DevOps is a word bandied about in the development world as being demonstrative of a software company’s maturity. But what exactly is it? Is it a principle, a process, a methodology, a toolset? In fact, DevOps can be described as a combination of all of the above. But above and beyond all that, it’s about bringing stable software to market faster.
Faster delivery times on software products? No wonder DevOps is hot. But it suffers from a definition problem.
“There is no consensus of what concepts DevOps covers, nor how DevOps is defined."
-A Qualitative Study of DevOps Usage in Practice (2017)
Let’s explore this topic a little further to try and determine how exactly DevOps works - in our own words.
DevOps = The fusion of software development & operations
First, let’s start with the literal definition of DevOps. The word itself is a mash-up of Development and Operations. We are indeed bringing software development and operations tasks together throughout the lifecycle of a software product.
What this means in practice is that, for changes to the codebase, we need to include operations tasks to ensure the finished software runs smoothly.
Traditionally, development teams and operations teams are siloed, with handoffs at very distinct points in the workflow. Any issues discovered after handoffs are likely to take a not insignificant amount of time to fix. By fusing these two practices more closely, there is naturally less time wasted.
DevOps is, at its core, about Continuous Delivery
Faster delivery times on software products is a practice known as Continuous Delivery. This is when software developers release production code with small, incremental changes, rather than huge new versions. It’s why you get daily updates on an app, instead of the old school, every three-month release. This way, not only are new bugs found fast, but software is always kept up-to-date, and is more of a living digital product.
Continuous Delivery allows stakeholders and developers to have a continuous feedback loop, and allows them to fail fast - and course-correct if necessary. When DevOps is done well, you can measure delivery in terms of speed, stability, and software quality.
This rapid software release process is only possible, and successful, by doing Continous Integration, whereby small updates to the software product are immediately part of its core.
Continuous Integration is only possible, and successful, by a combination of people, process, and technology. It requires teams to work cohesively together, along with management for feedback and direction. It requires processes to be in place to ensure the software is built and released quickly, with architecture in line with best practices to allow this. And it requires software products to be able to facilitate all this: code repos, automated builds, and pushes to production.
Successful DevOps requires overhauling People, Process, and Technology
DevOps, like many other tech buzzwords (Industry 4.0, digital transformation, AI) is only successful when people, processes, and technologies are transformed. It requires overhauls of each of these pillars: changing the way that things have been done in the past and perhaps still the present.
DevOps relies heavily on automation
Automation is, with a doubt, one of the greatest helpers for doing DevOps. For example, Continuous Delivery is made possible by automating software release builds: automating a test suite and full build on each update to the main git repository and then pushing to production.
DevOps works well with an Agile workflow
Software houses that do Agile development (and use Agile metrics to ensure they’re doing it correctly) are better placed to do DevOps. Getting DevOps “right” is an ongoing, iterative process: we find better or more efficient ways of delivering quality software and incorporate them into our workflows.
With Agile development teams, we are able to experiment easily with different ways of solving software (and/or operations) problems without the fear that failure will impact the ‘final product.’
We do DevOps
Successful DevOps in practice helps speed the delivery of quality software. If this sounds like something that you need on your software project, then we are here to help. With experience in DevOps across a range of products and industries, our team can assist in getting your software production-ready in a flash. Ask us for more information about our range of services.