenkins and Docker helps gather structured feedback and shape your services according to user preferences.

Benefits of DevOps Lifecycle

The benefits of the DevOps lifecycle include greater automation, faster and high-quality software delivery, high customer satisfaction, and many more. However, we have discussed a few ones to help you understand the importance of the DevOps lifecycle for your organization:

Great Automation

Manually performing technical tasks makes them prone to errors, which deflates customer expectations and exhausts organizational resources. DevOps lifecycle offers a ray of hope in this situation. It automates most of the repetitive and time-consuming tasks involved in the software development and deployment processes, reducing the risk of human error and increasing efficiency.

Stable Workplace Environment

Another benefit of the DevOps lifecycle is creating a stable workplace environment. How? Well, it connects both development and operation teams so they work collaboratively. They share responsibilities and keep an eye on key insights, creating a peaceful and positive workspace. This prevents silos and communication gaps that lead to a more cohesive environment.

Faster Software Delivery

To win the hearts of your customers and stay ahead of your competitors, you must deliver products faster and without compromising quality. DevOps lifecycle makes this happen! During this, each software and application undergoes strict testing and automated testing that speed up the development and deployment processes significantly. In addition, once the application is deployed, feedback is collected that further drives improvements.

Cost Reduction

The best benefit of the DevOps lifecycle is that it significantly reduces organizational costs. Yes, it’s true! DevOps frees your teams from manual and repetitive tasks by automating various processes throughout the software development and deployment lifecycle.

This frees up additional labor costs and the expenses associated with frequent recruitment. Furthermore, it results in fewer errors, reducing the cost kinked with rework and downtime.

Best DevOps Lifecycle Strategies

If you are all set to implement a DevOps or software development lifecycle in your organization, the following are some best practices that will help you:

Focus on Observability and Find the Right Metrics

Without proper monitoring and observability in place, your DevOps initiatives may fail. Therefore, you should first adopt proper observability measures to understand what’s happening in your infrastructure, applications, and services. In addition, you should also define some key metrics that give you information about the health of your system. Although these metrics vary from organization to organization, some common ones include:

• Frequency of deploys: The number of times your DevOps team has deployed a new feature or update in the production environment. Typically, high-performing teams deploy once a day or week.
• Deployment failure rate: It’s the number of incidents or issues that occurred in your deployments. It can be determined by dividing the total incidents by the number of deployments.

Incorporate Security at the Early Stages of the Software Development

You may not know this, but in the complex IT or digital environment, your applications are prone to cyber-attacks. Hackers with malicious aims are always ready to target any sensitive information that puts your company and customers’ data at risk. Therefore, to avoid this, instead of introducing security at a later DevOps pipeline stage, you should incorporate it at the start of the development process.

For instance, you can implement security controls, conduct regular security assessments, and incorporate security testing into your CI/CD pipeline. You should also ensure that access to critical data is given to only specific team members. This will reduce security concerns and help you maintain your reputation as a reliable business.

Conclusion

The implementation of the DevOps lifecycle in your organization offers you numerous benefits, ranging from enhanced collaboration to quicker and more reliable and faster delivery. However, if understanding and incorporating DevOps seems like a hassle, you should reach out to Hicron Software House. We offer comprehensive DevOps services, handling your applications or software from start to finish. Our services cover every aspect, including continuous deployment, exploratory testing, security, and compliance with top standards. Get in touch with us today to get guidance from experts at each step to lead your business to glory!