DevOps: Process and Importance Explained

The competitive business environment and the increasing customer demands have compelled companies to release software products in the market in a quick span and work constantly towards their improvement. This is one of the foremost reasons why they seek DevOps services and implement them in their project. Today, we will discuss what DevOps is, why is DevOps important along with the DevOps process.

What is DevOps?

Formed from the two words Development (Dev) and Operations (Ops), the term DevOps can be defined as a culture and set of practices that bring together development and operations teams to enable faster development and easier maintenance of existing deployments besides improving collaboration and communication between them at every stage of product creation.

DevOps enables organizations to create and improve products relatively faster than the traditional software development methods, which, in turn, allows them to serve their customers in a better way and compete more effectively in the market. It promotes shorter and controllable iterations with the help of automation and new tools and by adopting best practices. DevOps isn’t any kind of tool or technology but involves everything from organization to culture, process, and tooling.

DevOps Process

The DevOps process is entirely related to agility and automation with each phase in its lifecycle focusing on closing the loop between development and operations and push production through continuous development, continuous integration, continuous testing, continuous monitoring, continuous delivery, and lastly continuous deployment.

1. Continuous Development

Continuous development explains the iterative process for developing software to be delivered to customers as soon as it is completed and tested. It involves pushing continuous updates piece by piece rather than improving the software in one huge batch. This helps businesses achieve faster delivery of the latest features or products that possess low risk and are of high quality.

2. Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration is the process of automating the embedment of code changes from various contributors to a single project. It allows developers to repeatedly merge their code changes into a central repository where the updates run automatically. CI ensures that the latest and validated code is always ready for developers and prevents expensive delays in software development by allowing numerous developers to work confidently on the same source code.

3. Continuous Testing

In DevOps process, Continuous Testing is basically a verification process where the developers check whether the code works as intended in a live environment. It involves testing the software at each stage of the software development cycle with one primary goal, i.e. to assess the software quality at every step of the continuous delivery process.

4. Continuous Monitoring

Continuous monitoring encompasses monitoring each phase of the DevOps and IT operations lifecycle using a certain process/technology. It assists in continuously evaluating the health, performance, and reliability of the application as it progresses from development to production.

5. Continuous Delivery

Continuous delivery in the DevOps process involves code changes of all types (latest features, bug fixes, configuration changes) that are automatically built, tested, and packaged for release into production or to the users quickly and safely in a sustainable manner. CD tends to automate the release process so that new builds can be released effortlessly.

6. Continuous Deployment

Continuous Deployment is a process that utilizes automated testing to verify if the changes made into the codebase are accurate and stable for sudden autonomous deployment to a production environment. The process puts an end to the need for scheduled releases and speeds up the feedback process.

Why is DevOps Important? (Benefits of DevOps)

DevOps is aimed at streamlining and accelerating software development, testing, deployment, management, and maintenance, alongside adding flexibility, scalability, and security to the process. To accomplish this, the specialists utilize DevOps practices such as continuous integration, continuous delivery, continuous development, and more which we discussed above. Here are the benefits of DevOps that explain why organizations have been so quick to adopt it.

1. Shorter and Faster Development Cycle

A shorter development cycle and faster innovation are among the major benefits of DevOps. When development and operations teams work in silos, it is generally difficult to tell whether the application is all set for operations or not. The cycle times are extended unnecessarily when the development teams unambiguously hand over the application to the operations team. However, with a combined effort from both teams, the application gets ready for use much faster, thanks to streamlined processes, automation, systematic release planning, etc. Faster innovation and faster time to market allow organizations to be much ahead of their competitors. Today, companies are judged based on how quickly they can innovate and their success also depends on their ability to innovate. It has been observed that shorter development cycles help push an application to market nearly 60% faster than conventional approaches.

2. Reduced Deployment Failure and Time to Recover

Programming defects are one of the core reasons why development teams face deployment failures. With DevOps, the shorter development cycle and continuous testing promote frequent code releases, which eventually makes it easier to identify the defects in the code and the teams can spot any inconsistencies in the software in a timely manner. As a result, teams can minimize the number of deployment failures using agile programming principles that involve collaboration and modular programming. Also, it is extremely easy to manage rollbacks.

Time to recover is also another major issue as some failures are bound to take place, however, recovery is much faster when both the teams work in tandem, exchange ideas, and tackle the associated challenges.

3. Boosts Efficiency

DevOps is important because it helps achieve higher efficiency since software engineers do not need to spend time on the tasks that are automated. They can utilize that time on completing tasks that can’t be automated. Continuous integration servers automate the testing code process, thereby minimizing the manual work. Apart from this, parallel workflows, acceleration tools, scalable infrastructure, and more contribute to efficient development and reliable deployment. Parallel workflows can be incorporated into the delivery supply chains to avoid any sort of delay in work, Acceleration tools can help compile the code more quickly, Scalable Infrastructure expedites testing and deployment operations as they improve the access to hardware resources. All these things make DevOps important.

4. Improves Communication and Customer Satisfaction

DevOps process enhances the culture of software development. Productivity is high when both the development and operations teams work in sync rather than working separately. The focus shifts on performance and the overall end-goal rather than individual goals. The teams work relentlessly on getting the software into production as soon as possible and the KPIs are structured accordingly. Moreover, when there is trust between the teams, they can communicate more clearly and effectively.

Put simply, it is no longer the matter of handing over the application to the operations team and waiting for their response. Similarly, the operations team doesn’t need to wait for any other teams to fix any problem. When all individuals have a similar goal in target, the process becomes seamless.

Another reason why DevOps is important for your software projects is that the customer-centric approach, constant feedback, and improvement, quality testing, stable environment with CI/CD, faster customer response, faster time to market, reduced costs- all these factors combined contribute to highly satisfying results in software development and also satisfied customers.

Final Thoughts

DevOps is getting adopted and implemented at a rapid rate. Organizations are always up to take advantage of the many benefits it offers. And we hope the above information gave you enough insights into the importance of DevOps.

Looking for a DevOps partner for your project? Our DevOps experts at Dew can help accelerate your application development and offer greater visibility and control over your applications and servers. You can reach out to us here.