The business world is experiencing rapid growth, with companies striving to stay ahead of each other. In such a competitive environment, having your operational and development teams working in silos can lead to inefficiencies, hampering your ability to deliver high-quality software or products.
However, there’s no need to stress about this challenge. The DevOps methodology stands out as the best solution in this regard. It focuses on improving business operations and reducing downtime, which is why many companies are adopting DevOps.
Let’s discuss what DevOps is in detail, along with its key principles and benefits.
The term DevOps combines development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams. The purpose of this merger is to combine these two critical spheres of the business and bring them under unified leadership. It helps shorten the overall product lifecycle while also equipping the DevOps teams to deliver new features and fixes to the end users frequently.
The key goals of DevOps involve faster development of software and other IT solutions without compromising on quality. Here’s an overview of where DevOps can help
There are a few key principles of DevOps that make up the basis of the whole process. These include smooth collaboration, automation, continuous delivery, and communication. Here’s a detailed explanation of each point:
This is the most important principle of DevOps. DevOps work to break down traditional silos between teams and replace them with an engaging and collaborative workspace environment.
Automation in the form of Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration is also important in DevOps. Codes must be deployed quickly into production, and each integration must be error-free. This lessens manual errors and speeds up the whole software delivery process.
Communication is key, and its role is undeniable for your entire development and operations teams. Teams are encouraged to present their ideas and ask questions related to any issues. Continuous feedback is also given to make timely changes in the products, and in case of a failure, there’s a sense of shared responsibility and no finger-pointing.
Infrastructure as Code provides infrastructure via codes instead of traditional manual scripts. It’s critical in DevOps and allows you to create consistent and repeatable configurations, reducing the risk of discrepancies in the application development, testing, and overall DevOps environment, and helping businesses scale quickly.
The DevOps approach isn’t a one-step process; it involves a series of steps that vary from planning to testing and deployment. Let’s discuss the stages of the DevOps methodology in detail:
The many DevOps or software development methodologies range from Agile to Lean and ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). Let’s discuss them in detail and how to integrate these with your DevOps strategy:
The Agile DevOps methodology has its roots in the software industry. This term was first coined in 2001 and has four fundamental principles:
However, in literal terms, agile methodology refers to a project management approach in which a project is broken down into small parts for continuous improvement. These small and manageable chunks are called sprints and align well with DevOps principles of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. Agile practices help in the rapid delivery of incremental changes that keep end users happy.
Lean is another DevOps methodology which is an evolution of the Toyota Production System that a Japanese automaker implemented during World War II to improve overall efficiency.
Typically, Lean involves working on optimizing production by visualizing and distributing work in a way that is sustainable and valuable. It reduces waste and ensures efficient usage of available resources. The Lean Enterprise Institute states:
“Simply put, lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources.”
Integrating this methodology in DevOps allows for efficient operations, eliminating waste, reducing lead times, and boosting overall productivity.
ITIL, or Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is another DevOps methodology. It’s a framework for different IT activities to meet business goals. Integrating ITIL with DevOps results in a symbiotic relationship that allows DevOps teams to capitalize on the best of both platforms. They enjoy benefits like standardized processes, maintaining compliance, and achieving high service quality.
Now that you are aware of what DevOps mean and DevOps methodology options, here are the key DevOps tools and technologies to use:
Let’s discuss these in detail.
Jenkins is an incredible open-source Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery tool that streamlines most of your business tasks. It was first developed in 2004 by Kohsuke Kawaguchi and is written in Java language. It automates and speeds up the software deployment process.
As developers commit code to the shared repository, Jenkins checks it for errors. In case of a failed build, this tool notifies the developer for a quick fix. The best part? It can be easily installed on Windows, Mac, and Unix operating systems, catering to a diverse user base.
Kubernetes is another open-source DevOps tool that automates the deployment and management of containerized applications. It allows you to make changes to your application or its configuration during different phases of the DevOps lifecycle. In addition, it monitors the health of your applications with automated rollouts and rollbacks to ensure smooth updates.
This tool provides each set of pods with its own unique IP addresses to facilitate easy load balancing. What truly sets this tool apart from many others is its self-healing capabilities, which pave the way for smooth application operation and automatically fix any issue that may arise.
Jira is a great DevOps tool that was built in 2002 as part of Atlassian tools. It’s a good help in planning and monitoring your DevOps projects. You can also use it to create different dependencies.
There’s a drag-and-drop feature that enables you to change the dates for tasks per the business requirements. It’s an open-source DevOps toolchain featuring a backlog that enables project managers to highlight the complexity of each task.
The benefits of DevOps are manifold, including quick software delivery and improved collaboration between the development and operations teams. Let’s discuss these benefits in detail:
The challenges of the DevOps methodology include a complex business environment and high system costs, which are hurdles to its success.
To make sure your DevOps culture is the ultimate success, here are a few best practices you should follow:
Moving away from traditional silos requires careful planning and proper trust. Therefore, instead of rushing to adopt the DevOps methodology, you should start small. For instance, you should first experiment with DevOps for a small project to let your team learn DevOps philosophy and make adjustments without putting additional pressure on your organization. Once your team is well-adapted and you’ve gained the trust of all stakeholders, you can expand DevOps adoption.
Automation is important in DevOps. Therefore, you should automate most repetitive tasks like testing, deployment, and monitoring of software to reduce errors and free your team’s time for strategic work.
Don’t forget to implement DevOps practices like continuous testing at each stage of the DevOps lifecycle to ensure code changes are automatically tested. This enhances the efficiency of your software while minimizing chances of downtime.
Customers are the lifeblood of your business. That’s why you should always prioritize customer satisfaction. For this, you should establish feedback loops to understand customer needs and preferences. You should also collect information about where customers face issues and implement this feedback in your software development lifecycle. This will make it easy for you to meet and exceed customer expectations, which is necessary for business success.
It has become essential to adopt the DevOps methodology to take your business on the road to success. DevOps increases the efficiency of your software development and deployment pipeline and meets customer expectations.
Wondering which company to choose as your DevOps partner? Hicron Software House is the answer. We have skilled DevOps engineers who take care of your applications from design to deployment and even maintenance. Our experts leverage advanced security tools to guarantee the safety of your software solutions. So why wait? Contact us today and bid farewell to downtime and an inefficient software development process.
Hicron’s contributions have been vital in making our product ready for commercialization. Their commitment to excellence, innovative solutions, and flexible approach were key factors in our successful collaboration.
I wholeheartedly recommend Hicron to any organization seeking a strategic long-term partnership, reliable and skilled partner for their technological needs.
After carefully evaluating suppliers, we decided to try a new approach and start working with a near-shore software house. Cooperation with Hicron Software House was something different, and it turned out to be a great success that brought added value to our company.
With HICRON’s creative ideas and fresh perspective, we reached a new level of our core platform and achieved our business goals.
Many thanks for what you did so far; we are looking forward to more in future!
Hicron is a partner who has provided excellent software development services. Their talented software engineers have a strong focus on collaboration and quality. They have helped us in achieving our goals across our cloud platforms at a good pace, without compromising on the quality of our services. Our partnership is professional and solution-focused!
The IT system supporting the work of retail outlets is the foundation of our business. The ability to optimize and adapt it to the needs of all entities in the PSA Group is of strategic importance and we consider it a step into the future. This project is a huge challenge: not only for us in terms of organization, but also for our partners – including Hicron – in terms of adapting the system to the needs and business models of PSA. Cooperation with Hicron consultants, taking into account their competences in the field of programming and processes specific to the automotive sector, gave us many reasons to be satisfied.
