DevOps refers to a group of modern-day IT approaches and practices which are designed to join operations and IT staff members (generally software developers) on a project with unforeseen levels of collaboration. The idea is to eliminate the traditional hurdles and barriers which have historically plagued cooperation between these departments, resulting in losses to an organization. Therefore, DevOps quickens the deployment of IT solutions. As a result, development cycles are optimized and shortened, saving money, time, staff, and other resources.

In the last few years, DevOps has commanded a strong presence in the IT circles. Despite its popularity as a useful approach, the domain lacks visibility and suffers from improper implementations. As a result, the operation and development departments are unable to leverage its maximum advantage. The integration of DevOps is needed in organizations where the IT leadership has its own strategy for its implementation.

As DevOps gains greater recognition, its community has managed to discuss the best practices which can help organizations improve collaboration and develop higher quality IT solutions. Following are some of the DevOps tips that can help you propel your IT department in the right direction through clean coding and optimized operations.

1.     Participation from the Concerned Parties

One of the founding principles of DevOps is to ensure that the operations personnel, the development professionals, and the support staff are facilitated to work together at regular intervals. It is important that all of these parties recognize the importance of each other and are willing to collaborate.

One of the well-known practices in the agile industry is the use of onsite customer where the agile development team operates the business by offering their support. Experienced professionals are known to adopt stakeholder participation practice. This practice recommends developers to expand their horizons and work closely with all the concerned parties other than the customer.

2.     Automated Testing

An agile software engineer is always expected to spend a considerable amount of time in quality programming along with focusing on testing. This is why automated regression testing is a recurring tool in the toolbox of agile developers. Sometimes, it is modeled as behavior-driven development or test-driven development.

One of the secret ingredients for the success of agile development is the fact that these environments are continuously run daily tests to identify issues quickly. Subsequently, they also receive rapid fixing. As a result, such environments are able to attain a greater degree of software quality in contrast to the traditional software approaches.

3.     Addition of “I” in Configuration Management

Configuration management is a set of standard practices which is required to monitor and manage changes in the software lifecycle. Previously, configuration management was ineffective because it was too limited. DevOps has allowed adding “I” in the CM equation, which has produced integration configuration management. This means that along with the implementation of CM, developers are also analyzing problems related to production configuration which originates between the infrastructure of the company and the proposed solution. This is a key change because developers were not too concerned about such variables in the past and only focused on CM in terms of their solutions.

DevOps promotes a fresh brand of thinking which targets enterprise-level awareness and offers visibility to a more holistic picture. The ultimate goal of integrated configuration management is to ensure that developer teams are equipped with the knowledge about all the dependencies of their solutions.

4.     Continuous Integration

When a project’s development and validation undergoes automated regression testing along with optional code analysis (after the code is updated via version control system), the approach is labeled as continuous integration. CI evokes positive responses from agile developers working in a DevOps environment. With support from CI, developers have been able to design a working product with gradual and regular coding while any code defect is promptly addressed through immediate feedback.

5.     Addition of I in DP

Traditionally, deployment planning was done with cooperation from the operation department of organizations whilst at times the release engineers were also consulted. Those who have been in the industry for a long period of time are compliant with this planning from the assistance received from active stakeholder participation.

In DevOps, one is quick to come to the understanding that a cross-team is necessary in deployment planning so the staff from the operations department is easily able to work with each of the development teams. Such practice may not be anything new for the operations staff, though development teams would find it the first instance due to their restrained nature of duties.

6.     Deployment

The methodology of CI is further enhanced through continuous development. In CD, whenever integration is met with success in a single sandbox, the modifications are sent to the upcoming sandbox as a sort of promotion. The promotion can only be stopped when the modifications require verification from people who serve the operations and development.

With CD, developers are able to decrease the time duration elapsed between the identification of a new feature and its deployment. Companies are becoming more and more response thanks to CD. Though, CD has raised some eyebrows for operational risks where errors maybe originated during the production due to the negligence of the developers.

7.     Production

In high-scale software environments, often software development teams are engaged in updating a new release of a product which is already established .i.e. it is in production. Hence, they are not only required to spend time on the newer release but also handle any incoming issues in the production front. In such cases, the development team is effectively the third level of application’s support as they are expected to be the third and last set of professionals to respond to any critical production issues.

Final Thoughts

Do you work with enterprise-level development?

In this day and age, DevOps is one of the most useful tools for large organizations. Follow the above-mentioned tips and improve the efficiency of your IT-related solutions and products within a short period of time.