As the technology sector expands and consumers continue changing their habits, IT companies must adapt to the pace and develop new products and solutions more quickly than ever before. More companies have chosen to adopt DevOps to meet these demands. DevOps is more than just a set of practices. It is also a philosophy that affects company culture, techniques, and mindsets.
To integrate DevOps as efficiently as possible, you must understand what it can do for your IT company. Show the benefits of DevOps to your team and follow a step-by-step implementation roadmap to ensure smooth integration.
Step 1: Introduce the Process
Although DevOps practices can bring many benefits to the entire company, one of the primary challenges before adopting it is explaining how DevOps can help. The objective is to introduce a DevOps initiative, so the other stakeholders understand the benefits of implementing DevOps from their respective points of view.
The primary objective of a CEO is cost reduction and profit generation. They may be most interested in a primer that explains how DevOps reduces the time-to-market and helps create better products.
The role of a System Administrator (Sysadmin) is to ensure the security and reliability of the company’s computer systems. They will be more interested in the procedural merits of DevOps, such as reduced failure rates, better app performance, or the higher frequency of code deployments such as new versions and bug fixes.
Step 2: Build a Strategy
Developing a DevOps strategy is about fostering a collaborative culture and encouraging the DevOps mindset. Instead of traditional hierarchies, a DevOps strategy involves a top-down sponsorship, empowering team members with high flexibility and responsibility. The goal is to increase autonomy, redefine trust, and prioritize results over processes.
Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and automation of code testing, deployment, and release are among the data management techniques that give your team the tools to facilitate the DevOps mindset.
Step 3: Containerize
Containerization is the practice of encapsulating an application alongside all its software dependencies into an isolated environment called a container. Examples of software dependencies include libraries or configuration files.
Containers are a type of operating system virtualization (similar to a virtual machine). They streamline the testing and deployment processes of applications in different environments.
Containerization requires less overhead and makes applications more portable, efficient, and reliable. Implementing and mastering containerization tools is an essential element of DevOps integration.
Step 4: Integrate CI/CD Tools and Test Automation
Two of the Nine Pillars of DevOps are Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD). An implied third element of the CI/CD pipeline is Continuous Testing (CT). CT is required to ensure the delivered code performs as expected.
Test automation tools include regression tests, code analysis, security testing, and API testing. The core principle of CT is to integrate these tools into the testing process and make it possible to trigger them from a command line or a web service, at the end of which they respond with success or failure messages.
Integrating CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, GitLab, or CircleCI helps DevOps teams deliver code changes quickly and reliably. It does this by automating the building, packaging, and testing processes.
Step 5: Integrate QA into Development
Although many of the DevOps principles are about automation and streamlining processes, Quality Assurance (QA) still plays a crucial role. Consumers don’t just need software and applications more quickly; they must also meet superior quality standards and be as functional and bug-free as possible. Quality is necessary for sustainability.
To meet these demands while also fitting into the rapid pace of DevOps practices, Quality Assurance is no longer the responsibility of a separate team near the end of development. Instead, QA teams work directly with the dev teams, defining tangible objectives, quality metrics, and minimum performance indicators, integrating the QA process into the development process.
Developers get a chance to partner with QA testers and check the code for bugs or errors as early as possible. Whereas QA team members become a part of the development process and may even fix the code themselves.
Step 6: Monitor Application Performance
Another crucial element of the DevOps principle is Continuous Monitoring (CM), sometimes called Continuous Control Monitoring (CCM). CM refers to both an automated process and a set of tools that give DevOps teams the information they need to measure and monitor application performance after release.
CM tools allow teams to monitor infrastructure, networks, and applications in real-time, capturing hundreds of different performance indicators and data points. DevOps teams use the information to detect and pinpoint User Experience (UX) issues, monitor user habits and behavior, and improve IT operations transparency.
The Takeaway
Not only does implementing DevOps offer proven benefits on the quality, efficiency, and speed of software delivery, but it also improves staff morale. The collaboration-focused approach of DevOps principles brings down barriers between different teams and automates repetitive and tedious processes.
In turn, DevOps principles reduce the effects of compartmentalization and help your team members focus on the work that matters at all levels.
