What is DevOps?
DevOps is a software development methodology that helps developers communicate effectively with other IT professionals. It is a set of processes and tools allowing a company to create and improve products faster than traditional software development approaches.
The term DevOps combines the words “development” and “operations” that integrate these disciplines into one continuous process. Developers and testers are responsible for Development, while administrators are responsible for Operations.
DevOps emerged around 2009. The developer community concluded that the requirements for their work had changed, and the classical approaches to software creation had to be changed. Teams now needed more involvement from other professionals.
The model of the methodology resembles a vertical flow, where all the phases sequentially flow one into another. After the stages of defining the requirements and designing the product, the writing and assembling of the code follows. Then the code is sent into the hands of testers. After testing, the operations department loads the code onto the production machines – the product is up and running.
DevOps is essential for developers to understand their products better and optimize code launch costs, enabling faster application launches. The methodology allows flexibility to adapt to changing conditions and reduce development and maintenance costs. By applying DevOps, developers can quickly notice and fix bugs and respond to customer requests.
One DevOps practice is Continuous integration and Continuous delivery, or CI/CD, which automates the software release process from assembly to deployment. CI/CD helps minimize errors, improve build rates, and increase the quality of the product being developed through automation.
Netflix is an excellent example of how DevOps development team culture has helped rise to the top of technology companies. The service is now innovating at a high-speed rate because developers do not put uptime first: zero downtime is not as crucial in streaming as it is in healthcare or banking.
What DevOps gives the team?
- Fewer bugs. One of the reasons why deployment failures happen is due to bugs. In DevOps, development cycles are shorter than usual, so code comes out more often. As a result, it becomes easier to look for bugs, which means fewer crashes.
- Reduced time to market for a service. Scalable infrastructures – cloud platforms, build acceleration tools, parallel workflows, working in the same environment – significantly reduce time to market. Deploying and running an application has become many times faster.
- Creating more flexible and fault-tolerant systems. It is achieved through the use of cloud infrastructure. It provides the ability to quickly scale the design, use only the right resources, and quickly increase capacity.
- Increased application reliability and security. Among DevOps tools, some analyze the software’s source code to determine if it has security flaws. There is also an application that scans services for vulnerabilities – OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project).
How to incorporate DevOps into your work?
Knowing DevOps allows a specialist to move to a stronger team if their environment or company doesn’t have this culture. It will also be a big plus if a developer is considering relocation or looking for remote jobs in Western companies.
First, start with yourself: automate some of your work processes. This will make your life easier and help you get new colleagues up to speed more quickly, pass them pieces of code, and help them solve problems.
Get inspired by speaking at conferences and push the idea of DevOps into your team. As more developers, testers, system administrators, and even analysts get involved, the first fruits will appear, and you’ll notice an acceleration of all processes within the team.
